Chief Inspector Oxford's Breakfast
The full english looked fantastic, bacon could have been cooked a bit longer. But the runny egg look great.
share"I've always been a Quaker Oats man, myself."
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MovieChat Forums > Frenzy (1972) Discussion > Chief Inspector Oxford's Breakfast
Certainly beat pig trotters with prunes.
Moments of perfection,share
idle in the sunshine
This is like me and my twin sister's favorite part of the movie. Not only just watching him eat that breakfast but watching the other inspector watching him eating the breakfast. It's just perfect. And what's with the half toasted/if not toasted at all toast?! haha.
Love this film as every other film of Hitchcock's. Family Plot and Shadow of a Doubt are in our tops.
Meyer Twins
Great breakfast. And the weird thing was that Hitchcock was quoted as hating eggs.
But Inspector Oxford says the best way to have a good breakfast is an ENGLISH breakfast. I agree. In the US we've added a few nice things: hashbrowns. But I loved that breakfast scene.
I think what the Inspector said was that the way to eat well in Britain was to eat breakfast 3 times a day (paraphrased). Britain was not known for its cuisine in the 70s.
let's go and say a prayer for a boy who couldn't run as fast as I could
What was that tiny little thing she served him after that horrid looking soup?
It looked like a tiny bird of some kind.
Also Jimmy, I love your signature. Angels With Dirty faces is one of my all time favorite movies!
I think it was quail, obviously I agree with you on "Angels with Dirty Faces"..one of the great endings in movie history IMHO.
let's go and say a prayer for a boy who couldn't run as fast as I could
"This is like me and my twin sister's favorite part of the movie. Not only just watching him eat that breakfast but watching the other inspector watching him eating the breakfast. "
Forgive me, but I didn't understand that scene at all. Why did the film linger for such a long time watching the policeman eat breakfast?
Much of the movie has food in it--Covent Garden, grapes, apples, the Inspector's wife's meals--the theme of the movie, I think, is about human appetites. Throughout Hitchcock's career, meal times show up many times.
Yep, food is a big deal in Hitchcock and Frenzy may be the Hitchcock movie in which food plays the biggest role.
In his early sixties interviews with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock told Truffaut that he always wanted to make a movie about "the journey of food" -- from vegatables in the ground, to produce being sold in the market, to dinner being served...to the sewage being dumped in the river.
Well, it took a few years after the Truffaut interviews, but it looks like Hitchcock made that movie: "Frenzy."
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The scene in which the one policeman politely and intently watches the other policeman eat his breakfast at his desk is, I think, simply a matter of Hitchcock's deadpan British humor at work. The scene goes on so long that we start to laugh. I think there are also these elements: how intently Oxford devours that food(we will soon learn that he is starving from Mrs. Blaney's gourment dinners), and how intently his assistant watches(the moustacheoed man is simply "doing his duty" as Oxford's assistant.)
It would be hard to enjoy a meal with someone carefully watching every bite you take unless you were starving! He not only enjoyed it, he packed it in--looked delicious!
By the way, I never actually saw Mrs. Oxford eat any of her own cooking, did you? She said in one scene that she was going to eat hers in the kitchen while she prepared eggs for the soufflé.
The soup was absolutely dreadful looking--it actually looked like it was teeming with botulism (bubbles on top). I think I saw some eel and I don't know what the other stuff was.
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>>> By the way, I never actually saw Mrs. Oxford eat any of her own cooking, did you?
She gulped down the margarita that the other guy left and immediately ran to the kitchen.
It should be against the law to use "LOL" unless you really did LOL!
Wonderful breakfast and eaten with gusto.
"Someone has been tampering with Hank's memories."
Outstanding observation; one I did not notice.
Warning: I probably read the book first.
I think Hitchcock had to establish the Chief Inspector yearning for the old fashioned breakfast to set up his discussions and humor with his wife's scenes. In his wife's scenes there was a lot of information about the case discussed at various times. So he had to establish this motivation.
share<< The full english looked fantastic, bacon could have been cooked a bit longer. But the runny egg look great. >>
I was wondering how many times that actor had to do that scene. He's noshing away quite enthusiastically!
