Film and the Theatrical in 'Inglourious Basterds': Part 2

In the previous entry, I was primarily concerned with Inglourious Basterds as theater, the first chapter being a perfectly composed one-act play and Christoph Waltz’s performance as Col. Hans Landa the epitome of a play-acting tour-de-force. In the next chapter, Tarantino introduces the title Inglourious Basterds, a troupe of Jewish-American soldiers (and one ex-Nazi serial killer with a taste for German officers) whose sole mission it is to terrify, torture and scalp every man they see wearing a Nazi uniform. In this chapter, the theatricality of the first begins to transition into an ingrained appreciation of film that will come to unite almost all the characters by the film’s conclusion. However, before the idea of film is introduced fully in the third chapter, Tarantino blends film and theater with ‘Inglourious Basterds.’

Besides theater referring to the stage, its players and accoutrements, the word theater can also refer to “a place of actions; field of operations” (dictionary.com). The most common usage of this definition is, of course, in the theater of war, like WWII’s European and Pacific theaters. This is where the Basterds come in. Essentially a roaming theater troupe of mayhem, the Basterds replace Shakespeare with scalping.  In this chapter, even the setting of the Basterds’ murder of a German patrol looks, and is shot like, an outside amphitheater.

Several members of the Basterds are assembled on top of the surrounding small hillsides, their attention focused on Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) in the depression below. Raine is in the midst of trying to convince German Sgt. Rachtman (Richard Sammel) to give up the position of another German patrol nearby by stressing that if he doesn’t, Sgt. Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz (Eli Roth) will come out and beat Werner Rachtman to death with his baseball bat. Rachtman refuses and in doing so, the real show begins. As Raine informs him, “Actually, Werner, we're all tickled to here you say that. Frankly, watchin' Donny beat Nazis to death is is the closest we ever get to goin' to the movies.”

A captivated audience. 

Thus, the theater of battle is transmuted into a theater of the dramatics. The Bear Jew is kept off-screen as Tarantino intercuts between the sound of his bat hitting the wall of a dark tunnel, Rachtman’s stoic face, and Lt. Raine, enraptured by the anticipatory theatrics. When Donny finally emerges, it is quite a dramatic entrance, indeed, punctuated by the ecstatic applause of the encircled Basterds. As Donny proceeds to bludgeon a man to death, Raine munches on a sandwich, the equivalent to a bucket of movie popcorn.

The main attraction. Violence: the film within a film.

This chapter also introduces an uncomfortable aspect to the picture, which will continue until its dramatic climax. In establishing a mini-theatrical episode which the characters consider “going to the movies,” Tarantino mirrors the cinematic experience back at us, the viewer. The Basterds’ whooping and shouting, applause and transparent enjoyment of Sgt. Rachtman’s violent death is both an invitation and challenge to the audience. It puts us in the uncharacteristic position of having to choose our reactions. Tarantino is playing with participatory theater, challenging the audience to fill in its own reactions to the action played out on screen. During this scene, Sgt. Rachtman behaves honorably, refusing to divulge information that could “put German lives at risk.” Had he been an American being tortured by Nazis, the audience would clearly pick out Brad Pitt’s character as the villain. However, the name of this chapter is ‘Inglourious Basterds,’ and the name of the film is “Inglourious Basterds,” and the leader of the Inglourious Basterds is Brad Pitt and there he is enjoying a sandwich as chunks of brain and scalp fly from a man’s head.

Another interesting challenge to the viewer that centers on theatrical excess is the parallel between characters, namely between Lt. Raine and Adolph Hitler (Martin Wuttke). As we are first introduced to the Basterds, Raine is giving a speech that lays out their mission statement in colorful and rousing language. Jingoist is an understatement:

       "Now, I don't know about y'all, but I sure as hell didn't come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross five thousand miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily and jump out of a fuckin' air-o-plane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin', mass murderin' maniac and they need to be dee-stroyed. That's why any and every every son of a bitch we find wearin' a Nazi uniform, they're gonna die. Now, I'm the direct descendant of the mountain man Jim Bridger. That means I got a little Injun in me. And our battle plan will be that of an Apache resistance. We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. And the German won't not be able to help themselves but to imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the German will be sickened by us, and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they're tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with. Sound good?"

