Inglourious Basterds
Business is a-boomin’ in Tarantino’s big, bold war movie.
In celebration of Eli Roth’s 48th birthday our #LockdownRewatch today is Tarantino’s 2009 audacious WW2 fantasy/satire/revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds, also starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger. It grossed over $321 million globally, making it Tarantino’s highest-grossing film at the time; it was later surpassed by Django Unchained and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
Did you know…
1) At one point during pre-production, Tarantino was close to calling the whole film off. He had trouble casting Hans Landa, and even told his producers the role was “un-playable”. Ultimately the part went to Austrian-born Christoph Waltz. “I said, I don’t want to make this movie if I can’t find the perfect Landa, I’d rather just publish the script than make a movie where this character would be less than he was on the page”, so Tarantino. “When Christoph came in and read the next day, he gave me my movie back.”
2) Only roughly a third of the film is actually in English, most of the other languages spoken are German, French and some Italian, as highlighted in this clip. Having native speakers, such as Waltz, Fassbender or Kruger in German-speaking roles also added authenticity to the film. “One of the great moves of this film is that every nationality that’s portrayed in the film is true to their language”, recounts Pitt. “And so Germans are speaking German, French are French and English are English. That’s the world we live in now, and that’s much more interesting as a viewer”.
