Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 revenge war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and released in August 2009 by The Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures. It was filmed in several locations, among them Germany and France, beginning in October 2008. The title of the film was inspired by Italian director Enzo Castellari’s 1978 film The Inglorious Bastards. However, it is not a remake. Instead, it is set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, and depictis a plan to assassinate the Nazi leadership.

Tarantino has repeatedly stressed that despite its being a war film, Inglourious Basterds is his “spaghetti western but with World War II iconography”.^[5] In addition to spaghetti westerns, the film also pays homage to the World War II “macaroni combat” sub-genre (itself heavily influenced by spaghetti-westerns), as well as French New Wave cinema.

Inglourious Basterds was accepted into the main selection at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in competition for the prestigious Palme d’Or and had its world premiere there in May.^[6] It was the only U.S. film to win an award at Cannes that year, earning a Best Actor award for

Plot

The main theme of the film is revenge. The film is set in an alternate history of the Second World War in which the entire top leadership of Nazi Germany, namely Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Bormann attend a film premiere in Paris celebrating the exploits of a German sniper who had managed to kill 300 American soldiers in Italy. Most of the film’s timeframe is set in early June 1944, after the D-Day landings but before the liberation of Paris.

The film tracks the separate attempts to kill Hitler by two disparate forces, one being the “Basterds”, a motley crew of Jewish American soldiers out for revenge against the Nazis. The Basterds have a modus operandi whereby each man must cut off the scalp of a dead Nazi soldier, with orders to get 100 scalps each. The Basterds allow one German soldier to survive each incident so as to spread the news of the terror of their attacks. However, the Basterds carve a swastika into the forehead of that German. The other force concerns Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), the only survivor of a Jewish family killed by the Jew Hunter, who plots her own revenge on the Nazis. The Basterds and Shosanna remain unaware of each other throughout the film.

The film opens in 1941 with Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) of the Waffen-SS, proudly known as the “Jew Hunter”, interrogating Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet), a French dairy farmer, over rumours that he had been hiding a Jewish family. Landa manages to break down LaPadite and locates the hiding place of the Jews underneath the floorboards. He orders his soldiers to fire into the floorboards, killing all but the teenage Shosanna.

Four years later, by 1944, Shosanna has assumed the identity of “Emmanuelle Mimieux”. How she manages to do so is not revealed. She has also become the proprietress of a cinema, which is chosen by Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a spotlight-hungry sniper-turned-actor whose exploits are celebrated in the Nazi propaganda film, Stolz der Nation (A Nation’s Pride), as the setting for the film premiere. He is attracted to Shosanna and convinces Goebbels to hold the premiere in her cinema. Shosanna does not reciprocate Zoller’s feelings.

Shosanna realizes that the presence of so many high ranking Nazi officials and officers provides an excellent opportunity for revenge. She resolves to burn down her cinema using the massive quantities of flammable nitrate film in her storage rooms during the premiere and makes a fourth reel in which she tells the Nazis present of her Jewish identity and revenge.

In the meantime, the British have also learned of the Nazi leadership’s plan to attend the premiere and dispatch a British officer, Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), to Paris to lead an attack on the cinema with the aid of the “Basterds” and a German double agent, an actress by the name of Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).

Hammersmark arranges to meet Hicox and the Basterds in the basement of a French tavern. Unbeknown to her, however, the night of the rendezvous is also the occasion of a German staff sergeant (Alexander Fehling) celebrating the birth of his son with his soldier comrades. One of the German soldiers present strikes up a conversation with Hicox and notices that his accent is “odd”. An SS officer (August Diehl) who is in the tavern as well also notices that odd accent. When Hicox gives the wrong three fingered order for whiskies (without using his thumb, a traditional German gesture), the SS officer realizes their deception. A firefight breaks out in which the British officer and two of the “Basterds” are killed as is everyone in the tavern except Hammersmark, who is wounded in her left leg.

Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a U.S. Army second lieutenant in the First Special Service Force  and the commanding officer of the Basterds, interrogates Hammersmark and decides to continue the operation against the cinema under the guise of Italians as suicide bombers. Colonel Landa, now an SD officer, is able to retrieve one of Hammersmark’s shoes from the scene of the firefight at the tavern and also an autographed napkin which Hammersmark had signed for the staff sergeant’s son. He approaches Hammersmark and Raine in the cinema lobby and is able to easily see through their disguises, as none, even Raine, can speak any Italian or German. He questions Hammersmark alone and makes her try on the shoe he had retrieved from the tavern. It is a perfect fit. He violently strangles her to death as a traitor, and orders the arrest of Raine.

In the closing stages of the film Quentin Tarantino sets the quirks which show that the film is in an alternative universe. Landa reveals himself to be a turncoat. He attempts to reach a deal with Raine’s commanding officer (Harvey Keitel) via a two way radio in which he proposes to allow the assassination attempt against Hitler and the rest of the Nazi leadership to continue in return for safety, privileges, money, medals and a house for himself. He also reveals that he had planted Raine’s stick of dynamite in Hitler’s box at the cinema meaning that there are now three attempts against Hitler’s life.

Zoller, uncomfortable with the way he is portrayed killing Americans in Stolz der Nation, leaves the cinema auditorium and makes his way to the projectionist’s room where Shosanna is planning her attack. Shosanna’s assistant and lover, Marcel (Jacky Ido), is waiting behind the cinema screen ready to set alight the film reels. Shosanna is unable to get rid of Zoller, who angrily confronts Shosanna about her behavior. She shoots him in the back, mortally wounding him. Afterwards, in an apparent moment of pity, realizing that Zoller is alive, she rolls him over and he in turn shoots her dead.

When the fourth reel of the film starts with Shosanna’s speech to the Nazis assembled in the auditorium that she is a Jew and the audience is about to burn, Marcel sets the nitrate film alight thus causing a pandemonium in the auditorium. Meanwhile, Donny (Eli Roth) and Omar (Omar Doom), who had been seated amongst the Nazis in the auditorium, ambush Hitler’s box and are able to gun down Hitler, Goebbels and the other Nazi leaders. As the cinema is engulfed in flames, Raine’s men fire randomly into the crowd, who are attempting to flee. Escape is impossible, as Marcel had earlier locked and barred the auditorium doors. Additionally, the dynamite that Landa had planted in Hitler’s box, as well as the dynamite strapped to the Basterds’ legs, now goes off. The cinema is destroyed in the subsequent inferno, killing all inside.

Landa sets off with Raine towards the American lines in Normandy where he intends to turn himself in, as part of the deal he had made with Raine’s commanding officer. He surrenders to Raine and hands over his gun. Raine orders Landa to be handcuffed and shoots dead Landa’s driver. The film ends with Raine carving a swastika into Landa’s forehead and declaring that it may just be his greatest “masterpiece”.

CAST

The Allies

The Basterds

Brad Pitt as 1st Lieutenant Aldo Raine aka “Aldo the Apache”: A fast-talking, thickly accented, vengeance-driven hillbilly from Maynardville, Tennessee, who puts together a team of eight Jewish American soldiers. He bears a rope burn on his neck, which is not mentioned in the film; the script hints that he might have survived a lynching. One of the film’s main protagonists: the character has been described as “a voluble, freewheeling outlaw” similar to Jules Winnfield from Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. His first appearance in the film is a subtle homage to George Carlin’s The Indian Sergeant routine. The character’s name is a tribute to the character actor Aldo Ray, who appeared as a tough soldier in many WWII films such as Battle Cry and What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?.

Eli Roth as Staff Sergeant Donny Donowitz aka “The Bear Jew”:  A huge and obnoxious “baseball bat-swinging Nazi hunter” from Boston who is known as “The Bear Jew” among Nazis. Some of them seem to fear that Donowitz is in fact, a vengeful golem, summoned by an angry rabbi. The role was originally conceived for Adam Sandler, who was in talks with Tarantino before declining due to schedule conflicts with the film Funny People. Roth also directed the film-within-a-film, Nation’s Pride, which alludes to Nazi wartime propaganda films.

