Year: 1996

Address: Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci

Distribution: Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub

Award and nominations:

1996: Sundance: Best Screenplay

1996: Critics' Choice Awards: Top 10 – Best Films of the Year

1996: New York Film Critics Circle: Best First Feature. 2 Nominations

1996: Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Nominated for Best Screenplay

BIG NIGHT (1996), It follows the trend of films where the act of eating is crucial to the development of the story. As in BABBETTE'S FEAST (1987), the moment of greatest dramatic intensity, occurs during, or as a result of, a grand banquet. In BIG NIGHT, the ritual of eating is imbued with transcendental connotations, each dish becoming a manifesto that defines how the characters understand life. This premise is taken to such an extreme that the grand banquet resembles a Last Supper, rife with deception and sacrifice, and where the table at which the food is served becomes the meeting place of the Family, an institution within which all human dramas are endured with intense passion and profound love.

The idea of food as a point of connection is paramount in BIG NIGHT. This is because the act of cooking is It becomes the protagonists' way of life. It becomes even more important when a restaurant called "Paradise" is founded around it. In other words, food is the foundation of a utopia, the paradise of two brothers reminiscent of the biblical Cain and Abel. Both strive to find their place in a new country to which they have arrived as immigrants, trying to replicate their homeland, a distant Eden lost in old Europe.

BIG NIGHT is a family film, both in its themes and because the screenplay was written by the director and star, Stanley Tucci, and his cousin. Tucci also co-directed it with his best childhood friend, another one who's practically family. Perhaps that's why the dramatic weight it conveys resonates so honestly with viewers' emotions?