Inglourious Basterds
Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 historical war[8] comedy-drama film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger and Mélanie Laurent. The film tells an alternate history story of two converging plots to assassinate Nazi Germany's leadership at a Paris cinema—one through a British operation largely carried out by a team of Jewish American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt), and another by French Jewish cinema proprietor Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent) who seeks to avenge her murdered family. Both are faced against Hans Landa (Waltz), an SS colonel with a fearsome reputation of hunting Jews. The title was inspired by Italian director Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 Euro War film The Inglorious Bastards, though Tarantino's film is not a remake of it.
For the 1978 film, see The Inglorious Bastards.
Tarantino wrote the script in 1998, but struggled with the ending and chose instead to direct the two-part film Kill Bill. After directing Death Proof in 2007, Tarantino returned to work on Inglourious Basterds. A co-production of the United States and Germany, the film began principal photography in October 2008 and was filmed in Germany and France with a $70 million production budget. It premiered on May 20, 2009, at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, and received a wide release in theaters in the United States and Europe in August 2009 by the Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures.
Inglourious Basterds grossed over $321.5 million in theaters worldwide, making it Tarantino's highest-grossing film to that point, until it was surpassed in box office by Django Unchained (2012) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). The film received positive reviews, with Waltz's performance as Hans Landa being singled out for praise, but some criticized the historical liberties taken. It also won multiple awards and nominations, among them eight Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay). For his role as Landa, Waltz won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor Award, as well as the BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, Critics' Choice, Golden Globe, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Plot[edit]
In 1941, Austrian SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa interrogates French farmer Perrier LaPadite, suspecting that the LaPadites are hiding a Jewish family, the Dreyfuses, under their floorboards. LaPadite confirms this to spare his own family, and Landa has the hidden family shot, but allows Shosanna Dreyfus to escape.[9]
Three years later, U.S. Army Lieutenant Aldo Raine recruits Jewish-American soldiers to the "Basterds", a black ops commando unit instilling fear among Nazis in occupied France by killing and scalping them. The group includes Sergeant Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz, rogue German Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz, and Austrian-born translator Corporal Wilhelm Wicki. In Germany, Adolf Hitler interviews a German soldier, who reveals that Raine carved a swastika into his forehead after massacring his squad.
In Paris, Shosanna operates a cinema under the name Emmanuelle Mimieux, and meets Fredrick Zoller, a famed German sniper set to star in the German propaganda film Stolz der Nation (Nation's Pride). Infatuated with Shosanna, Zoller convinces Joseph Goebbels to hold the film's premiere at her cinema. Landa, the premiere's head of security, interrogates Shosanna but does not reveal if he recognizes her. She plots with her Afro-French lover and projectionist, Marcel, to kill the German leaders in attendance.
British Commando Lieutenant Archie Hicox is recruited to lead an attack on the premiere with the Basterds. Disguised as German officers, Hicox, Stiglitz, and Wicki meet with German film star Bridget von Hammersmark, an undercover Allied agent, at a tavern in Nazi-occupied northern France. Hicox inadvertently draws the attention of Wehrmacht Sergeant Wilhelm and Major Dieter Hellström, first with his unusually accented German and then by using a British hand gesture. Their cover is blown, and a gunfight ensues, killing everyone except Wilhelm and a wounded von Hammersmark. Raine arrives and negotiates for von Hammersmark's release, but she shoots Wilhelm. Raine tortures von Hammersmark, believing she set his men up, but she convinces him she is loyal and reveals Hitler will be attending the premiere. Raine decides to carry out their plan with himself, Donowitz, and Omar Ulmer. Investigating the tavern, Landa finds von Hammersmark's shoe and a napkin with her signature.
Raine, Donowitz, and Ulmer infiltrate the premiere with timed explosives, while Landa confronts von Hammersmark with her missing shoe before strangling her to death. Raine and another Basterd, Smithson Utivich, are discovered and taken prisoner, but Landa has Raine contact his superior to cut a deal: Landa will allow the mission to proceed in exchange for safe passage through the Allied lines, a full pardon, and other privileges.
During the screening, Zoller slips away to the projection booth and berates Shosanna for rejecting his advances, leading them to shoot each other dead. As the film reaches its climax, Shosanna's spliced-in footage tells the audience that they are about to be killed by a Jew. Having locked the auditorium, Marcel ignites a pile of flammable film behind the screen, setting the theater ablaze. Ulmer and Donowitz break into the opera box, gunning down Hitler and Goebbels and firing into the crowd until their explosives kill everyone inside the cinema, including themselves.
Landa and his radio operator drive Raine and Utivich into Allied territory, where they surrender themselves. However, Raine shoots the radio operator before ordering Utivich to scalp him, and carves a swastika into Landa's forehead, professing it to be his "masterpiece".
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
Quentin Tarantino spent just over a decade creating the film's script because, as he told Charlie Rose in an interview, he became "too precious about the page", meaning the story kept growing and expanding.[29][30] Tarantino viewed the script as his masterpiece in the making, so felt it had to become the best thing he had ever written.[31] He described an early premise of the film as his "bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission" film,[32] "my Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare or Guns of Navarone kind of thing".[33]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Inglourious Basterds grossed $120.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $200.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide gross $321.4 million, against a production budget of $70 million.[7] It became Tarantino's highest-grossing film, both in the US and worldwide, until Django Unchained in 2012.[113]
Opening in 3,165 screens, the film earned $14.3 million on the opening Friday of its North American release,[114] on the way to an opening-weekend gross of $38 million, giving Tarantino a personal best weekend opening and the number one spot at the box office, ahead of District 9.[115] The film fell to number two in its second weekend, behind The Final Destination, with earnings of $20 million, for a 10-day total of $73.8 million.[116]
Inglourious Basterds opened internationally at number one in 22 markets on 2,650 screens, making $27.49 million. First place openings included France, taking in $6.09 million on 500 screens. The United Kingdom was not far behind making $5.92 million (£3.8 m) on 444 screens. Germany took in $4.20 million on 439 screens and Australia with $2.56 million (A$2.8 m) on 266 screens.[117]
