Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars an ensemble cast including Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger, and Mélanie Laurent. The film tells an alternate history story of two converging plots to assassinate Nazi Germany's leadership at a Paris cinema—one through a British operation largely carried out by a team of Jewish American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt), and another by French Jewish cinema proprietor Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent) who seeks to avenge her murdered family. Both are pitted against Hans Landa (Waltz), an SS colonel with a fearsome reputation.
The title (but not the story) was inspired by Italian director Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 Euro War film The Inglorious Bastards, but deliberately misspelled as "a Basquiat-esque touch". Tarantino wrote the script in 1998, but struggled with the ending and chose instead to direct the two-part film Kill Bill. After directing Death Proof in 2007, Tarantino returned to work on Inglourious Basterds. A co-production between the United States and Germany, the film began principal photography in October 2008 and was filmed in Germany and France with a $70 million production budget.
Inglourious Basterds premiered on May 20, 2009, at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, and received a wide release in theaters in Germany on August 20, and in the United States on August 21. The Weinstein Company distributed the film in the United States, while Universal Pictures handled international distribution. It was a commercial success, grossing $321.5 million worldwide, becoming Tarantino's highest-grossing film to that point, until it was surpassed by Django Unchained (2012). The film received critical acclaim, with Waltz's performance as Hans Landa being singled out for praise, but some criticized the historical liberties taken. It also won multiple awards and nominations, among them eight Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay). For his role as Landa, Waltz won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor Award, as well as the Academy Award, Actor Award, BAFTA Award, Critics' Choice Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Plot
In 1941, Austrian SS- Hans Landa, nicknamed "The Jew Hunter," interrogates French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite about a fugitive Jewish family, the Dreyfuses. Suspecting he is hiding the Dreyfus family, Landa plays cat-and-mouse with LaPadite. Speaking English so the Dreyfuses will not understand, Landa compels LaPadite to give up the Dreyfuses to save his own family. LaPadite tearfully admits the Dreyfuses are hiding under his floor. Landa's men massacre the Dreyfuses, but one, young Shosanna, escapes alive.
Three years later, U.S. Army lieutenant Aldo Raine recruits Jewish American soldiers to the "Basterds", a black ops commando unit tasked with instilling fear among Nazis in occupied France by killing and scalping them. The group includes Sergeant Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz, Privates First Class Smithson Utivich and Omar Ulmer, rogue German Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz, and Austrian-born translator Corporal Wilhelm Wicki. Raine carves swastika marks on foreheads of surviving German soldiers so they cannot hide their Nazi affiliations after the war.
In Paris, operating a cinema under the name "Emmanuelle Mimieux", Shosanna meets Fredrick Zoller, a famed German sniper set to star in the German propaganda film (Nation's Pride). Infatuated with "Emmanuelle", Zoller convinces Joseph Goebbels to hold the film's premiere at her cinema. Landa, the premiere's head of security, interrogates Shosanna, but does not reveal whether he recognizes her. She plots with her Afro-French lover and projectionist, Marcel, to kill the German leaders by burning down the cinema with her collection of highly flammable nitrate films.
British Commando Lieutenant Archie Hicox, a fluent German speaker, is recruited for Operation Kino, an attack on the premiere of Nation's Pride in Paris. The mission is to set off an explosion to take out the German High Command attending the premiere, including Goebbels, Göring, Bormann, and SS and Gestapo officers.
Disguised as German officers, Hicox, Stiglitz, and Wicki meet with German film star Bridget von Hammersmark, an undercover Allied agent, in an occupied town at a tavern unexpectedly full of German soldiers. Hicox's unusual accent arouses suspicion from Sergeant Wilhelm and SS- Dieter Hellström, who join them to play the German card game . Hicox blows the group's cover with a non-German hand gesture. Everyone is killed in the ensuing gunfight except Wilhelm and a wounded Hammersmark. While Wilhelm holds Hammersmark at gunpoint, Raine arrives and negotiates for her release until she shoots Wilhelm.
Believing she set his men up, Raine tortures Hammersmark, but she convinces him of her loyalty and reveals that Hitler will attend the premiere. The mission goes ahead with Raine, Donowitz, and Ulmer posing as Italian filmmakers. Hammersmark is doubtful but thinks the Germans may not find their Italian accents suspicious. Investigating the tavern, Landa finds Hammersmark's shoe and a souvenir napkin with her signature.
The Basterds infiltrate the premiere with timed explosives. Fluent in Italian, Landa sees through their cover and privately confronts Hammersmark with her shoe before strangling her. Landa arrests Raine, along with Utivich, but leaves Ulmer and Donowitz in the theater. Recognizing opportunity in the situation, Landa offers to let the attack proceed if Raine's OSS commanders guarantee his safety after the war. Raine contacts his commanders, and Landa negotiates a generous deal for himself and his radio operator.