At the termination of this speech, there is a smash cut to Hitler chewing out two subordinate officers, railing against the Basterds. His monologue is no less dramatic and no less colorful.

Both men seek to rally and inspire the men under their command. The difference is that Raine is an original character whereas Hitler’s violent speeches have been a point of parody since WWII. Although the scenes juxtaposed are meant to elicit laughs from an audience sympathetic to the Basterds’ vigorous anti-Nazi mission, is there really that great a margin of difference between Raine’s rhetoric and tactics and Hitler’s? That parallel will be continued more fully in later entries. 

Film and the Theatrical in 'Inglourious Basterds': Part 1

If there’s a sure thing at this year’s Academy Awards, it’s Christoph Waltz winning Best Actor for his performance as Nazi Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009). IB was one of my very favorite films of last year and Waltz was the maniacal glue that held the whole thing together. If anyone deserves the Oscar, it’s him. The other night I was roaming the dials and clicked onto an interview with Waltz on "Charlie Rose". Speaking of Tarantino’s ideas about Landa, Charlie Rose showed an earlier clip of QT on the show. Tarantino was talking about how Landa perceives himself as the ultimate detective and said this:

Everything he [Landa] does is some version of an interrogation and every piece of interrogation is a piece of theater.

-Quentin Tarantino on "Charlie Rose", August 21^st, 2009

Well, that’s interesting, I thought. Having seen IB three or four times already, I had already noted it’s a film steeped in film culture so much so there’s celluloid practically coming out its ears. But, theater, this was something different.

I dug deeper. I found an interview with Christoph Waltz where he addressed the theatrical construction of Inglourious Basterds:

/Film: I’d like to ask you, because you have many years spent in the theatre. And Eli says that actors will be performing scenes from Quentin’s script on the stage for years to come. [Ed. note: 100 years by Roth's precise calculation. Ha.] And in particular, he mentioned your scene, your introduction at the start, in the French farmhouse. Do you see Inglourious Basterds translating to the stage?

Christoph Waltz: Absolutely! I do think that is possible. Yes. Not the whole film, however. There is so much happening that is very, very, exclusively for film, it’s filmic, that it would really be…it would be violating the movie. But the first scene, by all means. And many of the individual scenes could very well be put on the stage. The first scene is essentially a one act play, and it’s not very short as such. I would not be surprised if the first scene is played on stages in the future.

-Slash Film interview, August 25^th, 2009

What I’d like to investigate in a series of articles are the themes of film and theatricality at play in Inglourious Basterds. Popular reception of the film has been on the level of a revenge flick, which it certainly is, but there is more at work here than is first apparent. I think IB is probably Tarantino’s most complex film to date. This is certainly the case if we eliminate Jackie Brown (1997), which he adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel, leaving only his original works.

These entries will be divided as the film is, into chapters, which, although a literary construct, take on a more theatrical scene and act structure in Inglourious Basterds. But more on that later.

The first chapter, titled ‘Once Upon A Time…In Nazi-Occupied France’ is the perfect example of the theatrical stucture of Inglourious Basterds. As mentioned above, the meeting between Col. Landa (Waltz) and Perrier LaPadite, French dairy farmer covertly housing Jews under his floorboards (Denis Menochet) is a one-act play, stationary in setting and almost entirely conversational. Landa’s interrogation of M. LaPadite takes almost twenty minutes of screentime and is executed in the most exacting, minute detail, the SS Colonel squeezing LaPadite and the audience till the breaking point.

As Tarantino noted on "Charlie Rose", each Landa interrogation is a different performance. In this one, he is excessively polite and neatly official in his duties. Landa manipulates the objects of his profession, his pen and ink, his ledger with the names of the Jewish Dreyfus family, like props in a drama. Each moment and movement is calculated to extract the most information from LaPadite.

