20 Things You Didn't Know About Inglourious Basterds
Tarantino's WW2 Spaghetti Heist - here's 20 things about Inglourious Basterds you might not know...
Inglourious Basterds (a title that is still giving spellcheckers a migraine a decade later) is the sixth film by Quentin Tarantino and probably one of his best. Hell, Quentin agrees and tells us straight to camera in the last shot of the film: "I think this just might be my masterpiece," says the director, wearing Brad Pitt's face.
In the style of the great 'macaroni combat' films of the 1960s and 1970s, IB plays fast and loose with history but keeps the plot tight and tense. The A story gives us Lt Aldo Raine (Pitt) and his 'Basterds,' a group of Jewish American Allied soldiers who have a talent for scalping Nazis.
Their plan to assassinate the German high command in one fell swoop at a Parisian cinema conveniently coincides with Shosanna's B story to do the same. As an escaped Jew, it's personal. As the cinema owner, it's perfect. What could possibly go wrong?
There's so much to unpack in the making of this unique and stylish war movie; Tarantino's love of film just shines through, as does his own shared cinematic universe. Multilingual, award winning and with more movie references than IMDb, here are 20 things you probably didn't know about QT's WW2 caper.
20. Hicox's Hiccup - The Linguistic Irony Of Michael Fassbender
Right, let's get into this.
Everyone will know that Inglourious Basterds is a multilingual movie; the opening act, Once Upon A Time In Nazi-Occupied France, dives straight into French, English and German.
In fact, volumes of the central plot revolve around the language barrier; the disastrous rendezvous between Michael Fassbender's Lt. Hicox and Bridget Von Hammersmark in a basement tavern is sunk on Hicox's inability to speak German convincingly, despite being fluent.
It's only when a Gestapo officer sniffs a rat in Hicox's peculiar accent that suspicions abound. The three fingered whisky faux pas is just the confirmation that Major Hellstrom needed to point a Luger at Hicox's groin.
There is, however, a wonderful irony to this scene that Quentin Tarantino must have been aware of:
Fassbender is trilingual, fluent in German, Gaelic and English, having been born to German and Irish parents in Germany. English is actually his third language.