The Inglorious Bastards: The Erstwhile ‘Glory’ of Exploitation

One of the juiciest bits of movie news to come out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival is that Quentin Tarantino is finally ready to stop talking about his remake of Enzo Castellari’s 1978 war film, “The Inglorious Bastards,” and actually start shooting it. Mr. Tarantino is said to be courting Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio to play the leads in his film about a group of Jewish soldiers who parachute into occupied France in order to bomb a Parisian movie theater where Goebbels’s latest propaganda film is slated to screen. With characters named “the Bear Jew” and “the Jew Hunter,” one gets the feeling that Mr. Tarantino wants to do for Jews what “Reservoir Dogs” did for AM radio hits of the 1970s. But his plot bears little resemblance to Mr. Castellari’s original, which has finally been released in a three-disc, restored DVD edition by Severin Films.The best way to understand the difference between the exploitation movies that Mr. Tarantino loves and the tributes to them that he actually makes is briefly to watch the interview between the “Pulp Fiction” director and Mr. Castellari that is included in this DVD set. I say “briefly” because it’s impossible to watch this special feature for more than 10 minutes without either dying of embarrassment or catching a skin disease from the filthy-looking Mr. Tarantino. Mr. Castellari is a compact Italian gentleman in a sport coat who smiles pleasantly and speaks simply; Mr. Tarantino, on the other hand, is a spastic, flailing, profanity-spewing mess who looks like he’s been sleeping under a bridge. Mr. Castellari is a professional; Mr. Tarantino is an “artist.”The differences between the two job titles are numerous. Go to an exploitation movie, especially one such as “The Inglorious Bastards,” and your modest expectations will no doubt be met, and in some cases exceeded, on time and on budget. With a Tarantino movie, you get the work of an undisciplined artist, often overlong and overindulgent, sometimes disappointing but occasionally astounding.Mr. Castellari’s movie begins with the U.S. Army shipping a gang of miscreants and crooks off to prison camp, then takes its first twist when a German bombing run liberates the prisoners, who team up to make a break for the Swiss border. After accidentally machine-gunning a squad of Americans (a classic “whoops” moment), the soldiers are roped into a suicide mission to attack a Nazi train carrying a new V2 rocket. It’s a slick and satisfying war picture, but its success rests entirely on the professionalism of its director and the charisma of its two lead actors. Mr. Castellari didn’t have Messrs. DiCaprio and Pitt to pretty things up, but he did have Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson. Mr. Svenson was, at the time, enormously popular for the “Walking Tall” movie sequels (later to become a TV series) and Mr. Williamson was the football-hero-turned-blaxploitation-star who had recently moved to Rome because, as he puts it in an interview on the DVD, “in the European markets I was an action star, I was an American actor. I was not a ‘black actor’ or a ‘black action star.'”Mr. Svenson never overplayed a scene when he could figure out how to underplay it, and Mr. Williamson was an established commodity at the time who had nothing to prove. In “The Inglorious Bastards,” he comes across as he probably was — a relaxed guy on vacation who exudes effortless cool.But while “The Inglorious Bastards” features five credited writers (and a slew of uncredited ones), it’s Mr. Castellari, at the peak of his career, who keeps it on track. The director began his career by dishing up spaghetti Westerns like “Go Kill Everybody and Come Back Alone,” before launching the Italian craze for crime films in 1973 with his “High Crime.” For “The Inglorious Bastards,” he keeps the avalanche of set pieces, characters, action scenes, cons, swindles, and plot twists on course with a relaxed hand. It’s even more of a tribute to his abilities when you see, thanks to the DVD, what was going on behind the scenes. Among other difficulties, after the first week of production the Italian government outlawed all firearms, even prop guns, and confiscated 250 weapons from the film. Mr. Castellari set the special effects department to work carving a new arsenal out of balsa wood and scrap metal while he used the forced delay to redesign and reshoot the movie’s central set piece, a suddenly firearms-free escape from a Nazi castle.Never hurrying, but never lingering, “The Inglorious Bastards” is a tribute to the kind of relaxed, professional B-list filmmaking that existed for decades before it was killed by television and rising production costs. In Mr. Castellari’s hands, a gang of naked, submachine-gun-wielding Nazi women comes off like just another surreal incident on the way to the Swiss border. In Mr. Tarantino’s remake, it will probably be a breathless, glossy shot that reviewers will talk about for years. But while the remake will most likely have a “Saving Private Ryan”-size budget and A-list stars, it probably won’t be able to recapture the original’s sense of a professional team of men on a mission: to complete their movie against all odds.

The Inglorious Bastards: The Erstwhile ‘Glory’ of Exploitation

The Inglorious Bastards: The Erstwhile ‘Glory’ of Exploitation

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