With Sian Conway introducing the film Big Night for the IFI’s Bigger Picture this week, the food writer, film lover and regular consumer and admirer of Italian cuisine has written and narrates a video essay for Film In Dublin, about the film’s sumptuous story, it’s unforgettable dishes, and the themes about food, finance and identity that resonate with restaurantaurs in the fair city of film and beyond.
Big Night screens at the Irish Film Institute at 6.30pm, Wednesday 17th June 2025. Tickets for the screening are available from the IFI website and box office.
Big Night (1996) as a film is, on one hand, a bountiful feast for the eyes and an absolute gem to watch. It’s a small dedication to the art and sacrifice of the service industry, in all its glory and flaws. And on the other, it’s a commentary on the difficulty of running a restaurant while trying to stay true to your identity and passion, keeping yourself afloat amidst the demands of operating a business and also the immigrant experience.
It’s a film that, nearly 30 years after its release, still holds so much relevance. Across the globe, we’re seeing a crisis in the hospitality sector. Inflation and rising costs, staff shortages and food shortages are wreaking havoc on independent restaurants. We’re seeing decades-old, family-owned establishments seeing no option other than closing their doors despite popularity and acclaim, usually for soulless international chains to move in instead. According to an article by Corinna Hardgraves for The Irish Times, between September 2023 and July 2024, the Restaurants Association of Ireland reported over 500 Irish restaurants had closed their doors. In the first couple of months of this year alone, a staggering 150 more closed. Things right now feel insurmountable, unstable and ephemeral for hospitality.
Though seemingly, it’s never been a better time to become a food influencer. Taking snaps of your coffee, your pastry or your romantic meal at x popular restaurant is a lucrative game for the girlies of TikTok with a decent following and even a semi-decent phone camera and wallet. I obviously say this as someone with some skin in the game and don’t want to sound like a hypocrite – but then again, I also work in service, because the content machine can be a hellish pit that I do need to have some distance from.
I guess my gripe does sort of come with the aesthetics-led depiction of the food industry via social media. How often it feels superficial, not fully cooked. Lacking the seasonings of authentic love. While it’s undoubtedly great for exposure, I think TikTok has had some negative influences on how restaurants shape their menus. What looks most aesthetic gets favoured and virality either makes a place impossible to visit or so oversaturated that you get sick of hearing about it. But mostly, it feels like, despite the surge in food influencers online, our favourite restaurants are still barely hanging on (and god help them if they get a scathing review). The dichotomy is stark, especially as one simply cannot exist without the other (I’ll let you guess which one).
And I suppose that might be as natural a segue into the film as I’m gonna get.
On a coastal road in 1950s New Jersey sits Paradise, a struggling Italian restaurant ran by Italian immigrant brothers, Primo and Secondo. It’s quickly established that Primo (played by Tony Shalboub) is the true chef of the two, his passion for the food that came with him from the home country is packed full of pride and care. For him, identity does not take a backseat for any customer. If he was to buy a bumper sticker in some cheap Dollar Tree type store, it’d definitely say, Like It or Lump It — Either Way, You’re Eating It.
His brother Secondo is the charming, diplomatic face of the business (played to charismatic perfection by Stanley Tucci). He’s not afraid to play the game in order to save the business, even if that means making sacrifices.
It’s a classic format in the service industry and one that I think the film showcases well: the drive and desires of both Back of House and Front of House and how they work and communicate together to make up the full wheel that is hospitality. No one is necessarily the villain here, nor is one alone the selfless hero. Because in the heat of working in or running any restaurant, there will always be disagreements – whether that’s about what’s not working, what’s costing too much, what’s selling versus what isn’t, what’s a correct way to speak to customers and knowing where to yield to them. But there will also always be a dependence on one another, especially when the stew is getting sour, so to speak. For 2 years in Paradise, they have both been doing the same dance: where Primo refuses to change a thing about his menu or the dishes he serves, Seco is the one to sweep in and mollify the scant clientele in an effort to make sure they’ll come back. But now they’ve been hit with an unshaking deadline from the banks, every lifeline already exhausted. Cosa dice? They’re in deep shit.
