Quentin Tarantino names the one director long overdue a critical rediscovery
Quentin Tarantino isn’t just a celebrated director; he’s also a self-proclaimed cinema nerd. Growing up, he spent countless hours in movie theatres, earning a local reputation as ‘the film guy’. Tarantino wears his love for obscure influences proudly on his sleeve, filling his films with nods to exploitation movies that only a handful of people have seen, along with other hidden gems from his cinema-obsessed mind.
You’ve got to truly love movies to become a director—otherwise, the stress of the job would be unbearable. Tarantino, however, takes that passion to another level, with a deep obsession that grants him a unique perspective on the industry he’s so profoundly influenced. Beyond filmmaking, Tarantino has written extensively about cinema, contributing critical essays and articles, including for the BFI. In one such piece, he delved into his love of westerns, spotlighting the work of the little-known American director Monte Hellman, a filmmaker whose contributions to the genre resonate deeply with Tarantino’s own sensibilities.
“I don’t care if he’s only done three,” Tarantino declared, clarifying why he’d singled out Hellman as a great Western director despite his relatively small filmography. “Two of them – Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting – demand that honour.” He moved on to broader praise for the filmmaker, saying, “If ever a director was due for critical rediscovery, it would be Monte Hellman. With his naturalistic style and pace, his invisibly punchy editing rhythms, and the journeys his characters inevitably set sail on, his influence can be found in the work of such directors as [Hal] Hartley, Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, and Terrence Malick.”
Hellman got his start as a director in the late 1950s, under the tutelage of the great producer Roger Corman. He also worked with a young Jack Nicholson on some of his earliest films, including 1964’s Flight to Fury, which the actor also wrote. Nicholson appeared in both of Hellman’s westerns, which were shot back-to-back in the mid-1960s. Over the rest of his career, the director dabbled in various genres including road movies, crime dramas, and slasher horrors. He returned to the western in 1978 with China 9, Liberty 37, a joint Spanish-Italian production starring Warren Oates, Jenny Agutter, and acclaimed filmmaker Sam Peckinpah in a small cameo.
Of Hellman’s two most revered westerns, The Shooting, is often given more praise, but Tarantino explained why he has a fondness for the other one. “It’s the simplicity,” he wrote of Ride in the Whirlwind. “The naturalistic tone, the awkward-sounding (because it’s so authentic) cowboy vernacular, the feeling of sadness that’s between every line, the burst of ridiculous comic moments, the beautiful underplaying of Nicholson and Cameron Mitchell, all wrapped up in a wing-ding plot, that make Ride in the Whirlwind one of the most authentic and brilliant westerns ever made.”
As well as impacting him stylistically, Hellman had a more direct role in getting Tarantino’s filmmaking career off the ground. He served as an executive producer on Reservoir Dogs, the auteur’s big screen debut. “My primary role was to raise the money, which I did,” Hellman told The Flashback Files. “My secondary role was to guarantee that Quentin Tarantino would perform, which was not a problem because he knew exactly what he wanted to do. If I found that he was making tiny mistakes I would let him know. And he would always say: well, that was my intent.”
In 2021, Monte Hellman passed away at the age of 91 following complications from a fall. He may not be the most famous director to have ever lived, but his influence on Tarantino alone is enough to secure him a place in film history, let alone all of his other many achievements.
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