When I watch old movies, I always like looking at the details of everyday life as imagined on film. That's how I first noticed the snowglobe in Susan Alexander's boarding-house room in Citizen Kane. The cigarette-lighter and Bull Durham sack on Sam Spade's night-table in The Maltese Falcon, the signs strung across the drugstore in The Best Years of Our Lives, the sad furnishings of Garzah's room in The Naked City -- they all move me to hit Pause and undertake my own version of Cultural Studies. Here's something I just took in on the DVD release of The Grapes of Wrath -- the menu-board in a diner where the Joads stop to buy a loaf of bread (a 15¢ loaf, which they are able to buy for 10¢). The menu stands a silent commentary on the distance between the Joads and their dream of a better life:
T BONE STEAK 35(The prices of the last three items are obscured by a counter display of lollipops.)
RIB STEAK 30
PORK CHOPS 25
ROAST CHICKEN 25
ROAST BEEF 25
ROAST LAMB 25
ROAST PORK 25
LIVER & ONIONS 25
BOILED HAM 25
COLD MEATS 25
STEW 15
SALADS 10
SOUP
PIES
COLD DRINKS
comments: 0
Post a Comment