Inglourious Basterds
Inglourious Basterds-spoilers included
Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is one of the most fun films I’ve ever seen and my vote for best film of 2009. As soon as it was over I could not wait to see it again, which is not something I often feel after spending two and a half hours in the cinema. Tarantino may have topped himself with the daring innovation of this film and I hope we do not have to wait five or six years until his next film.
One of the unique features of the film is that it is not to be taken very seriously. It is a fantasy version of events. Specifically, what if the Jews had the opportunity to kill Hitler and all of his closest advisors? I have yet to hear someone complain about the fantasy version of history. People accept Tarantino’s fantasy as being what it is and are having a great time going along for the ride.
For more than 10 years I read that Tarantino was working on a WWII film about a group of guys on a mission a la Guns of Navarone. I saw that film over 20 years ago and had kind of forgotten about the spirit of adventure of that film and was instead envisioning something along the lines of Saving Private Ryan, a mission but one showing the horrors of war that might educate the viewer. Then I heard in 2008 that the film was finally going forward and in February of 2009 I saw the first trailer.
In the trailer there was little other than Brad Pitt’s opening speech to his team which set up the rules of the game. This was going to be a fun look at World War II in which his team would apply ambush tactics with the goal of collecting Nazi scalps. My first thought was, “I should have known to expect something offbeat”.
Tarantino’s career is based on subverting expectations for his films (and then publicly patting himself on the back for it). Pulp Fiction was a brilliant story of redemption that used a nonlinear time structure to support his plot (necessary to appreciate Travolta’s and Jackson’s different journeys after a crucial event in their lives). Kill Bill was a similarly clever revenge tale, also told largely out of order, that used all kinds of techniques to tell its story, not the least of which was the Japanese anime segment. Even Death Proof, which was fun though kind of hollow, came up with an original idea, a serial killer who uses a car as his weapon. There was every reason to expect Inglourious Basterds to be completely off kilter but with Tarantino you never know what to expect so in order to classify my thoughts I had stuck my expectations in the Saving Private Ryan area.
Tarantino writes detailed backgrounds for his characters, some of which are never revealed to the audience. For example in the film we never know what happened to Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine character but he has burn marks on his neck. I suspect he was the victim of a lynching perhaps by white supremacists due to his partial Apache blood. In the film itself we never find out how Shoshanna survives running through the woods filthy and with nothing to end up running a cinema in Paris (though the script does tell how that happened). In Kill Bill, Bill at one point acknowledges a strained relationship with brother that is unexplained. Also in Kill Bill, it is never explained why his group of killers broke up. A final thought that just occurred to me, if Elle Driver is still so close with Bill (having replaced the Bride as his “girl), how does she feel about raising The Bride’s daughter, which she must have some hand in?
I recognize at this point I have written several paragraphs without actually talking about the film and my thoughts of it. Part of the reason for this is it is necessary to have some knowledge of Tarantino’s background and oeuvre (a favorite word of his to describe his films) in order to appreciate his work. So from this point, on we go…..
Tarantino’s films generally have chapters. The first one of this film is “Once upon a Time in Nazi-occupied France”. The horrific years of the French occupation are not generally the first place one would set a fairy tale so here you know you are seeing a modified version of events here. The scene opens on a farm in rural France and a farmer who is a strong but gentle family man with a wife and three daughters suddenly sees a convoy of Nazis heading toward his home. As an audience member I know Tarantino is capable of anything so I find myself hoping beyond hope that nothing happens to this man’s family.
Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is one of the most fun films I’ve ever seen and my vote for best film of 2009. As soon as it was over I could not wait to see it again, which is not something I often feel after spending two and a half hours in the cinema. Tarantino may have topped himself with the daring innovation of this film and I hope we do not have to wait five or six years until his next film.
One of the unique features of the film is that it is not to be taken very seriously. It is a fantasy version of events. Specifically, what if the Jews had the opportunity to kill Hitler and all of his closest advisors? I have yet to hear someone complain about the fantasy version of history. People accept Tarantino’s fantasy as being what it is and are having a great time going along for the ride.