When their American customers refuse to be open-minded about the food they have willingly ordered, Seco puts on his best customer service face and patiently explains to them that traditionally, spaghetti does not come as a side dish with risotto. Nor does it come with meatballs, much to the diners’ mutual chagrin.
“Sometimes, spaghetti likes to be alone!” he tells them light-heartedly, squeezing every last little ounce of a good FOH worker’s natural charm out of himself to try keep them sweet before he relays their disapproval to Primo and inevitably, earns himself a bollocking from his brother.
Primo’s dogged, perfectionistic attitude towards his menu is seen as frustratingly precious by Seco, who desperately wants to do something to change the restaurant’s financial viability (seeing as he is the one out of the two actively trying to schmooze their banker for another extension on their repayments). But I find myself rooting for Primo’s staunch disdain at the idea of watering down his recipes and thus, his culture. He snarkily suggests serving a bowl of mash on the side – or hell, even hot dogs – if that’s what will make them happy, prompting Seco to challenge him to tell this to the diners’ faces himself. He won’t. In defence of Seco, putting a chef and his Billy Big Balls attitude to the test by doing what they do for a living (keeping people happy via the medium of food) is enough to shut them up real quick most times.
“If you give people time, they learn” Primo exasperatedly tells his brother, setting him off into a rage, financial stress weighing down on him to the point of interfering with his sex drive.
“Well I don’t have time for them to learn,” Seco snaps back, “this is a restaurant, not a fucking school!”
The conversation dies unresolved, punctuated by comedic yet passive-aggressively swinging doors – a portal into the world of service fantasy for our *checks notes* two diners.
The pressure of Paradise’s finances affects both brothers, despite their different priorities. Primo turns to his confidant, pal and barber, who listens to his woes and soothes them with a shot of grappa in exchange for some genuine feedback on leftover food from the restaurant. He advises him to ring up their restaurateur zio back in Rome. Scheme one. Concurrently, a preoccupied Seco forlornly sucks down a cigarette in the blue and red lights cast from the glitzy, neighbouring and aspirational Pascal’s. All it needs is some Lana Del Rey dubbed over it to fully complete this forlorn visual. He, unlike his brother, can set aside his pride in the name of being realistic and so, takes himself over to Pascal’s for some R&D (and a potential handout). Scheme Two.
The scene in Pascal’s is one of near-overstimulating hedonism. It’s like some kind of nightmare circus, flashing red, white and blue like the Americans it appeals to. Flashy and abundant, plates fly out from the kitchen like comets across the sky and patrons eat, drink, smoke and dance like its their last night on earth. Not exactly a confidence boost for Seco, whose ability to play the game has led him to Pascal’s office, like a lost soul to a confession box. Even the barman here calls him by the English translation of his name, a further slight to his identity and the man he has to become in order to Play The Game.
Pascal is the kind of guy who, on the outside, seems like an Every Man kinda guy. A friend to all, despite his success and riches. An exuberant yet generous man. The kind of man who cut his teeth in “the land of fucking opportunity”; who made the American Dream work for him, thus making him seem like a bit of a blueprint for Seco. But Pascal speaks frankly to Seco that he can’t help him financially. Unsuccessful in another attempt to poach both of the brothers and their talent, he instead relays a sort of fable to our despondent Seco about American consumer behaviour:
“A guy goes out to eat in the evening after a long day in the office, whatever. He don’t want, on his plate, something he has to look and think, ‘What the fuck is this?!’ He wants to look at his plate, see a steak, and say ‘I like steak! I am happy.’’”
Pascal here shows us the decision he’s had to make in order to make money in the Land of the Free, resulting in the watering down of his own culture in order to be palatable to American diners (thus profitable for himself). It’s a double-edged sword. Is food simply a commodity, a distraction from our lives outside of work? A means to fill a gap within ourselves? If we think nothing of what we are consuming and spending money on, what’s it all really for? Mindless consumption with our disposable income can be seen as a show of status, rather than for discovery or genuine enjoyment.
