If household appliances have always sparkled the imagination of film makers and film producers, it is in American comedies that they have become almost a cliché, particularly the blender and the single-door refrigerator with the typical knob upper positioned that we can see almost everywhere, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) where the protagonist Holly keeps in it a pair of ballet shoes up to Pulp Fiction where they instead put in it the syringe with the dose of adrenaline. The blender stands instead in the foreground in the scene of the kitchen of The Truman Show (1998) when the protagonist discovers that he has been deceived also by his wife. It is famous anyway also the scene of the hairdryer in the hands of Marilyn Monroe in The seven year itch (1955).
In many movies the washing machine has even become object of sexual fantasies: in some of them, the protagonists even perform some obscene acts. Even if mythical has become, in the collective imagination, the scene of the ice taken from the refrigerator in Nine and half weeks (1986) for not properly domestic uses. Jodie Foster in The silence of the lambs (1991) instead uses the washing machine to lean on it, while washing clothes (the appliance as a mother surrogate?), whereas in Gran Torino (2008) by Clint Eastwood appears the chest freezer where the actor keeps the beers that he will then offer to the boy whom he will take under his protection (symbol of the paternal function?).
In short, we should admit it: the relationship between household appliances and cinema is a bit particular, perhaps it is not always idyllic, or it exists but it is not visible and often appliances are not always used for their normal functions. Is it perhaps to re-establish “good neighbours” relationships that partnerships between the two worlds were born? We do not know, but one of them is very recent and sees in the forefront the German manufacturer of household appliances Bosch that has just created, together with 20th Century Fox, the new range of Epic household appliances with high energy saving, inspired just by the release of the animated film in 3d. And technology returns to be our friend.