For more than 10 years I read that Tarantino was working on a WWII film about a group of guys on a mission a la Guns of Navarone. I saw that film over 20 years ago and had kind of forgotten about the spirit of adventure of that film and was instead envisioning something along the lines of Saving Private Ryan, a mission but one showing the horrors of war that might educate the viewer. Then I heard in 2008 that the film was finally going forward and in February of 2009 I saw the first trailer.
In the trailer there was little other than Brad Pitt’s opening speech to his team which set up the rules of the game. This was going to be a fun look at World War II in which his team would apply ambush tactics with the goal of collecting Nazi scalps. My first thought was, “I should have known to expect something offbeat”.
Tarantino’s career is based on subverting expectations for his films (and then publicly patting himself on the back for it). Pulp Fiction was a brilliant story of redemption that used a nonlinear time structure to support his plot (necessary to appreciate Travolta’s and Jackson’s different journeys after a crucial event in their lives). Kill Bill was a similarly clever revenge tale, also told largely out of order, that used all kinds of techniques to tell its story, not the least of which was the Japanese anime segment. Even Death Proof, which was fun though kind of hollow, came up with an original idea, a serial killer who uses a car as his weapon. There was every reason to expect Inglourious Basterds to be completely off kilter but with Tarantino you never know what to expect so in order to classify my thoughts I had stuck my expectations in the Saving Private Ryan area.
Tarantino writes detailed backgrounds for his characters, some of which are never revealed to the audience. For example in the film we never know what happened to Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine character but he has burn marks on his neck. I suspect he was the victim of a lynching perhaps by white supremacists due to his partial Apache blood. In the film itself we never find out how Shoshanna survives running through the woods filthy and with nothing to end up running a cinema in Paris (though the script does tell how that happened). In Kill Bill, Bill at one point acknowledges a strained relationship with brother that is unexplained. Also in Kill Bill, it is never explained why his group of killers broke up. A final thought that just occurred to me, if Elle Driver is still so close with Bill (having replaced the Bride as his “girl), how does she feel about raising The Bride’s daughter, which she must have some hand in?
I recognize at this point I have written several paragraphs without actually talking about the film and my thoughts of it. Part of the reason for this is it is necessary to have some knowledge of Tarantino’s background and oeuvre (a favorite word of his to describe his films) in order to appreciate his work. So from this point, on we go…..
Tarantino’s films generally have chapters. The first one of this film is “Once upon a Time in Nazi-occupied France”. The horrific years of the French occupation are not generally the first place one would set a fairy tale so here you know you are seeing a modified version of events here. The scene opens on a farm in rural France and a farmer who is a strong but gentle family man with a wife and three daughters suddenly sees a convoy of Nazis heading toward his home. As an audience member I know Tarantino is capable of anything so I find myself hoping beyond hope that nothing happens to this man’s family.
Tarantino loves to stage lengthy scenes in which one character is holding a secret from another and starts this film with a doozy of one.
Colonel Landa, played by Christoph Waltz in a deliciously charming, clever and smug performance, comes out of the car and very politely asks to be let inside. The farmer’s name is Perrier LaPadite and Landa seems to take an incredible amount of pleasure in his enunciation of it. He speaks to put the farmer at ease to lower his defenses. Once again we are reminded of the fantasy. I highly doubt Nazis looking for hiding Jewish families bothered to show much charm or have any interest in getting to know the families of the countries they occupied. The actor playing the farmer (Denis Menochet), while less showy with his work, does wonders in this scene as well. The farmer is trying to hide the fact that he is hiding a Jewish family (the Dreyfus’) beneath his house, which is not revealed until about two thirds of the way through the conversation, when Landa asks about Shosanna. He tries very hard to hide his nervousness, all while Landa’s men are outside with all of his women, which as members of the audience we are aware of but do not see. The camera slowly tracks in as the tension rises throughout the lengthy scene as Landa speaks to LaPadite first in French and asks to be switch to English to avoid the family below understanding him. The manner in which he does so is very Tarantinoesque as he says “This being your house, I ask your permission to switch to English for the remainder of our conversation?” Much of the film is spoken in French and German and Shosanna only speaks French in the film (except a quick scene in English in a reel at the end).