However, it seems maybe Pascal can do something to help. He knows a guy – a classic trait of men like Pascal, they always have a rolodex of Big Names to whip out for story embellishment and slight ego-stroking. When big names come in, you lavish them. It’s PR 101, essentially. He says it’s easy, throwing a few meals or bottles out to any big kahunas who walk through your door; then sitting back and waiting for them to come back in of their own accord. And in a slightly Nathan-For-You-esque scheme he proposes that he call singer and friend Louis Prima to come to Paradise. They’ll make a night of it! Free food and wine! Invite the town! It’ll have everyone talking and it’ll be the guaranteed hit Paradise needs to save it from closing. What could go wrong?!
Primo isn’t too delighted at the idea of selling themselves short with such a gimmicky marketing tactic, but reluctantly agrees anyway (no doubt accustomed to Seco’s own tenacity to get a job done). And so, the lads begin to gear themselves up. In a montage of all it takes for an already-struggling business to pull out the stops, we see them carrying bucket-loads of gleaming fish, haggled at the market for a decent price at the mention of Prima, back up to the restaurant as Pascal and Gabriella roll by in a Cadillac. Then there’s issues with suppliers and herbs not being as fresh as they should be, but time and money being of the essence. There’s the deciding of what dishes will really seal the deal together, including a timpano, a mad dish of epic proportions pasta, meatballs, egg and salami, encased in a baked pasta shell. The kind of dish that would have every food journalist breaking their necks to get through the doors if the Internet was around. Phyllis, putting her frustrations aside, even volunteers herself to help the boys out and we see the four working in tandem to get the restaurant ready. There’s some beautiful shots here, in between Seco crashing out over aubergines that are cut too thick, of the gang dutifully making pasta by hand. Of Cristiano waltzing with a broom in a brief moment’s downtime. Of all the checking, re-checking and fitting out of the restaurant before show-time. The calm before the storm, that harmonic concentration that takes you right up until you open the establishment doors.
Just before kick-off, in sweeps Pascal, all flattery guns blazing, letting the cat out of the bag that Prima’s visit isn’t an organic one, rather an orchestrated pulling of strings. The tension is soothed by Seco’s failed joke at Primo’s misunderstanding of the idiom red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning. Little does he know how much more wool has been pulled over his eyes as Seco dips out to grab the booze, at a heavily discounted rate due to him sleeping with Gabriella. On the way back, he’s lured in by a charming Cadillac salesman with a broken wrist and a lollipop hanging out the side of his mouth who offers him a test-drive. He’s basically a mirage of the American Dream, tantalising Seco with the kind of life he could lead if the brothers manage to pull this thing off.
And then in comes one of my favourite parts of maybe any film I’ve ever watched: the night itself. Not a phone in sight, just people living in the moment, etc. The bar is flowing, the place is packed. The guests flow in in their evening finery, everyone’s looking well and there’s an undeniable air of divilment between Paradise’s four walls. While they wait for the grand arrival of Prima, they lash out drinks. Bottles of wine are uncorked at ungodly rates and no one can hold down a drink longer than a couple of seconds it seems. The press are being buttered up by Seco, harkening back to Pascal’s advice and a conga line has bloomed as the patrons get a bit more sloshed. Meanwhile the brothers are in the back prepping, nerves as lit as their guests on the other side of the kitchen doors. Their razor-sharp perfection — or is it perspiration? — has them locked in, to the point where they don’t notice as their guests become avid spectators, tension and hunger stretched taut through their bodies until it’s pricked with the pin of a declaration of “LET’S EAT!”
The next few snippets of the film are served up to us like dishes themselves. Course by course, we feast vicariously through everyone at the table in Paradise.
