The scene Quentin Tarantino called the greatest of all time: “The pinnacle of moviemaking”
Writing and directing memorable scenes has become second nature to Quentin Tarantino, with even his weakest efforts from behind the camera boasting at least one sequence that lives in the memory.
Like everyone else, the two-time Academy Award winner has pointed to Death Proof as his least effective picture to date, but the grandstanding car chase that dominates the third act still stands tall as one of modern cinema’s most expertly crafted instances of cinematic vehicular mayhem.
While it isn’t fair or accurate to call him a director of moments and little else, it’s also true that every single one of Tarantino’s nine films contains a scene that borders on the iconic. Whether it’s the ear-slicing Reservoir Dogs, Samuel L Jackson’s monologue in Pulp Fiction, or rewriting history in the climax of Inglourious Basterds, the auteur knows how to craft an exchange that captures the imagination.
Tarantino has always been supremely confident in his abilities as a filmmaker, and his status as one of the modern era’s most celebrated and influential writers and directors justifies that borderline arrogance. However, he’d never go so far as to brand one of his own scenes as the greatest in cinema history, even if he knows exactly what fits the bill.
When speaking to Charlie Rose about the challenges of tackling Kill Bill‘s action-heavy stylings, Tarantino pointed out that he wanted to emulate the “directors who maybe don’t just do action but can do action beautifully,” with one name at the top of the list.
“Like Francis Ford Coppola in the helicopter sequence of Apocalypse Now,” he elaborated. “I mean, that’s just, to me, the pinnacle of moviemaking, that sequence. And I’ve never really done that before. So, if I’m going to throw my hat in the ring, I want to throw it in with the big boys. I don’t want to be OK; I want to be as good as them, if not better. Not saying I am, but that’s the goal.”
There aren’t a lot of obvious similarities between Coppola’s beleaguered masterpiece and Tarantino’s two-part roaring rampage of revenge, but it’s easy to see the point he’s getting at. The mastermind behind The Godfather and The Conversation was well-established as one of Hollywood’s finest directors, but he’d never helmed anything as remotely action-orientated as Apocalypse Now.
Similarly, Tarantino changed the face of the American independent scene for better and worse in the 1990s and developed a signature style that was endlessly replicated but never duplicated, which still didn’t make it obvious that he would so naturally and effortlessly segue into martial arts-inspired mayhem.
Is the legendary ‘Rise of the Valkyries’ scene the pinnacle of cinema? It all depends on personal preference, but it’s definitely up there. For Tarantino, though, it’s the benchmark that nobody has been able to top since.
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