(Personally, I'd have toasted the bread...though maybe that would be too dry for a performer to swallow easily...and repeatedly.)
I loved the breakfast scene…and ironic, too, because French cuisine has the reputation of being one of the best (if not the very best) in the world, while English cuisine is often frowned at. However, French food prepared wrong can be disgusting, and some English foods are actually quite tasty. Full English breakfast, for example…I personally don't care much for kippers and black pudding, but the rest…yum. Shepherd's pie, mentioned early in the movie, too…I love it, just like the various little treats you can eat with afternoon tea.
shareIf the bacon had been cooked longer, it would not have been an English breakfast...
The quality of an actor can be measured in the scenes where food is on the table. An "OK" actor might take a bite or two. Most actors fake it. But the best actors in the world can do what Alec McCowan did in that scene. Really eat and make it look GREAT! And not spit food all over whilst talking their lines out. EXCELLENT. Deserved an AcadAward for "food eating scene."
He was born in Tunbridge Wells. I was only briefly ever in England, but damn if I didn't have an English breakfast in the town of Royal Tunbridge Wells. Amazing.
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The breakfast scene vs The dinner scene.
These scenes are very funny.
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The eating scenes in this movie are simply FANTASTIC, although I must say - like most viewers - I would not eat any of the stuff served (including this first English breakfast).
The only eating scenes even more funny/lovely/wonderful than these in FRENZY are the once featured in the great C. Chabrol work "Les innocents aux mains sales", which I HIGHLY recommend to everyone loving FRENZY.
FRENZY has some mervellous dislogue, too. I especially cheerish this here: :-))
Solicitor in Pub: We were just talking about the tie murderer, Maisie. You'd better watch out.
Maisie, Barmaid: [salaciously] He *rapes* them first, doesn't he?
Solicitor in Pub: Yes, I believe he does.
Doctor in Pub: Well I suppose it's nice to know that every cloud has a silver lining.
HITCHs last masterpiece, 10 out of 10!
I thought it was downright disgusting, but I don't like eggs or sausage, I'd take the oats too.
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These are for you McNulty
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I had the good fortune to see Frenzy in a crowded revival house.
About 10 seconds after we first see the chief inspector eating, the audience laughter began and just kept building throughout the scene.
I used to think it was a mistake on Hitchcock's part to place this scene before either of the two dinner scenes but now I think the scene works fine just where it is.
Hair today. Goon tomorrow.
I think Hitchcock had to establish the Chief Inspector yearning for the old fashioned breakfast to set up his discussions and humor with his wife's scenes. In his wife's scenes there was a lot of information about the case discussed at various times. So he had to establish this motivation.
shareThere is, about Frenzy in general, and the Oxford scenes in particular, the idea that the movie had -- as one of its themes, not the ONLY theme -- a contemplation of food and its offshoots: enjoying it(the breakfast), being repulsed by it(the Oxford dinners), growing it(Covent Garden with its rich sense of fruits like the grapes Rusk gives Blaney and the potatoes within which Rusk will hide Babs' body...)
There's also food being inedible, as in the one-liner some pub extra yells out to a waitress about his putrid Shepard's Pie:
"Whew, take a whiff of this, will ya?"
Rusk being a greengrocer makes food his very profession. As noted by Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto, Rusk tells Brenda "We have a saying in my profession: don't squeeze the goods til they're yours." And Rusk proceeds to "squeeze"(strangle) Brenda. Moreover, his rape is a kind of "making a meal" of his female victims. We have Oxford saying "We must top(the killer) before his appetite is whetted again." We also have Rusk, after killing Brenda, stealing a half-eaten apple off her desk and eating it himself...picking his teeth with the incriminating tiepin that he uses to finish his meals.
Food, food, food...Frenzy IS food.
And interestingly, back in 1962 when being interviewed by Truffaut for Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock said he wanted to make a movie about food -- from being grown, to being "fresh and gleaming" for eating, until it becomes either garbage or digested sewage.
Some of that made it into Frenzy. And the thematic clarity of the food in Frenzy is one reason why Hitchcock was above and beyond the usual thriller-maker.