Tarantino’s approach to the notorious Nazi past

It seems to be a trait of really great movies to combine almost irreconcilable art forms, techniques, and styles, and in doing so, introduces the audience to a whole new aspect of storytelling and style. Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” is such a movie, and yet it tries not to appear special by being worn around the corners, unpolished in places, and not using the moral authority of most movies that portray events. of the Second World War. The script for “Inglourious Basterds,” which was written by director Tarantino himself, had developed over many years, allowing him to hone every detail and develop its unusual story to the point that the words spoken in the screen. it seemed so natural as if there was no real script. This unique writing method allowed the actors to take their characters in whatever direction they wanted, but still remain true to their original background that was established before shooting even began. This fact sets Tarantino apart from other screenwriters and allows him to do whatever he creatively sets his mind to in the first place, allowing interference from studio executives only at the very end, when the entire project is ready to hit the market. . But let’s take a closer look at the film itself.

At the level of the film’s message, Tarantino’s cool bastards potentially confronts the audience with several very serious taboo subjects. Let us mention some of them. The first issue could be framed as the following question: Should high-level officers of conquered armies, who committed massive war crimes against civilians, be allowed to have arranged for conditional surrenders (legal and safe rat channels) or should they be eternally marked? with the sign whose victory they expected? Tarantino’s Jewish bad boys prefer to knife curved Nazi swastikas into their foreheads. The second issue could also be posed in the form of a question: since justice is seldom fair, and since the victims of World War II (the Jews in the first place) cannot be fully compensated for their losses, should the victims commit revenge on their own? conduct? Tarantino’s bad boys scalp like Apaches, and film music supports this association by quoting and mixing music from even brutal spaghetti westerns with film music composed by Ennio Morricone. The third problem is a playful, pseudo-historical, postmodernist reconstruction problem of the end of World War II. Here, Tarantino teases us with the fictional possibility of ending the war by killing Hitler, Goebbels, Bormann and Goering in a movie theater (“all rotten eggs in one basket”). After numerous failed assassination attempts on Hitler, the “Painter” himself turns out to be killed by moving images in a Paris cinema? Nobody before Tarantino had such an idea. The fourth topic is the problem of German racism against Jews and blacks, which is actually a very good topic considering some real revivals of the neo-Nazi subculture around the world. And the fifth problem is the problem of a brilliant, intelligent, eloquent, polyglot, charming and educated serial killer in the character of SS Colonel Hans Landa, depicting here some very famous Nazi monsters who managed to escape justice. (eg Mengele), being a cartoon who finally manages to learn how to use the expression “bingo!” correctly, but under rather strange circumstances. Also, Hans Landa seems to be something of a cross between the detective who lives at 221B Baker Street and Michael Dobbs’ sinister politician Francis Urqhart from his bestselling novel “The House of Cards.” Furthermore, the rest of the cast is brilliantly playing many stereotypical roles that could have come from the set of any Sergio Leone movie, or even movies like “Dirty Dozen”, “Where Eagles Dare”, “Eagle Has Landed”. , etc

Furthermore, Tarantino seems to have made a film that approaches theater quality in some physically quite static scenes (while sitting at the table, for example) that grow to develop a full dynamic of verbal intelligence in acting (determining who gets to go). to survive, depending on accents, verbal and non-verbal errors in the mother tongue and in foreign languages, depending on the ability to destroy one’s tracks before leaving important places, depending on one’s luck and fate) with fatal shots finals. Somehow, we have here a film consisting of five partly varied and well-known dramatic parts: 1) the exhibition showing the extermination of the Jewish Dreyfus family “In Nazi-occupied France”; 2) introduction to the Jewish Avengers in “Inglourious Basterds”, 3) intensification of the tension in “German Night in Paris”, 4) dramatic adventures in “Operation Kino” and finally 5) the Nazi defeat in “Revenge of the Giant”. Face”. On the other hand, Tarantino’s film is also a film about films. It is about films that are in conflict: the UFA film production of the Third Reich against Hollywood, Goebbels against Selznik. It is a film about critics of cinema and his books.

Nazi war hero films (eg “The Pride of the Nation”) are set against the Jewish Expressionist films of the 1920s in the Weimar Republic. The chiaroscuro technique of expressionist film poetics has been used by Tarantino intentionally. The verbal allusion to the Jewish bad boy called “Jewish Bear” or “Golem” is part of this intertextual play in the film. Pabst is mentioned, and Emil Jannings himself appears as a character from film fiction. Leni Riefenstahl, Max Linder, “King Kong” and Chaplin’s “The Kid” are also part of Tarantino’s film script. Shoshana Dreyfus, the sole survivor of the entire Jewish family, collaborates with the Nazis as the owner of the German night host cinema under the name Emmanuelle Mimieux and buys guest appearances from supposed collaborating actress Danielle Darrieux. Furthermore, Tarantino’s film is also indirectly a film about hate propaganda films -such as “The Eternal Jew” (directed by Fritz Hippler, 1940)- which have become part of people’s subconscious even in France: Perrier LaPadite he decides to betray the Dreyfus family only after Hans Landa tells his story of rats (i.e. Jews) bringing disease and disaster. The savior of the Jews becomes his traitor after Landa’s brainwashing and silently, albeit tearfully, points out his location in the basement. This movie is also a movie about cutting movies, changing them with new embedded subversive movie sequences. The film material itself (nitrate film prints) eventually becomes the most important means of destroying the entire Nazi leadership.

Let’s finally see the reception of the film. The common denominator of most of the early reviews of this film was the fact that they all praised the overwhelming performance of an Austrian-born actor, Christoph Waltz, professing his brilliance in playing the witty Hans Landa, while at the same time manifesting his mysteriousness. anonymity abroad. world. However, this is not the truth. He was almost unknown to the English-speaking world in the sense that he had hardly ever seen him perform. Most of his roles were for German TV movies, but he certainly wasn’t anonymous. In fact, people would be surprised at the fact that he was considered a prodigy in his early days as an actor, in the same way that Pitt was heralded as the “next generation” Robert Redford.

There is, however, a big difference between the two. Christoph Waltz is a classic actor, in the sense that he studied acting at the Max Reinhardt School of Drama in Vienna and at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in New York (the same Lee Strasberg who taught Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and most ’80s and ’90s actors and actresses, the art of method acting!) As such, Waltz, being a classically-educated actor, certainly has a wider range of craft techniques at his disposal. disposition, which he masterfully implores throughout this film. Pitt, on the other hand, has evolved as an actor and carries himself with the same tenacity and charm of a young Frank Sinatra, a role he played gallantly in Soderbergh’s remake of “Ocean’s 11.” The two actors find themselves in an environment that serves as a catalyst for their conflict, designed not to tame and soothe but to provoke and beautify reactions, sharpen the senses, and bring to light the hidden qualities of both worlds. The film benefits from their mutual exclusivity and it’s no surprise that Waltz ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, which puts him alongside Emil Jannings as the second Austrian to receive this award. He will surely go down in history as the man who breathed life into one of the smart but terrifying antagonists of modern movie history, alongside Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter or Perkins’ Norman Bates in “Psycho.”