The probing continues as Landa gets LaPadite to reveal that he knows Landa’s nickname, The Jew Hunter. He starts to compare Jews to rats and the Germans as hawks, which reflects a tendency by Tarantino to use metaphors (in Kill Bill he compared the Bride to Clark Kent and in Crimson Tide, in which he doctored the script, Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman debate the origins of Lippazzaner stallions). Landa dares LaPadite to establish or admit his own prejudices with his rat metaphor so that it will become easier for him to give up the family if he is in fact hiding them. He has the memorable line that “I am aware of what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity”, which is exactly what the Dreyfus’ living under the floorboards, have done. Once this is established he then pulls out a Sherlock Holmes type Calabash pipe, which though it give credence to his detective skills, looks a bit ridiculous against Nazi uniform, to further unease LaPadite.
Landa sums up his speech by effectively telling LaPadite in a roundabout way that if he gives up the Dreyfus his own family (unseen but still outside with the Nazi soldiers) will not be hurt. LaPadite’s family has no other men or boys and their protection falls solely upon him. While he alone could probably break Landa in two he could never protect his women from the soldiers outside nor from the onslaught that would inevitably follow. LaPadite’s resolve breaks as the camera comes in ever tight on close ups of both him and Landa as Landa’s gentlemanly behavior falls away as he asks LaPadite directly if he is sheltering the family (using the term, “enemies of the state” an interesting term since the Dreyfus’ are a French family in their own country). LaPadite’s stillness never breaks however but a tear starts to fall as he painfully reveals that the Dreyfus family is there and where they are hiding.
When Landa calls in his grunts to execute the family the entire massacre is seen from LaPadite’s point of view. He sees and hears the floor shot up and splinters and dust fill the air. As Shoshanna Dreyfus miraculously avoided being hit and makes her escape into the woods Landa decides to toy with her and let her go. I think he does so, other than for the fact that the plot needs her to be alive, as an exercise of his power. Obviously he just destroyed the girl’s life and for Landa, the idea a Jew hiding and enjoys the fact that she might still be out there, giving him a prey to chase later.
What is left unsaid is the fact that Landa has probably just destroyed LaPadite’s life as well, even though LaPadite is not seen again in the film. He and his family survived but must live with the horror. The destroyed floor is a reminder that he allowed an innocent family to die, a family he promised to protect. He will probably never be the same again, even though I doubt an audience member would disagree with the choice he was forced to make.
This scene is perhaps the most crucial in the film as it sets up the drive of Shoshanna, who is revealed to be the film’s heroine. There is a parallel here with Kill Bill, which was also a revenge film in response to a massacre. Melanie Laurent even looks a little like Uma Thurman, tall, thin, and blond with a somewhat similar face.
From here the Basterds are introduced. Brad Pitt, playing Aldo Raine as a Tennessee hillbilly who thinks killing Nazis is about the most fun thing ever, gleefully spells out the mission to collect scalps after destroying the bodies of the Nazis. The tone of the film changes instantly from the slow paced horror to almost comedic. There is a jump in time to a point when the Basterds have already done a lot of their bushwhacking and we get to see the aftermath of an ambush and how they conduct their interrogation. Pitt’s joy with Tarantino’s dialog is obvious as he states to a Nazi sergeant that “Cousin, business is ‘a boomin!’”, which is a pretty ridiculous thing to say to a Nazi, who probably even though he speaks English won’t understand half of it but Aldo Raine wouldn’t be able to say it any other way. When the German fails to give up some information he has the Bear Jew, played by director Eli Roth, beat him to death with a baseball bat. While we are meant to cheer this event we are also horrified by it, illustrating that even the heroes do things we do not much like. Pitt has a couple of other great lines in the scene such as “if you ever want to eat a sauerkraut sandwich again” and “watching Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to going to the movies”. He also puts a little extra hillbilly emphasis on the line “beat your ass to death with it”
The scene is juxtaposed with a survivor of the squad, who the Basterds let live (with a swastika carved into his head) to spread the myth about them to Hitler who is thrown for a loop. Also, the additional Basterds’ origins are described in a little more detail.
Now here’s an odd thing I noticed the second time I saw the film. Despite the title of the film and all the references made throughout, this is the only time the Basterds are actually shown doing their thing in the film. The rest of the film focuses on the set up of the mission ands its execution and the Basterds ultimately play kind of a small role in it, but that is for later.
