Watch 34 of Quentin Tarantino’s Visual References to Citizen Kane, Blade Runner, 8 1/2 & Other Great Films

Some­times when I enjoy a movie less than I thought I would, I find that my dis­sat­is­fac­tion stems from the feel­ing of hav­ing watched a movie made out of oth­er movies, a Franken­stein­ian cre­ation assem­bled from the dead bits and pieces that worked well when attached to their orig­i­nal bod­ies, alive long ago, but, when re-used, don’t come to life at all. When avid cinephile turned avid cinephile and direc­tor Quentin Taran­ti­no plays the role of a cin­e­mat­ic Dr. Franken­stein, how­ev­er, he turns the volt­age much high­er up, ele­vat­ing the prac­tice to an auteur’s art.

When Taran­ti­no’s films ref­er­ence his favorite films — be they clas­sics of the canon, tried-and-true west­erns, kung-fu obscu­ri­ties, pieces of Euro­pean new-wave, or grind-house exploita­tion flicks — they often tran­scend their sources. Jacob Swin­ney, whose super­cuts of Taran­ti­no’s use of sound, close-ups, and cars we fea­tured back in April, has cut togeth­er 34 par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive visu­al ref­er­ences of the thou­sands found in the direc­tor’s fil­mog­ra­phy and placed them along­side the works quot­ed.

The video cov­ers, in three min­utes, visu­al ref­er­ences from the “Mex­i­can stand­off” from City of Fire in Reser­voir Dogs to the dances from Band of Out­siders and 8 1/2 in Pulp Fic­tion to Super­chick and The Grad­u­ate’s open­ing titles in Jack­ie Brown to Bruce Lee’s track­suit in Game of Death on Uma Thur­man in Kill Bill Vol­ume One to Daryl Han­nah’s writhing from Blade Run­ner in Kill Bill Vol­ume Two to fram­ing from The Searchers in Inglo­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds.

It stops short of The Hate­ful Eight, Taran­ti­no’s lat­est, leav­ing it as an exer­cise for the view­er to tab­u­late just how wide a swatch of cin­e­ma the man has repur­posed this time. He’s gone on record as say­ing he’ll only make two more fea­ture films, but don’t wor­ry, cinephiles: they’ll more than like­ly con­tain enough ref­er­ences to oth­er movies, visu­al and oth­er­wise, to keep you in view­ing mate­r­i­al for the next twen­ty years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Super­cuts Explore the Director’s Styl­ized Use of Sound, Close Ups & Cars in His Films

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His 20 Favorite Spaghet­ti West­erns, Start­ing with The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

Watch Free Online My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Quentin Tarantino’s Top 20 Grindhouse/Exploitation Flicks: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Hal­loween & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


by | Permalink | Comments (1) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.