The tools of Landa’s trade become weapons he wields to ensnare his enemies. One element of theater Landa revels in is his nickname, the Jew Hunter. He knows M. LaPadite is aware of his “unofficial title,” and wheedles the Frenchman to reveal it. Landa revels in his nickname with a silky sense of pride. He establishes himself as the predator, allowing M. LaPadite to fill in the other side of the equation: he is the prey. As we’ll see in later chapters, when interrogating others, Landa will have an opposite reaction to his nickname. It’s another example of his eminent play-acting ability.

The central prop in this scene, however, is the comedic reveal of Landa’s pipe. After M. LaPadite has lit his own modest corncob pipe, Landa asks permission to smoke his own, in a deceptively servile gesture. The humor of the moment comes with the fact that the pipe he smokes is a giant Calabash. The absurdity of the contrast between the two mens’ pipes creates an uncomfortable, tension-breaking laughter in the audience but for Landa, it is one in a string of chess moves leading to M. LaPadite confessing he is harboring Jews on his property.

The Calabash pipe is cited as evidence to support a connection between Col. Landa and Sherlock Holmes as detectives, the large Calabash being, as Tarantino noted in the "Charlie Rose" interview, “the Sherlock Holmes pipe.” In public perception, this is true, however the Landa/Holmes relationship is complicated by the fact that the Calabash is not the type of pipe Holmes smokes in Conan Doyle’s stories and novels. In the Holmesian canon, Sherlock smokes various pipes, most of the time favoring a small, black clay pipe or a long cherrywood "when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood" (The Adventure of the Copper Beeches). In fact, the Calabash was an invention of stage actor William Gillette who played Holmes at the turn of the century. It is theorized the switch was made to suit the audience, which would have less trouble seeing and hearing Gillette on stage with a pipe that sloped away from his face than one that jutted out in front of it. The Calabash was adopted by other stage and screen Holmes’, establishing the mental image, along with the Deerstalker cap, of the world’s most famous consulting detective.

All this back-story lends another layer of metatextuality of Waltz’s performance of Col. Landa, a man who fancies himself a Nazi Sherlock Holmes, a detective for hire, and a damned good one. Perhaps it was Tarantino’s and Waltz’s intention to include the Calabash because of its history on stage as another layer of theatrical reference to a character already defined by his play-acting. Perhaps the filmmakers were unaware of the connection. Either way, it is an interesting connection to the history of stage and screen performances that helps to inform and enrich Inglourious Basterds with meaning.

Eventually, Landa intimidates LaPadite into revealing the Dreyfuses hiding under his floorboards. With intensity, Landa commands LaPadite, “I want you to follow my masquerade, is that clear?” Landa is able to bully the farmer into submission with the strength of his theatrics. Quite simply, Landa prevailed in the interrogation because he was the better actor than M. LaPadite.

The scene comes to an end much as it began, reinforcing a curtain open/curtain close motif. Landa is such a powerful theatrical presence in fact, that he even commands stage directions, motioning for his Nazi troops to come into the house and shoot the Dreyfuses.

Curtain up on the LaPadite's farm...and curtain down as sole survivor Shosanna escapes.

Landa conducting the figures on the stage...and signaling the Dreyfuses' exit.

The closing lines of the scene, “Au revoir, Shosanna!” signal the exit of Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) who will become one of the major players in the rest of the film. Waltz’s Col. Landa has commanded the stage for the entire first chapter of Inglourious Basterds and will continue to do so with each subsequent appearance on screen.

Au revoir, Shosanna!

EDIT: I found this video of the last part of the Landa/LaPadite scene on YouTube. It's in German with no subtitles, but it's pretty clear what's going on. And as a bonus, Christoph Waltz does his own dubbing, so it's not too painful to watch. It picks up from when Landa has cornered LaPadite into giving up the whereabouts of the Dreyfuses' until Shosanna's escape.

Intertextuality and The Body: The Titles of Vertigo, Foxy Brown, and Superbad

This article is an adaptation of a paper I wrote in 2007 as an undergraduate at UC Irvine. Screencaptures are my own. Critical analysis is original. 