- Starting off with LA ZUPPA, modestly whetting appetites and securing satisfied smiles from the diners, as all good starters should. A teaser of what’s to come, without taking the wind out of your hunger’s sails.
- Followed swift by I PRIMI, which features a decadent, tri-coloured plate showcasing three of Italy’s greatest gifts: pesto, risotto and seafood.
- Drum roll please for the man, the myth, the legend, IL TIMPANO. Breaths are held as if by corsets around windpipes as the brothers contemplate the removal of the lid. when they successfully remove it, they continue to talk in hushed tones, palpating the big mound of pasta like it could detonate at anything more than a feather-light touch. The sheer anticipation of the timpano’s unveiling rivals that of an episode of The Great British Bake Off. Will it collapse? Will it crumble? Will it even taste good? You find yourself scooching further to the edge of your seat as the brothers, with the concentration and seriousness of surgeons, prepare themselves for literal lift-off. Seco smacks Cristiano’s hands away from the lid and tells Seco to keep one just for Prima himself. The entire future of the business lies on that tray after all. But it’s a success! It passes the palpation test, the brothers moving as gently as first-time parents with a newborn infant. A trepidatious slice reveals the ugly beauty of what lies beneath and everyone at the table goes wild! Pascal exclaims, “This is fucking good, I should kill you!”
- Hard to beat, and yet, like a QVC advert, there’s more! By the time we get to I SECONDI, the lads are well and truly in their stride. Like charmed snakes, the guests wave their napkins at the table and eyes almost roll out of skulls as the pig is wheeled out, glossed and gleaming like a brand new Cadillac.
- The meal concludes with I DOLCI, a bittersweet ending really as wine-wrought emotions weave their way to the table. One patron weeps about how their mother was such a terrible cook. At this stage, everyone is beyond sated and sleepy. Pascal tickles the ivories lazily, while everyone slumps at the table.
As a post-meal breather, I’d like to take a brief moment to talk about the women of Big Night. It’s a triple threat treat casting, comprised of Isabella Rosselini, Minnie Driver and Allison Janney. Rosselini plays Gabriella who, I didn’t realise on my first watching of Big Night, is Pascal’s arm-candy. Driver plays Phyllis, Seco’s romantic interest who is being strung along a bit and doing too much free labour (emotional and otherwise). Both women are being two-timed by Seco, and although only one of them knows this (Gabriella), both are left feeling unsatisfied by their respective relationships. What I find interesting about both of these women, is their loyalty to the men who don’t appreciate them. Their willingness to toil for the sake of their businesses while being kept on short leashes. A tale as old as time. And in the one scene that allows this film to scrape a pass in the Bechdel Test, they meet outside the restaurant after Phyllis has been puking her ring up and before she walks in on this woman wearing the face off her man in the toilet. Gabriella helps her through it and they share a smoke and a quick chat. They talk about moving out west, a shared aspiration that belongs to them and them alone, with no men to tend to – until they are swiftly interrupted by a man, concluding their brief alliance.
I find this scene so poignant for all the times I have knowingly and otherwise been comforted or cared – even in tiny moments – by other women who “should be” my competition. By tunnel sisters. By past flames. By the women I’ve shared men with, before or after my own relationships or situationships. When the men themselves have their back turned, couldn’t extend a care with their own egos and aspirations burning too brightly in their eyes to give a fuck about the woman behind them; these women have been there. And before I get too sappy on this, because who knows if this was the screenwriters’ intent – I haven’t watched nor do I know if any bonus features commentary for this scene exists – I’ll wrap it up with a quick uttering of: women rule \m/
Even Ann the florist manages to prise Primo from the usual chokehold his food has over him, turning him into a bit of a dithering dope when he sees her; unable to even ask her to the restaurant out of nerves (Seco jumps in after he bottles it). And towards the night’s end, he seems to have gained a newfound sense of confidence as he woos her with an intimate walk-through of his dishes in the back of the restaurant. He tells her, like a rizzed-up version of himself all of a sudden, that, “the knowledge of God is the bread of angels.”