The scene cuts to 1944 in Paris where Shosanna is shown running a theatre in Paris under a new identity and a young German soldier named Frederick Zoller takes an interest in her. Melanie Laurent plays these scenes wonderfully as she is a little impressed with Zoller but disgusted by his uniform and really cannot pretend otherwise. Her hatred is mistaken for shyness and playing hard to get by the soldier who gradually reveals that he is a German war hero. He is famous for shooting a couple of hundred Americans from a perched position and maneuvers to get Shoshanna to host the premiere for the film of his exploits. In order to do so she has to convince the Goebbels, the German minister of propaganda of the worthiness of her cinema and is forced to sit at a table with Goebbels discussing his vision for German film and then, surprisingly, Landa, who is in charge of security of the event. Landa does his best to charm her while not revealing at all if he has any idea of who she really is. The audience also suffers greatly since we well know that even if he did know he would probably play along to entertain himself just for the thrill of it. Her release of emotions at the end of the scene as he leaves, unaware of her background, punctuates the lengthy scene perfectly.
These scenes allow Tarantino to have his characters debate German vs. French vs. Hollywood cinema. I find it amazing that Tarantino’s cinema lore goes back to European films of that time period. I would be very interested in hearing modern characters have similar debates.
Soon afterwards there is a scene of Shosanna holding a screening for Goebbels and Landa to demonstrate if the venue is worthy of a premiere. They agree to do so and then at this point, the audience feels really bad for Shosanna. She had no desire to have anything to do with the Nazis and now has to put on this face for them. However one also feels there might be a possibility of romance with the German soldier that might supersede her hatred of the Germans. But, here is where Tarantino reveals his trick. She plans to take advantage of having all the Nazi high command in one place and burn the cinema down. It is once this is established it is also revealed that Shosanna has a relationship with Marcel, who is black and works in the cinema. Only someone like Tarantino ever think of combining the themes of revenge and the cinema.
The plot then moves forward as the Basterds learn of the event and then team up with a German double agent, the memorably named Bridget Von Hammersmarck, a German movie star played as a bit of a diva who is very good at humoring the powerful men around her, by Diane Kruger.
Her introduction takes place during the longest scene in the film in which she is in a family owned tavern in a basement with several German soldiers celebrating the birth of one of their sons and a British soldier and the two German speaking Basterds are dressed as Nazis who rendezvous with her. As the Basterds try to speak with her a drunken soldiers keeps interfering. When the Basterds pretend to pull rank on the soldiers instead of a release of the tension builds bit by bit as a clever German Gestapo major appears and joins the table suspicious of the British officer who is impersonating a Nazi captain. The standoff between the two men is delightful. Once the major figures it out there is a great pause before the inevitable violence. The British lieutenant is aware that while the major is outnumbered at the table, he most certainly is not in the room. He drops the accent and the German, stating he would rather go out speaking the Queen’s English. He has a last drink of scotch and then the Mexican standoff ends and the shooting starts. Everyone except Bridget and the new father are killed, though Bridget is wounded in the leg. The end of the scene shows Aldo, who was covering the outside with one of the other Basterds, speaking from off-screen, having a negotiation with the new father to let Bridget out. As it appears Tarantino is allowing the new father, who admittedly has become a sympathetic figure in this scene, to live, he is shot by Bridget, the most unlikely person to commit a cold blooded murder. But of course she is doing so to protect her double identity so she has the most personal motive.
From here we move into the final section off the film, the premiere. The chapter is called Revenge of the Giant Face. Hitler will be attending the premiere (he actually only visited Paris once during the war and it was in 1940) as a move to improve morale. Although it is never mentioned, D-Day has already occurred and the Germans having lost that pivotal battle need a boost. The surviving Basterds (Aldo, Utivitch, Donny and Hirschberg), having lost their German speaking members in the tavern shootout, try posing as Italian escorts to Bridget to get into the premiere (Bridget had told them most Germans can’t speak Italian) and they claimed to speak some. This leads to the funniest moment in the film in which Landa, having found Bridget’s shoe at the tavern puts two and two together and approaches her standing next to Aldo. Landa greets Aldo in a typically (for him) eloquent sentence in Italian and there is a pause and Aldo responds “Bongiorno” with no attempt to hide his thick Tennessee accent. This plan seems doomed since Landa has been established as far too sharp to let something like this slide by.
