Inglourious Basterds

***Inglourious Basterds*** is a 2009 German-American war-thriller film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender and Eli Roth. The film tells the fictional alternate history story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germany's political leadership, one planned by a young French Jewish cinema proprietor, and the other by a team of Jewish-American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine. The film's title was inspired by director Enzo G. Castellari's macaroni combat film, *The Inglorious Bastards* (1978).

Tarantino wrote the script in 1998 but struggled with the ending and chose to hold off filming and instead direct the two-part film *Kill Bill*. After directing *Death Proof* in 2007 (as part of the double feature *Grindhouse*), Tarantino returned to work on *Inglourious Basterds*. A co-production of the United States and Germany, the film began principal photography in October 2008 and was filmed in Germany and France with a $70 million production budget. *Inglourious Basterds* premiered on May 20, 2009, at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. It was widely released in theaters in the United States and Europe in August 2009 by The Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures.

The film was commercially successful, grossing over $321 million in theaters worldwide, making it Tarantino's highest-grossing film at that point, and second-highest to date, after *Django Unchained* (2012). It received multiple awards and nominations, among them eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. For his role as Hans Landa, Christoph Waltz won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor Award, as well as the BAFTA Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Golden Globe Award, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

## Plot

In 1941, SS colonel Hans Landa, the "Jew Hunter," interrogates French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite as to the whereabouts of the last unaccounted-for Jewish family in the area. LaPadite reveals that the Dreyfus family is hidden under the floor in exchange for the Germans to leave his family alone for the rest of the war. Landa orders SS soldiers to shoot through the floorboards. All are killed except Shosanna, a young woman who flees through a field. Landa watches her go, deciding not to shoot.

In the spring of 1944, 1st Special Service Force Lieutenant Aldo Raine recruits Jewish-American soldiers to the Basterds, who spread fear among the German soldiers by brutally killing and scalping them. The Basterds also recruit Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz, a German soldier who murdered thirteen Gestapo officers. Adolf Hitler interviews a Nazi soldier, Private Butz, whose squad was ambushed and his sergeant beaten to death with a baseball bat by Staff Sergeant Donny Donowitz, the "Bear Jew". Raine carved a swastika into Butz's forehead with a knife so he can never hide his Nazi identity.

In June 1944, Shosanna Dreyfus runs a cinema in Paris under an alias. She meets Fredrick Zoller, a German sniper who killed 250 soldiers in a single battle; Zoller is to star in a Nazi propaganda film, *Stolz der Nation* (*Nation's Pride*). Infatuated with her, Zoller convinces Joseph Goebbels to hold the premiere at her cinema. Shosanna plots with her projectionist and lover, Marcel, to burn down the cinema and kill Nazi leaders at the premiere. Meanwhile, the British recruit Lieutenant Archie Hicox, a film critic specializing in German cinema, is planning a similar operation: Operation Kino (cinema in German). Hicox will rendezvous with a double agent, German film star Bridget von Hammersmark, and the Basterds will plant explosives at the premiere.

Hicox, along with Hugo Stiglitz and Wilhelm Wicki from the Basterds, meets von Hammersmark at a tavern, where German Staff Sergeant Wilhelm is celebrating his son's birth. Major Dieter Hellstrom, a Gestapo officer, finds Hicox's German accent odd and becomes suspicious. Hicox convinces Hellstrom that he is from the German mountains, but gives himself away by ordering glasses with an English hand gesture. After a Mexican standoff, the Basterds open fire and everyone is killed except Wilhelm and a wounded von Hammersmark. Raine arrives and negotiates with Wilhelm for von Hammersmark's release, whereupon the actress kills Wilhelm when he lowers his guard. Landa investigates and finds evidence that von Hammersmark was there, a lost shoe.

Raine learns from von Hammersmark, after forcefully interrogating her, that Hitler will attend the premiere and decides to continue the mission. Two of the Basterds, Donowitz and Ulmer, join him in posing as Italians, hoping to fool Germans unfamiliar with the language. Landa, who speaks fluent Italian, converses briefly with the Basterds before sending Donowitz and Ulmer to their seats. He takes von Hammersmark to a private room, replaces her shoe with the one from the tavern, then strangles her to death. Raine and another of his men, Utivich, are taken prisoner, but Landa has Raine contact his superior with the OSS and cuts a deal. He will allow the mission to proceed in exchange for immunity and rewards.

During the screening, Zoller slips away to the projection room to see Shosanna, who rejects him. After he gets angry and slams the door open, she shoots him, but he fatally shoots her as well before dying. As Zoller's film reaches the climax, spliced-in footage of Shosanna tells the audience that they are about to be killed by a Jew. Marcel, having locked the cinema, ignites a pile of flammable nitrate film behind the screen as Shosanna's image laughs. Ulmer and Donowitz break into the box containing Hitler and the other top Nazis, killing them, then fire their submachine guns into the crowd until the bombs go off, killing everyone present including Ulmer and Donowitz.

Landa and his radio operator drive Raine and Utivich into Allied territory, where they surrender. Raine shoots the radio operator, carves a swastika into the forehead of a screaming Landa, and tells Utivich with a grin, "This just might be my masterpiece."

## Cast

* Brad Pitt as Lieutenant Aldo "The Apache" Raine
* Christoph Waltz as SS Colonel Hans Landa
* Diane Kruger as Bridget von Hammersmark
* Michael Fassbender as Lieutenant Archie Hicox
* Daniel Brühl as Private First Class Fredrick Zoller
* Eli Roth as Sergeant Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz
* Til Schweiger as Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz
* Julie Dreyfus as Francesca Mondino
* August Diehl as Major Dieter Hellstrom
* Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus
* Sylvester Groth as Joseph Goebbels
* Jacky Ido as Marcel
* Denis Ménochet as Perrier LaPadite
* Mike Myers as General Ed Fenech
* Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill
* Martin Wuttke as Adolf Hitler
* Gedeon Burkhard as Staff Seargent Wilhelm Wicki
* B. J. Novak as Private First Class Smithson "The Little Man" Utivich
* Omar Doom as Private First Class Omar Ulmer
* Léa Seydoux as Charlotte LaPadite
* Richard Sammel as Sergeant Werner Rachtman
* Alexander Fehling as Staff Sergeant Wilhelm
* Christian Berkel as Proprietor Eric
* Sönke Möhring as Private Butz
* Samm Levine as Private First Class Hirschberg
* Paul Rust as Private First Class Andy Kagan
* Michael Bacall as Private First Class Michael Zimmerman
* Rainer Bock as General Schonherr
* Bo Svenson as an American Colonel in *Nation's Pride*
* Enzo G. Castellari as Nazi General at film premiere
* Samuel L. Jackson (*uncredited*) as the narrator
* Harvey Keitel (*uncredited*) as the voice of the OSS Commander
* Bela B. (*uncredited*) as an usher