Abstract: The titles for Vertigo (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, titles by Saul Bass, 1958), Foxy Brown (dir. Jack Hill, titles by Imagic Inc., 1974), and Superbad (dir. Greg Mottola, titles by Scott M. Davids of Yard VFX, 2006) when viewed in chronological order present a timeline of sorts, offering an interesting view into the intertextuality of film titles and the ways in which the body, especially the partitioned and dissected body, and the body in motion, are represented in a similar visual fashion even though the stories of the three films are vastly different. Each title works within its specific decade of release and says something about its time period. Foxy and Superbad draw more consciously on the concept of cultural citation of the filmic tradition, whereas Vertigo evokes psychological depth and originality in its approach; the latter films rely more on the stylistic quotation of popular culture.    

Vertigo: This title sequence moves from a shot of a live woman’s face to many-colored fractal shapes, spiraling into and out of impenetrable and infinite black space, the space of the disturbed mind, and then returns back to the impassive woman’s face. Each subtle color change and the choice of the hollow, white outline typeface reflects on the thematics of the film. Central to this discussion of the titles is their relation to the representation of the body. One important aspect of that is the inscription of text onto image and how that relates to authorship. The font, as already noted, is a hollow outline, which allows for the maximum exposure of skin. This creates the illusion of branding, of stamping onto a woman’s flesh the names of men who claim to own her. The model in the titles is a stand-in for Kim Novak’s character, Madeleine/Judy. Her dual identity speaks to the difficulty Jimmy Stewart’s Scottie has pinning her down, pinpointing her, gaining control of her actions. When Stewart’s title zooms in from off-screen and stamps itself above the unnamed woman, the character of Scottie is declaring his ownership of Madeleine/Judy, and giving the anonymous model an identity solely in relation to his name and identity. Importantly, Bass uses a freeze frame technique on this image, stopping the motion of the model’s lips, lingering on them, and emphasizing the importance of Stewart’s credit.

The next credit is for Kim Novak, the object of obsessive desire in the film. The camera pans up to the woman’s eyes that, instead of being immobilized by a freeze frame, dart back and forth, imparting uncertainty and the theme of searching which is central to Madeleine’s character. The camera then pans left and zooms into a singular eye and the credit ‘IN ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S’ appears. This is an obvious example of the branding and ownership of the dismembered woman’s body. Hitchcock is ostensibly taking claim of his film, but subtextually, declaring dominion over her eyes, which are later revealed to be the entrance to the interior space of the mind, the area of madness and abstract obsession. The camera zooms in more slowly to the eye, the frame is tinted red, the eye widens in reaction to this dangerous color, and the title ‘VERTIGO’ charges from the depths of the woman’s dark iris, toward the camera and up out of frame. The arena of the mind that was branded as belonging to Hitchcock has now produced the title of the work of art. The façade of the mask-like woman is revealed to be as hollow as the typographic outline, a mere vessel for the artistic expression of film auteur Hitchcock, and by implication, title auteur Bass. After an interlude of spiraling geometric shapes of varying colors, the camera zooms back again out of the woman’s iris, with the credit ‘DIRECTED BY ALFRED HITCHCOCK.’ This is another inscription of authorship, and an exertion of control over the uncontrollable interior madness of the montage of fractal shapes. After a recess into the ether, we emerge again, back where we started, with the commanding name of the director reified.

 

The inscription of text on image: Typography and its placement over the image belies a struggle for dominance that is amplified when the type is placed over the human form. In Vertigo, authorship is etched into the skin of female, owning and controlling it. The credit for Kim Novak is unsure of itself, and the woman’s eyes break their mask-like gaze.

