Delicatessen

Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro first tried to set up The City of Lost Children; that was judged too expensive, so this became their first feature instead. Jeunet has said the cannibal butcher came from living above a butcher’s shop, hearing the man shout and cut meat very early in the morning. The two split the work. Caro took the art direction and drew every shot from his partner’s descriptions and breakdown. It was made in the former Seita warehouses at Pantin, whose vast sheds were turned into a studio for budget reasons. The underground sewer passages needed three weeks of motion control. Jean-Claude Dreyfus, the butcher Clapet, was picked after the pair remembered him as the booming Monsieur Marie in adverts for the Marie brand. At the 17th César Awards in 1992 the film won four prizes: first work, original screenplay or adaptation, production design, editing. It was up for six more there, Darius Khondji’s cinematography among them, and the 1991 European Film Awards named its production designers of the year, though it lost film of the year. A good fit if you are curious what a film looks like when every shot was drawn before the camera rolled. Not for anyone who cannot take the source of the meat Clapet sells his tenants as ground for jokes.