摘要：The introduction of rationing in Britain during the Second World War promoted the idea of a common national diet and linked the State to the individual consumer in such a way that the principles of food control could be used to define the British as a coherent and specific group. This process was both advanced and reflected in the cinema of the period, for whilst the publicity that the Ministry of Food (MoF) exhibited in British auditoriums helped to further the appeal of a collective gastronomic agenda, commercial feature films also used food imagery in their attempts to create “authentic” representations of contemporary Britain. However, whilst many films were happy to toe the official line and advance the idea of a uniform diet, others preferred to use food to remind audiences of both the gratification offered by individual indulgence and the pleasures of the flesh. This paper will explore some of the different ways in which British films of the war years used food, and will suggest that the frequent use of food imagery in British wartime cinema is linked to a wider cultural and societal interest in the subject