Although Vertigo deals with sexuality, fetishism, sexual obsession and perversions, it is moored in the spatial temporality of 1950s America. According to the Hollywood codes at the time, these themes are repressed throughout the film and their representation becomes sublimated to the level of subtle visual markers. The title sequence sets up these sublimated sensibilities. The title opens and closes on a female body as a way into the psychological and physical space of the film. Physical representation is important as a threshold metaphor, as a method to draw the viewer into the immersive space of the film. The physical, and importantly female, body that is utilized as a metaphor in this instance is carefully spliced by the camera, into disparate body parts: lips, eyes, chins, and cheeks. The slow camera movement, coupled with Bernard Herrmann’s perfectly lilting orchestrations, entices the viewer into the body, and into the obsession that is shared by Scottie, Bass, and Hitchcock.

Foxy Brown: The cinematic tradition upon which the Foxy titles draw is varied, but a clear antecedent is Bass’ work on Vertigo. Though the films are thematically and stylistically worlds apart, the first images of each title sequence is a dislocated female body part, in Foxy, first a pair of lips, and then two blinking eyes. The theme of eyes continues with Foxy’s/Pam’s wink to the audience as the green-tinted images transition to a photo-real filmic representation. The sequence also features several freeze frames of Foxy as she poses, dancing, each freeze frame bringing her figure closer to the audience. Unlike the Vertigo titles, however, Foxy Brown has somewhat of a schizophrenic title sequence because auteurship is not foregrounded, rather favoring the strong Black, female protagonist. Her identity is clearly marked, signaled in text “PAM GRIER IS…‘FOXY BROWN,’” and image, the close up of Foxy/Pam’s face winking to the viewer. The strong centrality of the title character before the film proper begins distances this title from its ‘50s forbearer whose title woman was an empty vessel and a physical surface on which to ascribe masculine authorship. Foxy is a character of the 1970s, foregrounded socially in the women’s rights movement and cinematically in the tradition of blaxploitation and sexploitation pictures.

 

Freeze frame: In Vertigo and Foxy Brown, freeze frame pauses and focuses the gaze on the female protagonists to fetishize the lips and eyes.

The different representations of Foxy Brown within the title sequence, both on the visual and auditory plane speak to the conflicts of bodily representation. On the one hand, Foxy is a modern, liberated woman who is the center of her film. On the other, her physicality is sexualized and fetishized in lingering close-ups of her breasts, crotch, lips, and eyes. Switching back between film and tinted and colorized images also reflects the multiplicity of representation. Foxy is dressed in many ways throughout the title: in a bikini, as a cowgirl, in a one-piece bell bottom suit, as a ghetto or “Afrotastic” version of herself, and as a leather-clad, karate-chopping action heroine. Conflicting images of physical representation are layered and diverse. The title seems at odd with itself, unable to reconcile the profit AIP needed to generate by playing on Pam Grier’s sex appeal, with its vengeful and ass-kicking female protagonist.

 

In Foxy Brown, the text does not assert its control over Foxy’s body, like the type in Vertigo, but acts as an introduction to her character, which is defined by the coupling of the visual and the auditory, more than the typographic.

This tension between Foxy's status as sexualized object and in-control heroine is brought to bear in the tension between sound and image. Willie Hutch’s funky sound, upbeat and celebratory, provides the viewer with positive associations and a general happy feeling towards Foxy. This sets the tone for the film, where the viewer really comes to root for and identify with Foxy’s path of revenge. As much as the objectifying images are at odds with this groovy soundtrack, so do the lyrics occasionally contradict themselves and the music. One of the lyrics’ main descriptors of Foxy: “You’re cute and sweet, but you don’t play around!” Foxy embodies the duality of the newly liberated woman, still an object of desire but one who does not tolerate the masculine control exercised over the unnamed model in Vertigo’s titles. Another lyric warns of Foxy’s physical dominance: “Please don’t make Foxy mad/Or you’ll find out that the lady is Superbad/Superbad!” In Foxy Brown, the lyrics are mostly empowering to women, and the images mostly objectifying, though the sequence treads a fine line between the exploitation and celebration of the physical body in motion. 

 

Foxy Brown uses close-ups of Foxy’s anatomy to convey her obvious sex appeal. This image is layered, in the foreground with Foxy’s realistic body and in the background, her colorized body.

 

Superbad's homoerotic friendship. 

