One of three films at the Italian Cinema Day hosted by VTIFF and VICA.
See also The Truffle Hunters and L’immensità
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This film is sponsored by Peter Ciardelli and David Arms Jr.
Big Night focuses on the volatile relationship between two immigrant restaurateurs, the uncompromising chef Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and his younger sibling, Secondo (Stanley Tucci), who runs the dining room and is trying desperately to keep the business afloat.
That’s a particular challenge because Big Night is set in the late 1950s, when American customers in Italian restaurants demanded spaghetti and meatballs, not delicate Venetian rice dishes. Over the course of a few days, the brothers cook, bicker, court women (Isabella Rossellini, Minnie Driver and Alison Janney), and host a wild, hours-long feast for the musician Louis Prima, in an attempt to drum up the good press they need to stay alive.
Big Night helped kick off a revolution in American food culture. “The idea that the Italians had broken the meal into distinct antipasto, pasta, and farinaceous products, followed by a main course, was still news to Americans back in the 1990s,” ~ Mario Batali, who was given his first show on Food Network that same year.