The QT on War Movies

I thought some might enjoy or get a laugh out of dear Quentin’s impressions on World War II movies. I particularly liked this gem,

I don’t like Truffaut’s “The Last Metro”. It seems very phoney, like it’s made on Nazi-occupied Sesame Street. The story is all about the director of a theatre group hiding from the Nazis inside the theatre and ghost-directing his wife, Catherine Deneuve, and the leading man, Gerard Depardieu, from his hideout. And I watched it and thought: This is a great premise for a comedy, but it really doesn’t work as drama.

Not that The Last Metro was one of my favorites either, but I hope he brings more “insight” to Venice.

I hate to admit it but he’s kinda right about The Last Metro.

Seeing the German/Lithuanian movie Ghetto a few years ago, I was impressed by how much more Juzenas did with similar subject matter, but then there was a lot more action. The problem with The Last Metro is that in revolves too much around the dialog between Depardieu and Deneuve without much sense of what is going on around them. I had forgotten it was even set during WWII.

The director of INGLORIOUS BASTERDS isn’t someone whose opinion on THE LAST METRO I’m going to take particularly seriously. Tarantino would doubtless have gotten more out of it if Marion Steiner had carved a swastika into Daxiat’s forehead.

Funny to see that there was a similarly titled movie, The Inglorious Bastards, from 1978, with the tagline,

Whatever the Dirty Dozen did they do it dirtier!

I guess you might call it a Spaghetti War Movie ; )

Just for the record, Dzimas, the Italians made tons of war movies in the ‘60s and ’70s, often with American or British stars flown in. One I remember liking a great deal was called DIRTY HEROES and had a great score by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai and starred Curt Jurgens, Daniela Bianchi, Frederick Stafford and John Ireland. Enzo Castellari’s INGLORIOUS BASTARDS (1978) came out relatively late in the cycle and saw some theatrical release in the U.S. It starred Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson, both of whom have worked for/with Tarantino.

I’m not a big fan of “The Last Metro”. I respect Tarantino’s thoughts on the film, as much I respect anyone else’s. Unfortunately my usually bad opinion about Tarantino’s films isn’t always that well accepted. :)

“I guess you might call it a Spaghetti War Movie”

They’re actually called ‘Macaroni Combat’ movies; it’s a recognised genre, though obviously less famous than the ‘Spaghetti Westerns’, partly because there was never anything as big or as successful as ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ to make it iconic.

Castellari’s ‘The Inglorious Bastards’ (1978) might be the most famous ‘Macaroni Combat’ movie, largely because of Tarantino’s constant name-dropping, but his earlier film, ‘Eagles Over London’ (1969), is more representative of the genre, along with Tonino Ricci’s ‘Salt in the Wound’ (1969) and Maurizio Pradeaux’s ’Churchill’s Leopards’ (1970) (both starring Klaus Kinski)

I won’t argue with “Come and See” at #1. But I don’t think I even saw “The Longest Day” on that list. Surely that’s among the best 50 ever made.

Thanks for filling me in on these Italian war movies. I remember Fred Williamson and Bo Svenson from the 70s but didn’t see them in these movies.

The Time Out list is an odd one. Seems drawn up by Tarantino himself, since it mostly focused on WWII action movies with the occassional more serious reference as if to say he is an “auteur.”

Same old song again with that list, no variety and plenty of baffling picks (Iwo Jima? Private Ryan? REALLY?), most of those are English-language films anyhow, I hate thematic lists with one dominant country / language.

@Dimitris: We know…

When I feel the need to listen to someone trivialize a war that killed maybe 40 million people I can’t think of anyone who would be a better choice than L’il Quentin.

Just how close was this moron to the war that he thinks his opinion of what is authentic carries weight?

Inglorious Basterds isn’t about WWII, it’s about WWII movies.

I prefer later WWII movies to earlier ones. Stuff like Army of Shadows, Band of Brothers and The Pianist seem to get closer to the core of the experience than the films that came out shortly after the war ended, which seemed more interested in celebrating the demise of Naziism than showing you gritty personal stories.

Pretty hard to top Rossellini’s war movies.

@Anonymouse

you’ll have to forgive Dimitris, he woke up on the wrong side of the West.

All of QT’s movies are about movies. I guess that comes with spending all that time at a video store. In many ways, he is still that geek at the counter trying to tell anyone who will listen what he thinks about movies, except that now more persons take him seriously.