Quentin Tarantino: Definitive Guide To Homages, Influences And References

Inglourious Basterds

27. The Title

The title of the movie, Inglourious Basterds, is a play on the title of an exploitation movie from the 70s, the correctly spelt Inglorious Bastards. That movie, which Tarantino's original plot seemed to borrow from more heavily, focused on a group of disgraced soldiers on their way to an execution camp who manage to escape and go on a Nazi-killing rampage. Though Tarantino's own WW2 movie took its own shape, he kept the title, though marked the title with a purely Tarantino-esque spelling touch - one that the director insists explain would make it redundant.

26. Once Upon A Time...

Chapter One of Inglourious Basterds is titled "Once Upon A Time in Nazi Occupied France"... what was once the sub-heading for the movie. For Tarantino's own fantasy WWII movie, this is a clear homage to Sergio Leone and his fantasy Western Once Upon A Time In The West and Fantasy gangster Once Upon A Time in America.

The whole first scene is shot in a Leone style with exaggerated, over-bearing Ennio Morricone music and extreme close-ups before the backdrop of huge landscapes. In both, the first sign of danger from an arriving harbinger of doom is with a woman outside, before the male, followed by a massacre.

25. The Citizen Kane Window Reference

The moment where a member of the LaPadite family closes the window before Hans Landa's interrogation references a similar moment in Citizen Kane. Both moments reflect the shutting out members from a family unit; in Kane the parents of Charles giving him up to a foster parent and in Basterds, LaPadite giving up the location of the jews he has been hiding under the floorboards.