Til Schweiger as Hugo Stiglitz: A strange and quiet German-born psychopath, former Feldwebel in the Wehrmacht who is recruited by Aldo to kill other Nazis. The character’s name is a tribute to the famous 70s B-movie mexploitation actor Hugo Stiglitz.

Gedeon Burkhard as Wilhelm Wicki: An Austro-German Jew who immigrated to the United States, becoming a citizen as the Third Reich established itself in Europe. Wicki acts as the Basterds’ translator.

B. J. Novak as PFC Smithson Utivich aka “The Little Man” - In an interview with Esquire Magazine, Novak theorizes that PFC Utivich came from a family that named their son Smithson in an attempt to integrate themselves into the WASP-y mainstream and that signing up to fight the Nazis is his attempt to reclaim his Jewish heritage.

Omar Doom as PFC Omar Ulmer Tarantino, who has been friends with Doom since 1998 and encouraged him to become an actor, called Doom just two weeks before shooting was scheduled to begin to cast him in the role.

Samm Levine as PFC Gerold Hirschberg

Paul Rust as PFC Andy Kagan: A character Tarantino added in after meeting Rust.

Michael Bacall as PFC Michael Zimmerman.

Carlos Fidel as PFC Simon Sakowitz.

The British

Michael Fassbender as Lt. Archie Hicox: A “snappy and handsome British lieutenant” and a film critic in his pre-war civilian life. He is described in the script as a “young George Sanders type”. One of the film’s main protagonists, albeit introduced later in the movie. The character was originally intended to be played by Tim Roth, then later by Simon Pegg.

Mike Myers as General Ed Fenech: A “legendary British military mastermind” who provides a plot to kill Nazi leadership.  Based on the older George Sanders.

Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill: The then-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

The Jews

Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus: A young French-Jewish girl on the run. One of the film’s main protagonists, Tarantino states that Shosanna was “always a main character”.

Cloris Leachman as Mrs. Himmelstein: An elderly Jewish woman living in Boston.  Although filmed, the scenes featuring Mrs. Himmelstein drinking tea with Donny Donowitz (and signing his trademark baseball bat afterwards) were cut from the final film. Tarantino says that he might use the footage in the prequel instead.

The Axis Powers

The Nazis

Christoph Waltz as Standartenführer Hans Landa aka “The Jew Hunter”: A romantic, yet utterly sinister pipe-smoking Nazi Waffen-SS-turned-SD officer so nicknamed in reference to his keen ability to locate Jews hiding throughout France. Tarantino claims that if he had not found a perfect actor for the role, he “might have pulled the plug on the whole movie”. Tarantino also remarked that this might be the greatest character he’s ever written. A linguistic genius (it is obvious from the dialogue that he speaks perfect English, German, French and Italian) and a charming detective, Colonel Hans Landa is the primary antagonist of the film. For his performance, Christoph Waltz won the Best Actor Award in the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and there are talks of a possible Academy Award nomination.

Daniel Brühl as Gefreiter Fredrick Zoller: A young arrogant German Wehrmacht war hero starring in Joseph Goebbels’ newest propaganda film entitled “Stolz der Nation” (which is actually directed by Eli Roth who is Jewish).This character name shares similarities to producer Frederick Zollo for whom Eli Roth was an intern while attending NYU. Zoller could also be the German counterpart of real-life American WWII hero Audie Murphy, who shared a similar battle experience and also went on to star in a film about himself entitled To Hell and Back

August Diehl as Sturmbannführer Dieter Hellstrom: A uniformed Gestapo officer.

Alexander Fehling as Wilhelm, a Nazi soldier celebrating the birth of his son at a French tavern.

Sönke Möhring as Gefreiter Butz.

Richard Sammel as Feldwebel Werner Rachtman.

Sylvester Groth as Joseph Goebbels.

Martin Wuttke as Adolf Hitler.

