Spuds

The cinetrix is apparently busier than some of her fellow film teacher types. How else to explain the multiple responses to this list-serv query: "Can list members think of any films in which the humble potato appears, either as a plot device, character, etc.?" Well, far be it from me to stem the tide of knowledge. [Names are stripped out to protect these tater tots.]

In James Whale's spoof horror movie, The Old Dark House (1932), there's a
dinner party scene in which Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), the head of a
very strange family, solemnly intones, "Have a po-ta-to".  Once heard, never
forgotten....

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) constructs
a model of the mountain he longs to find out of mashed potato.

On the Fiddle (1961):  a long-forgotten British comedy in which Alfred Lynch
plays a wide boy drafted into the army, and a just-pre-Bond Sean Connery
plays his dimwitted chum.  The pair spend a lot of time peeling potatoes.

All I can think of is the scene in A Christmas Story, in which they are
trying to get the little one, Randy, to eat his supper, which consists
largely of mashed potatoes and turns into (if I remember right) a food
fight.  (This, though, reminds me of another: the crater rendered in mashed
potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.)

Dying to know what you're doing with potatoes on film over there....

"Ah got ten pounds of taters in the back end of my car" says one down-and-outer who shows an interest in communal sharing in King Vidor's Depression film OUR DAILY BREAD, if that helps.

D. W. Griffith's ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL.

Probably the most famous scene in the Soviet film Chapaev (1934) is
the one in which the unlettered Civil War commander Chapaev moves
potatoes around a map to demonstrate his battle strategy.  This was
the most popular Soviet movie of the 1930s.

It has a strong presence in Agnes Varda's "The Gleaners and I"

Close Encounters of the Third Kind has a rather memorable potato sculpture
which later gets parodied in UHF.

There's also a documentary called Rice and Potatoes in which we learn that
"Potato" is - or was - Asian slang for gay Caucasians in San Francisco.

titles escape me but I remember 3 or 4 about the potato famine in
Ireland. (at least one was Brit, i think) Then there were the potato
head animated films.

One of my favorite uses of the potato is in Pudovkin's "The End of St. Petersburg" (1927). The leading character at the beginning of the film is understandably stingy with offering guests and even her own daughter the meager measure of potatoes which is all they they have to eat. By the end of the film, after the Revolution, she gives away all the potatoes she has brought for her husband to wounded soldiers. It is a particularly powerful symbol and metaphor, subtly employed but very effective.

Hot Potatoes
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/hp.html

Spudfest Film Festival:
http://www.idahofilminstitute.org/spudfest/home.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpyMUJY9yJc

http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=hot+potato&x=0&y=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpAJOPzKK-M

How Do They Make Potato Chips (NFB)
http://www3.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=33458

Agnes Varda's The Gleaners and I, a french documentary that begins with the
question of why some potatoes are fit for the market and others are dumped to
rot in fields.  Heart-shaped potatoes recur, especially in the sequel.

Also, while it may not be entirely useful, IMDB has 46 films/TV episodes with
the keyword potato, including The Potato Hunter and The Fresh Vegetable Mystery.

Well, there's a significant part of Tolstoi's War and Peace where a
potato becomes significant, and Sergei Bondarchuk's adaptation does a
fine job with the scene.  The film is, however, 12 hours long, and I
can't remember which section it's in.  Sorry.

Potatoes and their role as a staple of the Russian diet play a crucial
role, particularly at beginning and end, of Vsevolod Pudovkin's "The End
of Saint Petersburg" (1927).

Quod erat faciendum