Landa gets Bridget alone, puts her shoe from the tavern on, which allows Tarantino his near mandatory scene where a beautiful woman’s bare foot figures prominently in the plot (see Kill Bill, Death Proof, or From Dusk Till Dawn, which he scripted). He then strangles her to death in a vicious act, the one time he personally engages in violence. Then Aldo and Utivitch are captured but Donny and Hirschberg are left in the cinema with dynamite strapped to their legs. Landa, showing he is always one step ahead, instead of torturing them or having them shot negotiates a deal wherein he allows the plan to take place and in exchange for immunity and false recognition as an American spy. He also wants credit for the operation, which would make him a hero in the U.S. Again the timing here is crucial. D-Day has proven to be the turning point in the European section of the war and was the last great German stand. A month earlier and Landa might have killed Aldo and Utivitch but he is now aware of the enormity of the task facing the Germans and selfishly knows he might be better off taking this opportunity.
In the parallel story, Shosanna, utterly unaware of the Basterds or their mission, is preparing to burn the cinema down using nitrate film. She and Marcel elaborately plan to edit the film being shown, Nation’s Pride (which Roth actually directed) which has no plot to speak of but is just a piece of propaganda showing Zoller shooting Americans, with a special reel. Shosanna is alone in the projectionist booth, having just put the reel in (but it has not started showing) when Zoller appears, hoping for a little romance, thinking his actions to stage the premiere there might have won her over. Shosanna tries standing up to him and for the first time Zoller shows his temper and looks like he’s about to attack her and she immediately switches tactics, telling him to lock the door behind him, suggesting Zoller is finally going to get to have sex with her. Her voice drops noticeably here as she realizes she is going to have to have to kill him in cold blood which is a lot different than her plan to kill all the Nazis from a distance. She then takes advantage of his distraction by shooting him in the back (using the excessive gunfire in the film as cover) but then makes the mistake of checking on him too close and he shoots her back and they both die of their wounds, the doomed couple that never was having died together.
Soon afterwards, the reel cuts in and the film is suddenly of Shosanna telling all the Nazis they are about to die by a Jewish hand. Donny and Hirschberg have left the cinema and gotten guns out of the bathroom, but left the explosives in the room. The Nazis panic, Shosanna in the film laughs maniacally and Marcel lights the film from behind the screen. The room is locked and Donny and Hirschberg start firing down on the Nazis and even manage to unload their machine guns into Hitler’s face. The fire burns anyone who Donny and Hirschberg do not hit. The effect of Shosanna (the giant face of the chapter title) laughing while the screen is partially burning (she is also wearing a red dress and the décor of the theatre is red) gives the unmistakable feeling of her being the devil welcoming the Nazis to Hell. The fact that Shosanna is actually dead at this point strengthens the impact of her killing them from beyond the grave. The scene is completely over the top but it works in this setting. However Donny and Hirschberg are killed when the bombs go off (we never see them leave the cinema). So history is completely rewritten and the fantasy is fulfilled except for one detail.
Aldo has been ordered to take Landa into American hands after a symbolic surrender. Landa holds up his end of the deal but Aldo can’t quite fathom leaving the Jew Hunter (who represents the personification of his mission to kill Nazis in his eyes) to be seen as a hero live a comfortable life after all the death he has perpetrated so he carves a swastika into his head. This is characteristic of Aldo, who is not much of a soldier and has little use for protocol. He has the closing line, in which as an audience member I felt he was speaking for Tarantino, which is “I think this just might be my masterpiece.” *****
Colonel Landa, played by Christoph Waltz in a deliciously charming, clever and smug performance, comes out of the car and very politely asks to be let inside. The farmer’s name is Perrier LaPadite and Landa seems to take an incredible amount of pleasure in his enunciation of it. He speaks to put the farmer at ease to lower his defenses. Once again we are reminded of the fantasy. I highly doubt Nazis looking for hiding Jewish families bothered to show much charm or have any interest in getting to know the families of the countries they occupied. The actor playing the farmer (Denis Menochet), while less showy with his work, does wonders in this scene as well. The farmer is trying to hide the fact that he is hiding a Jewish family (the Dreyfus’) beneath his house, which is not revealed until about two thirds of the way through the conversation, when Landa asks about Shosanna. He tries very hard to hide his nervousness, all while Landa’s men are outside with all of his women, which as members of the audience we are aware of but do not see. The camera slowly tracks in as the tension rises throughout the lengthy scene as Landa speaks to LaPadite first in French and asks to be switch to English to avoid the family below understanding him. The manner in which he does so is very Tarantinoesque as he says “This being your house, I ask your permission to switch to English for the remainder of our conversation?” Much of the film is spoken in French and German and Shosanna only speaks French in the film (except a quick scene in English in a reel at the end).
