Cinematic Potatoes:

Starring Spuds!

And the Oscar for the Best Line About Potatoes in a film goes to:

Empire of the Sun

“You taught me that people will do anything for a potato.”

Tubers and Tinseltown share a long history together. It probably starts with a little known 1924 D.W.Griffith film called Isn't Life Wonderful? Spuds play a starring role here - publicity stills featured the leading lady and man smiling at each other over a tin basin of dirt-covered potatoes. The plot concerns an impoverished German family, driven from their homes, who live in two rooms in Berlin. They can only afford to eat a potato a day each.

One of the family's sons, Hans, falls in love with the orphaned Inga and is determined to make a life for himself. He secretly builds a small cottage for himself and his future bride. He also cultivates a small potato patch in a public garden. The harvested spuds are to ensure better times for the family, but, alas, as the young lovers are bringing home the potatoes from the field, their cart is set upon by robbers and all the taters stolen. Ruin! But wait... Inga turns to Hans and says, “I have you and you have me and, oh -- isn't life wonderful?" There's also something in the script about an ill grandmother, a hen who lays a timely egg and a pound of beef that costs 15 million paper marks, but that's not our focus, right?

The silent film about post-World War I Germans facing food shortages did not do well at the box office. Presumably Americans were too busy dancing the Charleston and playing the stock market to flock to a flick about their former enemies. Variety (Dec.3, 1924) doubted the picture would bring in the fans.

"The story is too realistic. It is a page torn from life. Those who rave about "the finer things in pictures" may not come to the box office in sufficient numbers to offset the out and out fans who will stay away. After all, the latter are the ones to be catered to. Fans like naught but the sweetened pap fed to them day after day on the screens of the country.

One point about this story should be pointed out immediately before some rabid anti-German jumps to the fore, proclaiming it another example of German propaganda. That is the fact that Major Jeffrey Maas, the author, is of the British army. In itself, that should be sufficient to still those who might shout "propaganda".

Photoplay (February 1925) wrote this of the film:

"No doubt, this is one of the finest pictures of the typical Griffith type. We are not quite sure that any other director would have made a flop of it, owing to the absence of a plot. Yet, one never loses interest for a moment; in fact, we seemed to share the hardships and sorrows of the half -starved Polish family and we rejoiced in their very happy moments."

No plot but packs of potatoes. That's our kind of flick. We think the two movie magazines got their countries mixed up, by the way. As best as we can decipher, Inga, the orphan, is a Polish refugee. The family, however, is German.

Coming Soon: more cinematic potatoes

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