The first chapter of Inglourious Basterds is titled “Once upon A Time in Nazi-occupied France” and this signals that we are in the realm of a fairy-tale, and “wish-fulfillment fantasy” as Quentin Tarantino said. Lt. Aldo Raine, an American with Native American roots, assembled a group of Jewish Nazi hunters, saying that each one of them owes him 100 Nazi scalps. They ambush Nazi soldiers and invoke terror in their ranks, and the word of them reaches Adolf Hitler. He says: “How much more of this Jewish swine I must endure? They butcher my men like they were flies! Do you know the latest rumor they conjured up in their fear-induced delirium? The one that beats my boys with a bat! The one they call ‘The Bear Jew’ is a Golem.” The Nazi soldier replies to Hitler: “My Führer, this is just soldier’s gossip. No one really believes ‘The Bear Jew’ is a Golem.” Hitler says: “Why not? They seem to be able to elude capture like an apparition. They seem to be able to appear and disappear at will. You want to prove they are flesh and blood? Then bring them to me!”
Hitler’s reference to “Golem” is an allusion to the figure from Jewish folklore, the creature of clay which is animated to protect Jewish people. German filmmaker Paul Wegener made a trilogy about the Golem, and only the 1920 version titled The Golem: How He Came into the World is preserved, albeit partially, while the other two films are lost. In Wegener’s 1920 expressionist film, set in the 17th century Prague, the Rabbi sees it in the stars that Jewish people are threatened, and seeks to find a solution to this predicament. His people are indeed in danger, since the king brings up charges against the Jews, and orders them to be expelled from their ghetto. One of the charges is that they practice black magic, and in the film, it is indeed correct. The Rabbi uses black arts to animate the creature of clay, the Golem.
At first, it protects the Jewish people, but soon it goes on a rampage, murders the lover of Rabbi’s daughter, the messenger of the king, and sets fire to the tower in which the Rabbi resides, threatening the whole Jewish neighborhood to be engulfed in fire. The Rabbi uses a spell to put out the fire, and in the end, the Golem is immobilized by children who remove the Jewish star from his chest, which animated him in the first place. The Jewish people are thus saved. If we follow Wegener’s 1920 film, Hitler’s reference to the Golem implies that this “Bear Jew” who murders Nazis with a baseball bat could be just a product of wild imagination of Hitler’s soldiers, but even if he was true, he would most likely bring the Jews their own demise, just like the Golem from Wegener’s film almost did. The irony in Tarantino’s film is that Hitler himself, alongside his closest associates perishes in the fire in the film theatre, just like the Jews who almost perished due to fire caused by the Golem in the 1920 film.
Shosanna, a Jewish woman who, in her teenage years, witnessed the murder of her family by the SS officer Hans Landa and his men, a few years later, in 1944, owns a film theatre in Nazi-occupied Paris. A Nazi war hero approaches her, and makes a romantic advance, while she is removing the letters from her cinema’s marqeuee billboard. They start to talk about movies, and he suggests that she admires Leni Riefenstahl, a Nazi propaganda filmmaker, known for her documentaries Triumph of the Will and Olympia, which in many ways defined Nazi aesthetics. Shosanna says that admiration is not the word she would use. He also suggests that she admires Pabst, since she displayed his name when she did not have to. Shosanna doesn’t reply to this.
This is interesting, since Pabst’s work could strongly resonate with Shosanna, as far as we get to know her as a character. His films felt distinctly modern at that time, and even when watched today, they feel so. They often feature female protagonists whose acts were transgressive at the time, and Pabst’s films were banned in several countries because of this. For example, his 1929 film Pandora’s Box features an alluring femme fatale Lulu, played by Louise Brooks in her unforgettable performance, who goes beyond the limits of morality not because she is evil, but simply because of the fact who she is, fanatically adored by many, and this brings many calamities upon her and people around her. The film also features an openly lesbian character, a countess who wears male clothes, she is one of many characters in the film who are captivated by Lulu.
A film which could resonate with Shosanna even more is Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl, in which Louise Brooks also plays the main part. Thymian is a girl who is violated by her father’s assistant who works in the farmacy owned by Thymian’s father, and she gets pregnant. She is thrown out of the house since she cannot be married to the assistant, and put in a strict “reform-school” with military discipline, for “fallen” or “wayward” girls. She escapes from there, only to end up as a prostitute, but she escapes from that kind of life mainly due to her kindness and a fortunate string of events. This character could resonate with Shosanna mainly due to Thymian’s endurance and willpower, the desire to advance her goals at all costs. In one word, the daring and transgressive nature of Pabst’s films could resonate with Shosanna, and it is not unusual that she respects his cinema, although he is a German filmmaker.
This also tells an important thing about her character – in spite of the fact that Germans killed her family, she is still fond of a German filmmaker, with whom she forms a spiritual bond. In Inglourious Basterds, there are several allusions to Nazi cinematography, mainly Riefenstahl’s, and in the film there is talk of evalution of Nazi propagandist cinema by a film critic who specializes in German cinema, and poses as an undercover agent for the Allies. He says that Goebbels’ goal to rejunevate German cinema is going well. He works alongside Raine’s “Basterds” and meets an untimely end in the basement in which the conspiracy against Hitler unfolds. Nevertheless, references to German films made before the Nazis came into power are are much more interesting in the context of understanding Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds in a more nuanced way.
Vigour of Film Lines 