Inglourious Basterds
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 World War II revenge film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and released in August 2009. It is an epic ensemble war film, a "spaghetti-western but with World War II iconography."
Plot
In 1941, SD Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) arrives at a dairy farm in France to interrogate Perrier Lapadite (Denis Menochet) about rumors that he is hiding the Jewish Dreyfus family. Landa pressures the farmer to confess to hiding the family underneath his floor. Landa then orders the SS soldiers into the house to shoot through the floorboards where they are hiding. The entire family is killed, except the teenage Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), whom Landa allows to escape.
In the spring of 1944, 1st Special Service Force First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) recruits a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers for a mission to go behind enemy lines to hunt German soldiers. He tells the soldiers that they each owe him 100 Nazi scalps. They operate with a "take no prisoners" attitude and come to be known as the "Basterds". One survivor of an attack by the Basterds, a soldier named Butz (Sönke Möhring), is interviewed by Adolf Hitler (Martin Wuttke). Butz's account of the attack is shown in flashback: his squad was ambushed and his sergeant (Richard Sammel), when he refused to divulge the location of another German patrol, was beaten to death with a baseball bat by Staff Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), known by the Germans as "The Bear Jew". Butz divulges the locations, but reveals that Raine carved a swastika into his forehead with a knife.
In June 1944, Shosanna has assumed a new identity as "Emmanuelle Mimieux" and is operating a cinema in Paris. She meets Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a German sniper whose exploits are to be celebrated in a Nazi propaganda film, Stolz der Nation (Nation's Pride). Zoller is attracted to Shosanna and convinces Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to hold the premiere of his film at Shosanna's cinema. Shosanna realizes that the presence of several high-ranking Nazi officials provides an opportunity for revenge and resolves to burn down the cinema during the premiere by setting fire to a large quantity of extremely flammable nitrate film.
A British General, General Ed Fenech (Mike Myers) learns of the premiere and "Operation Kino" is conceived, and Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is recruited to infiltrate the event, aided by the Basterds and German film actress and British spy, Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger). Hicox and Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), a former Nazi enlisted man who defected to the Basterds after killing several of his superiors, meet with von Hammersmark at a tavern where Major Dieter Hellstrom (August Diehl), of the Gestapo, notices Hicox's odd accent and that he gives the wrong (non-German) three-fingered order for drinks; holding the pointer, middle and ring fingers up instead of the middle finger, pointer finger and thumb. This results in a firefight and a standoff with a German serviceman, Staff Sgt. Wilhelm (Alexander Fehling), leaving everyone dead except von Hammersmark. Raine interrogates von Hammersmark, and upon learning that Hitler will be attending the premiere, devises a plan whereby he, Donny, and Omar (Omar Doom) will pose as von Hammersmark's Italian escorts at the premiere. Landa later investigates the tavern, retrieving von Hammersmark's shoe and an autographed napkin.
At the premiere, Landa asks to see von Hammersmark privately, where he makes her try on the shoe. Convinced to his satisfaction that she is in league with the Basterds, he suddenly strangles her. He then orders Raine and Utivich (B. J. Novak) to be arrested. Communicating by radio, Landa makes a deal with Raine's commanding officer (Harvey Keitel) to be granted a full military pension and American citizenship, in exchange for allowing Donny and Omar—still seated in the cinema—to kill the Nazi high command. During the film, Zoller goes to the projection room to see Shosanna and angrily confronts her due to her rejections of his advances. When his back is turned, she shoots him multiple times, but he manages to shoot and kill her before succumbing to his wounds. The film is then interrupted by an inserted close-up of Shosanna informing the audience that they are going to be killed by a Jew. At the same time, Shosanna's employee and lover, Marcel (Jacky Ido), who has locked and bolted the cinema exits, ignites the nitrate film stacked behind the screen. Omar and Donowitz disguise themselves as waiters and kill the soldiers guarding Hitler with hidden pistols. They then kill Goebbels and Hitler, and shoot into the crowd of panicking Nazis until the timers on their bombs go off and destroy the cinema, killing everyone inside.
Landa and his radio operator drive Raine and Utivich to the American lines, and according to the deal, Landa surrenders to Raine and hands over his weapons, allowing Utivich to handcuff him. To Landa's horror, Raine then shoots the radio operator and orders Utivich to scalp the dead man. Raine — hating the idea of Landa walking away unpunished — then carves a swastika into Landa's forehead, proclaiming, "You know something, Utivich? I think this just might be my masterpiece."