Other roles

Diane Kruger as Bridget von Hammersmark: A popular film star in Nazi Germany and a spy for the Allies.

Samuel L. Jackson as The Raconteur

Bo Svenson as American Colonel: Quentin Tarantino said he gave Svenson a small cameo that will be hard to recognise. He is the colonel in Nations Pride. He is seen briefly in the movie but can be seen more close up in the Nations Pride trailer

Julie Dreyfus as Francesca Mondino: Joseph Goebbel’s mistress, French interpreter and favourite actress to appear in his films.

Ludger Pistor as Wolfgang: A role Tarantino added specifically for him.

Christian Berkel as Eric: The Barkeeper.

Maggie Cheung as Madame Ada Mimeux: Although her scenes were cut from the Cannes cut for length reasons,Cheung played Madame Mimieux, a beautiful French woman who owned the cinema marquee in Paris where most of the movie is set.

Denis Menochet as Perrier LaPadite.

Jacky Ido as Marcel: Shosanna’s beloved and a projectionist at Mimeux’s cinema. A man of quiet dignity.

Jana Pallaske as a french girlfriend of a Nazi soldier.

Enzo G. Castellari as Obergruppenführer: A nameless Nazi General, although strangely credited as “himself” in the film. Castellari had done a Nazi cameo in his own Inglorious Bastards and reprised the role in this movie as well, but under a different rank and SS organization.

Harvey Keitel lends his voice as the Basterds’ commanding officer, heard only over the radio in a call to Raine and Landa. Acording to IMDb, Tarantino is in the film as the voice of an American solider in Eli Roth’s “Nation’s Pride”, and a dummy of him is the first dead nazi scalped in the film, and finally, he is also a fake shemp for Christoph Waltz’s hands when he strangles Bridget von Hammersmark. Tarantino originally talked to Simon Pegg about portraying Lt. Archie Hicox, but the actor was forced to drop out due to scheduling difficulties having already agreed to appear in Spielberg’s Tintin adaptation. However, Pegg did make Tarantino promise to cast him in his next film. Also, Tarantino originally sought for Leonardo DiCaprio to be cast as Hans Landa, a poetic Nazi colonel targeted by the resistance.  The director then decided to instead have the character played by a German actor.  The role ultimately went to Christoph Waltz, an Austrian actor who, according to Tarantino, “gave me my movie back.” Jack White & Adam Sandler were both rumored to play a pair of the Basterds at one point.

Developmental history

Quentin Tarantino spent more than a decade writing the script because, as he told Charlie Rose in an interview, he became “too precious about the page,” meaning the story kept growing and expanding. Tarantino viewed the script as his ultimate masterpiece in the making, so he felt it had to become the best thing he’d ever written. Entering the 21st century, the director had been writing several scripts, including one for the World War II adventure film that would eventually become Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino described the premise in October 2001, “[It's] my bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission film. [It's] my Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare or Guns of Navarone kind of thing.” The premise had begun as a Western and evolved into a World War II version of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly set in Nazi-occupied France. The story changed to be about two maverick units from the United States Army that had “a habit of scalping Germans” before changing again.

Actor Michael Madsen, who appeared in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill, was originally reported to star in the movie, then spelled Inglorious Bastards, which had been scheduled for release in 2004. By 2002, Tarantino found Inglourious Basterds to be a bigger film than planned and saw that other directors were working on World War II films. Tarantino had produced three nearly finished scripts, saying, “[It was] some of the best writing I’ve ever done. But I couldn’t come up with an ending.” The director then held off his planned film and moved on to direct the two-part movie Kill Bill (2003-2004) with Uma Thurman in the lead role. After the completion of Kill Bill, Tarantino trimmed the length of the script, which was reportedly three films long, to 222 pages.The director eventually planned to begin production of Inglourious Basterds late in 2005. The revised premise focused on a group of soldiers who escape from their executions and embark on a mission to help the Allies. He described the men as “not your normal hero types that are thrown into a big deal in the Second World War”.

