The movie review that greatly inspired Quentin Tarantino
Known for his appreciation of world cinema, there are countless movies that the American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is fond of. Passionate about the likes of Martin Scorsese, Takashi Miike, Sergio Leone, Stanley Kubrick and many more, most of Tarantino’s loves come from the same sort of genre, with Tarantino long being fond of dark thrillers, crime dramas and violent exploitation flicks.
Rarely do we associate French arthouse cinema with Tarantino, however, even though the director looked up to the work of Jean-Luc Godard and his contemporaries. He didn’t exactly fall head over heels for the films of such French New Wave icons, but the filmmaker did appreciate their exuberant approach to cinema, instilling their own rebellion and romance in 1960s moviemaking.
Strangely, it was actually a review of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 film Band of Outsiders that inspired the director more than the movie itself. The film, which told the story of two criminals who convince a student to help them commit a robbery, was reviewed by the influential critic for the New Yorker, Pauline Kael, in her second anthology Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, with Tarantino reading the book many years after its original release.
“The one review Pauline Kael wrote that ended up meaning something to me in a big way was for Band of Outsiders,” Tarantino stated: “She said, ‘it was as if a bunch of movie-mad young French boys had taken a banal American crime novel and translated the poetry that they had read between the lines. It was like, that is my aesthetic, right there. That’s what I hope I can do”.
Years later, in 1991, when Tarantino was putting his production company together, he thought back to this moment of creative inspiration and named it ‘A Band Apart’. The company would help to bring 1992’s Reservoir Dogs into reality and was used throughout the following decades, producing such modern classics as Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Django Unchained.
Tarantino wasn’t the only member of the company either, with other individuals including the likes of Tim Burton, John Woo, Darren Aronofsky, John Landis, Steve Buscemi and Luc Besson.
At one point, Tarantino’s supposed ‘final movie’ was thought to be all about the film critic Pauline Kael. His 10th film, titled The Movie Critic, follows the story of a film journalist in 1970s America, with many fans theorising as to who the titular character may be. “There is a lot of speculation as to who it is based on,” Tarantino has stated, “And yes, he is a real critic, but he is not known…and I am not going to tell you more”.
Tarantino added that the film “will also not be what you might call a ‘revenge story’”. This comment comes due to the fact that the director is known for such tales, with Django Unchained, Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds each being violent revenge stories.
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