The probing continues as Landa gets LaPadite to reveal that he knows Landa’s nickname, The Jew Hunter. He starts to compare Jews to rats and the Germans as hawks, which reflects a tendency by Tarantino to use metaphors (in Kill Bill he compared the Bride to Clark Kent and in Crimson Tide, in which he doctored the script, Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman debate the origins of Lippazzaner stallions). Landa dares LaPadite to establish or admit his own prejudices with his rat metaphor so that it will become easier for him to give up the family if he is in fact hiding them. He has the memorable line that “I am aware of what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity”, which is exactly what the Dreyfus’ living under the floorboards, have done. Once this is established he then pulls out a Sherlock Holmes type Calabash pipe, which though it give credence to his detective skills, looks a bit ridiculous against Nazi uniform, to further unease LaPadite.
Landa sums up his speech by effectively telling LaPadite in a roundabout way that if he gives up the Dreyfus his own family (unseen but still outside with the Nazi soldiers) will not be hurt. LaPadite’s family has no other men or boys and their protection falls solely upon him. While he alone could probably break Landa in two he could never protect his women from the soldiers outside nor from the onslaught that would inevitably follow. LaPadite’s resolve breaks as the camera comes in ever tight on close ups of both him and Landa as Landa’s gentlemanly behavior falls away as he asks LaPadite directly if he is sheltering the family (using the term, “enemies of the state” an interesting term since the Dreyfus’ are a French family in their own country). LaPadite’s stillness never breaks however but a tear starts to fall as he painfully reveals that the Dreyfus family is there and where they are hiding.
When Landa calls in his grunts to execute the family the entire massacre is seen from LaPadite’s point of view. He sees and hears the floor shot up and splinters and dust fill the air. As Shoshanna Dreyfus miraculously avoided being hit and makes her escape into the woods Landa decides to toy with her and let her go. I think he does so, other than for the fact that the plot needs her to be alive, as an exercise of his power. Obviously he just destroyed the girl’s life and for Landa, the idea a Jew hiding and enjoys the fact that she might still be out there, giving him a prey to chase later.
What is left unsaid is the fact that Landa has probably just destroyed LaPadite’s life as well, even though LaPadite is not seen again in the film. He and his family survived but must live with the horror. The destroyed floor is a reminder that he allowed an innocent family to die, a family he promised to protect. He will probably never be the same again, even though I doubt an audience member would disagree with the choice he was forced to make.
This scene is perhaps the most crucial in the film as it sets up the drive of Shoshanna, who is revealed to be the film’s heroine. There is a parallel here with Kill Bill, which was also a revenge film in response to a massacre. Melanie Laurent even looks a little like Uma Thurman, tall, thin, and blond with a somewhat similar face.
From here the Basterds are introduced. Brad Pitt, playing Aldo Raine as a Tennessee hillbilly who thinks killing Nazis is about the most fun thing ever, gleefully spells out the mission to collect scalps after destroying the bodies of the Nazis. The tone of the film changes instantly from the slow paced horror to almost comedic. There is a jump in time to a point when the Basterds have already done a lot of their bushwhacking and we get to see the aftermath of an ambush and how they conduct their interrogation. Pitt’s joy with Tarantino’s dialog is obvious as he states to a Nazi sergeant that “Cousin, business is ‘a boomin!’”, which is a pretty ridiculous thing to say to a Nazi, who probably even though he speaks English won’t understand half of it but Aldo Raine wouldn’t be able to say it any other way. When the German fails to give up some information he has the Bear Jew, played by director Eli Roth, beat him to death with a baseball bat. While we are meant to cheer this event we are also horrified by it, illustrating that even the heroes do things we do not much like. Pitt has a couple of other great lines in the scene such as “if you ever want to eat a sauerkraut sandwich again” and “watching Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to going to the movies”. He also puts a little extra hillbilly emphasis on the line “beat your ass to death with it”
The scene is juxtaposed with a survivor of the squad, who the Basterds let live (with a swastika carved into his head) to spread the myth about them to Hitler who is thrown for a loop. Also, the additional Basterds’ origins are described in a little more detail.
