Indebted to Jean-Luc!

Rating: Null/10 (9 August 2004)

Just a couple of points. In the 1950s and 60s, French 'nouvelle vague' (new wave) directors, such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, made films based on the American pulp crime tradition, filtered through European notions of art cinema. But you knew that, right? Thing 'Breathless' and 'Shoot the Pianist'. An, of course, 'Bande a Part', after which Tarantino named his production company. So essentially 'Pulp Fiction' is American crime re-interpreted in the light of the French interpretation of it in the 60s. It contains several references to Godard, most notably the dancing scene (Tarantino is on record as saying this was directly inspired by 'Bande a Part'). And The Wolf's arrival in 9 minutes and 37 seconds refers to the scene in the same film in which the characters run through the louvre in record time. The moment when Mia tells Vincent not to be square and a square appears on the screen is also pure Godard. So basically, this is an all American film that could not have been made without the high priest of European arthouse cinema. Which you could see as fairly ironic, and something that gets missed very easily by US critics.