 

Sexuality in bodily titles: Bodies captured on film, and especially bodies in motion, are subject to a sexualizing filmic gaze, so it is fitting that three films each dealing with sexuality include in their opening credits the sexualized or fetishized body. The role of sexuality in Vertigo's titles because of the time period is more subdued, though there are subtle clues that link sex with obsession and madness, much as the story centers on this paradigm.

 

Freeze frame: In Foxy Brown, freeze frame draws Foxy closer to the viewer. 

Superbad: The title theme song for Foxy Brown provides the title for the next film, Superbad. This sequence is a direct descendent of Vertigo and Foxy Brown, yet its subject matter is the most radically different. This film also provides us with the clearest example of intertextuality because the theme of filmic citation and self-reflexivity is central to the titles, and the film at large. The main stylistic difference is tied to this film’s postmodernity. Superbad comes thirty years after Foxy, and fifty years after Vertigo. To bridge that gap, the film employs the currently popular strategy of a retro title sequence. The retro appeal of its titles comes from its reference to blaxploitation films like Foxy Brown and the era they represent. This is purposefully one of the most ironic cultural citations Superbad, a buddy film about two white, suburban teenagers, could make. 

Within the text, there are no overt references to the ‘70s, neither Foxy Brown nor blaxploitation are mentioned in the film, and the phrase ‘superbad’ is never uttered by any of the characters. The title sequence establishes a groovy mood that is never explicitly evoked again, yet the celebration of retro nerdiness is maintained throughout the film. The film is relying on the cool factor of its title tune, “Too Hot To Stop” by The Bar-Keys, and the aura of the 1970s, to support the plot, which is essentially about nerdy white high school kids trying to score alcohol and get laid. The plot of Foxy Brown and Superbad could not be more far apart, and yet the titles of the later film draw on the cinematic history of films like Vertigo and Foxy Brown in setting the tone for their modern teen comedy.

 

The visual quotation of Foxy Brown in Superbad: The multiplication of bodies in motion, with shadowed and layered images of dancing figures.

The juxtaposition of funky ‘70s flavor and the 21st century green screen and computer technology utilized presupposes the theme of cultural citation prevalent in the film. The first conversation in the film is Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) talking over cell phones, immediately signifying that the story does take place in the present, and not the 1970s. But, references to the ‘70s are commonplace: Seth and Fogel (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) wear t-shirts with pictures of Sherman Hemsley of The Jeffersons, Bruce Lee and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam, 1975). This kind of intertextuality is merely quotation, and does not have a deeper significance to the plot or meaning of the film. Much like the opening titles, these in-text references are stylistic choices pulled from pop culture.

Unlike the female bodies at the center of Vertigo and Foxy Brown, the male body takes center stage in the Superbad title sequence. And although it is not a photo-real physique, it is a new representation and commodification of male friendship that is not usually seen in mainstream cinema. Like the music of Foxy Brown, Superbad also presents an tension between the visual and the audio because while the lyrics are explicitly heterosexual (“Girl, I’m out to get your love and I’m too hot to stop now”), whereas the images convey a homosocial bond between the two characters that is much stronger than either character’s pursuit of the opposite sex. The characters in Superbad are obsessed with the female form and its anatomy is immediately the center of conversation in the opening seconds of the film. Seth’s quest for the “Vagtastic Voyage” porn site and the emphasis on breasts and penises and individual body parts recalls the fetishism present in both Vertigo and Foxy Brown, albeit in a more obvious and less mature manner.

 

Freeze frame: In Superbad, freeze frame lingers on a backwards glance and a separation, emphasizing the male "bromance" at the center of the film.

    

Fifty years of cross-genre thematic titles: Focus on the eyes in the Vertigo titles is key to understanding the psychological complexity of the plot and main character. Foxy Brown's titles convey the inner strength of the title character by quoting Vertigo's design while simultaneously updating it for the newly liberated '70s. The "iris out" visual effect in the Superbad titles completes the ocular thematic continuity between the three sequences. Superbad suggests a shift from the isolated and fetishized female body to the coupling of two male bodies in constant tension between heterosexual and homosocial desires.