Now here’s an odd thing I noticed the second time I saw the film. Despite the title of the film and all the references made throughout, this is the only time the Basterds are actually shown doing their thing in the film. The rest of the film focuses on the set up of the mission ands its execution and the Basterds ultimately play kind of a small role in it, but that is for later.
The scene cuts to 1944 in Paris where Shosanna is shown running a theatre in Paris under a new identity and a young German soldier named Frederick Zoller takes an interest in her. Melanie Laurent plays these scenes wonderfully as she is a little impressed with Zoller but disgusted by his uniform and really cannot pretend otherwise. Her hatred is mistaken for shyness and playing hard to get by the soldier who gradually reveals that he is a German war hero. He is famous for shooting a couple of hundred Americans from a perched position and maneuvers to get Shoshanna to host the premiere for the film of his exploits. In order to do so she has to convince the Goebbels, the German minister of propaganda of the worthiness of her cinema and is forced to sit at a table with Goebbels discussing his vision for German film and then, surprisingly, Landa, who is in charge of security of the event. Landa does his best to charm her while not revealing at all if he has any idea of who she really is. The audience also suffers greatly since we well know that even if he did know he would probably play along to entertain himself just for the thrill of it. Her release of emotions at the end of the scene as he leaves, unaware of her background, punctuates the lengthy scene perfectly.
These scenes allow Tarantino to have his characters debate German vs. French vs. Hollywood cinema. I find it amazing that Tarantino’s cinema lore goes back to European films of that time period. I would be very interested in hearing modern characters have similar debates.
Soon afterwards there is a scene of Shosanna holding a screening for Goebbels and Landa to demonstrate if the venue is worthy of a premiere. They agree to do so and then at this point, the audience feels really bad for Shosanna. She had no desire to have anything to do with the Nazis and now has to put on this face for them. However one also feels there might be a possibility of romance with the German soldier that might supersede her hatred of the Germans. But, here is where Tarantino reveals his trick. She plans to take advantage of having all the Nazi high command in one place and burn the cinema down. It is once this is established it is also revealed that Shosanna has a relationship with Marcel, who is black and works in the cinema. Only someone like Tarantino ever think of combining the themes of revenge and the cinema.
The plot then moves forward as the Basterds learn of the event and then team up with a German double agent, the memorably named Bridget Von Hammersmarck, a German movie star played as a bit of a diva who is very good at humoring the powerful men around her, by Diane Kruger.
Her introduction takes place during the longest scene in the film in which she is in a family owned tavern in a basement with several German soldiers celebrating the birth of one of their sons and a British soldier and the two German speaking Basterds are dressed as Nazis who rendezvous with her. As the Basterds try to speak with her a drunken soldiers keeps interfering. When the Basterds pretend to pull rank on the soldiers instead of a release of the tension builds bit by bit as a clever German Gestapo major appears and joins the table suspicious of the British officer who is impersonating a Nazi captain. The standoff between the two men is delightful. Once the major figures it out there is a great pause before the inevitable violence. The British lieutenant is aware that while the major is outnumbered at the table, he most certainly is not in the room. He drops the accent and the German, stating he would rather go out speaking the Queen’s English. He has a last drink of scotch and then the Mexican standoff ends and the shooting starts. Everyone except Bridget and the new father are killed, though Bridget is wounded in the leg. The end of the scene shows Aldo, who was covering the outside with one of the other Basterds, speaking from off-screen, having a negotiation with the new father to let Bridget out. As it appears Tarantino is allowing the new father, who admittedly has become a sympathetic figure in this scene, to live, he is shot by Bridget, the most unlikely person to commit a cold blooded murder. But of course she is doing so to protect her double identity so she has the most personal motive.