Tarantino also sought to present the film as a spaghetti-western set in Nazi-occupied France. He explained his intent:

Tarantino planned to set the film around the time of D-Day (June 6, 1944) and afterward.

In November 2004, the director decided to hold off production of Inglourious Basterds and instead film a kung fu movie entirely in Mandarin. Tarantino ultimately directed a part of the 2007 Grindhouse instead, returning to work on what was now renamed Inglourious Basterds after finishing promotion for Grindhouse.He teamed with The Weinstein Company to prepare what he planned to be his epic masterpiece for production.In September 2007, The Irish Times reported the film’s scheduled release for 2008, writing, “Inglourious Basterds, a war movie that may eventually resemble The Dirty Dozen merged with Cross of Iron, has been predicted more often than the second coming of the Lord.”

Of the finished film, Tarantino said he thinks that it is the closest thing to Pulp Fiction he has ever done.

After the final draft of the script was finished, it got leaked on the web. Several Tarantino fan sites began posting reviews and excerpts from the script. Principal photography started mid-October 2008 on location in Germany. Although the leaked script was confirmed to be the final draft of the script, several things (set visits, interview snippets etc.) hinted that the director has done some rewriting: changed some details, as well as added new characters and expanded the ending of the film, possibly to surprise those who have read the leaked script.

The role of General Ed Fenech being played by Mike Myers caught many fans by surprise. Although Myers used his normal speaking voice in the role, he is using a lot of makeup and looks considerably older than his normal self. Myers, a personal fan of Tarantino, had inquired about doing a role in the movie, since the Canadian-born Myers’ parents were in the British Armed Forces. Some critics have considered Myers’ performance to be similar to that of Tom Cruise as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder and possibly reviving Myers’ career, which aside from the popular Shrek movies has largely stalled since Austin Powers in Goldmember was released in 2009

The first trailer for the film, a teaser, premiered on Entertainment Tonight on February 10, 2009, and was shown in American theaters the following week attached to Friday the 13th. The trailer features excerpts of Lt. Aldo Raine talking to the rest of ‘the basterds’, informing them of the plan to kill, torture, and scalp Nazis, intercut with various other scenes from the movie. It also features the spaghetti-westernesque kickers Once Upon A Time In Nazi Occupied France (originally considered as a subtitle for the film) and A Basterd’s Work is Never Done, a line not spoken in the final film.

Soundtrack

As is usual for a Quentin Tarantino film, the music used in the film is quite eclectic, but mostly consisting of music in the spaghetti-western genre. The soundtrack was released on August 18th, 2009 and contains the following songs

No.	Track	Artist	Original film
1	“The Green Leaves of Summer”	Nick Perito	The Alamo (1960)
2	“The Verdict”	Ennio Morricone	The Big Gundown
3	“White Lightning”	Charles Bernstein	White Lightning (1973)
4	“Slaughter”	Billy Preston	Slaughter
5	“The Surrender (La resa)”	Ennio Morricone	The Big Gundown
6	“One Silver Dollar (Un Dollaro Bucato)”	Gianni Ferrio	Blood for a Silver Dollar
7	“Davon Geht Die Welt Nicht Unter”	Zarah Leander	Die große Liebe
8	“The Man With The Big Sombrero”	June Havoc	Hi Diddle Diddle
9	“Ich Wollt Ich Wär Ein Huhn”	Lilian Harvey & Willy Fritsch	Glückskinder
10	“Main Theme From Dark of the Sun“	Jacques Loussier	Dark of the Sun
11	“Cat People (Putting Out Fire)”	David Bowie	Cat People (1982)
12	“Tiger Tank”	Lalo Schifrin	Kelly’s Heroes
13	“Un Amico”	Ennio Morricone	Revolver (1973)
14	“Rabbia e Tarantella”	Ennio Morricone	Allonsanfàn

The film was released on August 19 in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and the Republic of Ireland, two days earlier than the US release. Some European cinemas however showed previews starting on August 15.