During the screening, Zoller slips into the projection room seeking Shosanna. Unsuccessful at driving him away, Shosanna shoots Zoller, who shoots her as she checks his body; both die. As Nation's Pride reaches its climax, Shosanna's closeup face appears on the screen, telling the Nazi audience they are about to be killed by a Jew. Having locked the auditorium, Marcel ignites a pile of nitrate film behind the screen, setting the theater ablaze. Ulmer and Donowitz break into the opera box, gunning down Hitler and Goebbels, before firing into the crowd. The timed explosives kill everyone inside the cinema.
According to the negotiated deal, Landa and his radio operator drive Raine and Utivich into Allied territory, where they surrender to Raine. Resigned to being reprimanded for his act of defiance, Raine shoots the radio operator. To brand Landa as a Nazi in his negotiated new life, Raine carves a swastika into Landa's forehead, declaring it to be his masterpiece.
Cast
Director Enzo G. Castellari also makes a cameo appearance in the film at the movie premiere. He previously cameoed as a German in his own The Inglorious Bastards and reprised the same role in this film, but under a different rank and SS organization. Bo Svenson, who starred in Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards, also has a small cameo in the film as a US colonel in the Nation's Pride movie.
Additionally, Samuel L. Jackson narrates the film, Harvey Keitel voices the Office of Strategic Services Commander, Bela B appears as an usher and Tarantino appears as an American soldier in Nation's Pride and a scalped German. Two characters, Mrs. Himmelstein and Madame Ada Mimieux, played by Cloris Leachman and Maggie Cheung, respectively, were both cut from the final film due to length.
Production Development Quentin Tarantino spent just over a decade creating the film's script because, as he told Charlie Rose in an interview, he became "too precious about the page", meaning the story kept growing and expanding. Tarantino viewed the script as his masterpiece in the making, so felt it had to become the best thing he had ever written. He described an early premise of the film as his "bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission" film, "my Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare or Guns of Navarone kind of thing".
By 2002, Tarantino found Inglourious Basterds to be a bigger film than planned and saw that other directors were working on World War II films. Tarantino had produced three nearly finished scripts, proclaiming that it was "some of the best writing I've ever done. But I couldn't come up with an ending." He moved on to direct the two-part film Kill Bill (2003–2004). After the completion of Kill Bill, Tarantino went back to his first storyline draft and considered making it a mini-series, but Luc Besson convinced him to finish it as a film. Instead he trimmed the script, using his script for Pulp Fiction (1994) as a guide to length. The revised premise focused on a group of soldiers who escape from their executions and embark on a mission to help the Allies. He described the men as "not your normal hero types that are thrown into a big deal in the Second World War".
Tarantino planned to begin production in 2005. In November 2004, he delayed production and instead took an acting role in Takashi Miike's Western film Sukiyaki Western Django (2007), and intended to make a kung fu film entirely in Mandarin; this project floundered. He directed Death Proof (2007), part of the double feature Grindhouse, before returning to work on Inglourious Basterds.
The film's title was inspired by the English-language title of director Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 war film, The Inglorious Bastards.
Tarantino has said that the film's opening scene, in which Landa interrogates the French dairy farmer, is his "favorite thing" he's "ever written".
Casting
Tarantino originally sought Leonardo DiCaprio to be cast as Hans Landa, before deciding to have the character played by a native German-speaking actor. The role ultimately went to Austrian Christoph Waltz who, according to Tarantino, "gave me my movie" as he feared the part was "unplayable". Brad Pitt and Tarantino had wanted to work together for a number of years, but they were waiting for the right project. When Tarantino was halfway through the film's script, he sensed that Pitt was a strong possibility for the role of Aldo Raine. By the time he had finished writing, Tarantino thought Pitt "would be terrific" and called Pitt's agent to ask if he was available.
Tarantino asked Adam Sandler to play the role of Donny Donowitz, but Sandler declined due to schedule conflicts with the film Funny People (2009). Eli Roth was cast in the role instead. Roth also directed the film-within-the-film, Nation's Pride, which used 300 extras. The director also wanted to cast Simon Pegg in the film as Lt. Archie Hicox, but he was forced to drop out due to scheduling difficulties with The Adventures of Tintin (2011). Irish-German actor Michael Fassbender began final negotiations to join the cast as Hicox in August 2008, although he originally auditioned for the role of Landa. B. J. Novak was also cast in August 2008 as Private First Class Smithson Utivich, "a New York-born soldier of 'slight build.