From here we move into the final section off the film, the premiere. The chapter is called Revenge of the Giant Face. Hitler will be attending the premiere (he actually only visited Paris once during the war and it was in 1940) as a move to improve morale. Although it is never mentioned, D-Day has already occurred and the Germans having lost that pivotal battle need a boost. The surviving Basterds (Aldo, Utivitch, Donny and Hirschberg), having lost their German speaking members in the tavern shootout, try posing as Italian escorts to Bridget to get into the premiere (Bridget had told them most Germans can’t speak Italian) and they claimed to speak some. This leads to the funniest moment in the film in which Landa, having found Bridget’s shoe at the tavern puts two and two together and approaches her standing next to Aldo. Landa greets Aldo in a typically (for him) eloquent sentence in Italian and there is a pause and Aldo responds “Bongiorno” with no attempt to hide his thick Tennessee accent. This plan seems doomed since Landa has been established as far too sharp to let something like this slide by.
Landa gets Bridget alone, puts her shoe from the tavern on, which allows Tarantino his near mandatory scene where a beautiful woman’s bare foot figures prominently in the plot (see Kill Bill, Death Proof, or From Dusk Till Dawn, which he scripted). He then strangles her to death in a vicious act, the one time he personally engages in violence. Then Aldo and Utivitch are captured but Donny and Hirschberg are left in the cinema with dynamite strapped to their legs. Landa, showing he is always one step ahead, instead of torturing them or having them shot negotiates a deal wherein he allows the plan to take place and in exchange for immunity and false recognition as an American spy. He also wants credit for the operation, which would make him a hero in the U.S. Again the timing here is crucial. D-Day has proven to be the turning point in the European section of the war and was the last great German stand. A month earlier and Landa might have killed Aldo and Utivitch but he is now aware of the enormity of the task facing the Germans and selfishly knows he might be better off taking this opportunity.
In the parallel story, Shosanna, utterly unaware of the Basterds or their mission, is preparing to burn the cinema down using nitrate film. She and Marcel elaborately plan to edit the film being shown, Nation’s Pride (which Roth actually directed) which has no plot to speak of but is just a piece of propaganda showing Zoller shooting Americans, with a special reel. Shosanna is alone in the projectionist booth, having just put the reel in (but it has not started showing) when Zoller appears, hoping for a little romance, thinking his actions to stage the premiere there might have won her over. Shosanna tries standing up to him and for the first time Zoller shows his temper and looks like he’s about to attack her and she immediately switches tactics, telling him to lock the door behind him, suggesting Zoller is finally going to get to have sex with her. Her voice drops noticeably here as she realizes she is going to have to have to kill him in cold blood which is a lot different than her plan to kill all the Nazis from a distance. She then takes advantage of his distraction by shooting him in the back (using the excessive gunfire in the film as cover) but then makes the mistake of checking on him too close and he shoots her back and they both die of their wounds, the doomed couple that never was having died together.
Soon afterwards, the reel cuts in and the film is suddenly of Shosanna telling all the Nazis they are about to die by a Jewish hand. Donny and Hirschberg have left the cinema and gotten guns out of the bathroom, but left the explosives in the room. The Nazis panic, Shosanna in the film laughs maniacally and Marcel lights the film from behind the screen. The room is locked and Donny and Hirschberg start firing down on the Nazis and even manage to unload their machine guns into Hitler’s face. The fire burns anyone who Donny and Hirschberg do not hit. The effect of Shosanna (the giant face of the chapter title) laughing while the screen is partially burning (she is also wearing a red dress and the décor of the theatre is red) gives the unmistakable feeling of her being the devil welcoming the Nazis to Hell. The fact that Shosanna is actually dead at this point strengthens the impact of her killing them from beyond the grave. The scene is completely over the top but it works in this setting. However Donny and Hirschberg are killed when the bombs go off (we never see them leave the cinema). So history is completely rewritten and the fantasy is fulfilled except for one detail.
Aldo has been ordered to take Landa into American hands after a symbolic surrender. Landa holds up his end of the deal but Aldo can’t quite fathom leaving the Jew Hunter (who represents the personification of his mission to kill Nazis in his eyes) to be seen as a hero live a comfortable life after all the death he has perpetrated so he carves a swastika into his head. This is characteristic of Aldo, who is not much of a soldier and has little use for protocol. He has the closing line, in which as an audience member I felt he was speaking for Tarantino, which is “I think this just might be my masterpiece.” *****
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