Babette's Feast (DVD)
At once a rousing paean to artistic creation, a delicate evocation of divine grace, and the ultimate film about food, the Oscar-winning Babette’s Feast is a deeply beloved treasure of cinema. Directed by Gabriel Axel and adapted from a story by Isak Dinesen, it is the lovingly layered tale of a French housekeeper with a mysterious past who brings quiet revolution in the form of one exquisite meal to a circle of starkly pious villagers in late nineteenth-century Denmark. Babette’s Feast combines earthiness and reverence in an indescribably moving depiction of sensual pleasure that goes to your head like fine champagne.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 2K digital film restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- New interviews with director Gabriel Axel and actor Stéphane Audran
- Karen Blixen—Storyteller, a 1995 documentary about the author of the film’s source story, who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen
- New visual essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
- New interview with sociologist Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson about the significance of cuisine in French culture
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Mark Le Fanu and, for the Blu-ray edition, Dinesen’s 1950 story
New cover by Sarah Habibi