But in the end, it seems like the brothers lose everything in their unaligned quest to save what’s most important to them both at heart: the restaurant. Seco resignatedly tosses a plate into the bin, knowing it’s over, in all senses of the word. Phyliss and Gabriella have both deserted him and the restaurant is toast. Ann surely wasn’t impressed by Primo’s tirade against and tousle with his brother on the beach in front of everyone, striking that romance in the heart before it could properly blossom. Their “friendship” with Pascale has been exposed as a lie and he, nothing but a shark-like businessman, perpetually hungry for prospective employees to collect for his ever-growing empire. No press invited to the event will write about the evening, likely, as Prima didn’t even show so that’s a whole vacuum of money spent on comped meals and wine that won’t amount to anything. The future of the Paradise brothers’ funds is murkier than ever.
But while it all hangs in the air, Seco does manage to take some control back, firstly by expunging Pascal from his life, telling him that he and his brother have something that cannot be bought or commodified. That what they do may not be packing the place out every night, but at least it’s always straight from the heart. Pascal spits back at him, but it’s clear that this small triumph belongs not to him, but to Seco. The rust has been exposed underneath the glossy hood of Pascal’s. With what remains of his dignity, Seco takes himself back to the restaurant, still in disarray from the night’s antics. Cristiano is curled up asleep on the counter. Just like waking up after a sesh, Paradise is a shell of the night prior, stripped back to the beating heart of itself: its own staff. The early morning sunlight exposes the writing on the wall for the restaurant and the lads.
And so, silently, Seco does what he knows best. Without a word or a semblance of doubt, he cracks a few eggs into a pan and begins to cook.
The staff meal is a unifier, a salve to all service-sustained wounds, a respite after the madness or a moment of calm beforehand. At the table, everyone is equal. To be human is to have hunger, to eat is to nourish one’s body; and to eat together, is to nourish one’s soul. Seco splits his omelette three ways, passing a plate to Cristiano and to Primo, who finally joins them at the altar he knows best. They eat in silence, but it’s a comfortable silence. Between each bite, so much is said while saying absolutely nothing at all.
I find this closing scene so bittersweet. Despite everything that undoubtedly will follow – the boarding up of the premises, the job insecurity, the potential relocating back to Italy – in the here and now it is and always has been about the food. The fluency with which Primo and Seco are able to communicate with one another even after such a public argument and an inability to make things work for the business. For them, food is a symbiotic language. An arm over the shoulder after the bread has been broken, so to speak. All that lies beyond this moment is lost in the scraping of knives against plates, eggs sizzling and water boiling. You almost can’t hear the sound of the repo man’s tyres pulling up out back.
And while this is just a movie, this is also such a stark reality for many. If they don’t have the right cash flow to begin with or don’t have a shiny modern aesthetic to their premises or can’t appease the general populace with what they have to offer (usually interesting and delicious food from where they’re originally from), it may not work. Sometimes, it could just take that one mention in an article or word of mouth recommendation to get them going. Or a willingness from prospective diners to try something they’re not necessarily used to. Right now, there’s a terrifying amount of people getting fired up about immigrants in Ireland, a land and nation built and arguably, preserved by immigration. Intolerance is soaring scarily and people’s perceptions of what counts as “Irish” and what doesn’t is narrowing. Immigration breeds innovation, a more beautiful and diverse world and of course, delicious food. It’s sad to see our world — and our own little island — forget that.
If Paradise existed some 60 years in the future, perhaps it’d get picked up as a “hidden gem” on TikTok and become a Jersey favourite. Their timpano would attract diners from all corners of the globe. Seco could do demos online and off about different Italian aperitifs and how to pair them with food, racking up a new audience, hungry to learn more about Italian cuisine. But in the afterglow of their big night, things look less hopeful. But at least in the now of our final scene, the brothers’ sorrows are lessened slightly, at least for a moment, with a well-cooked meal enjoyed together.
– Sian Conway