So Tarantino’s latest attempt at cinematic cross-pollination has been out for several weeks now. As is the norm with QT, critical potshots have been flying all around Inglourious Basterds. One of the latest to take aim has been David Arnold, the British film composer, who recently claimed that Tarantino doesn’t really know how to use film music.
Arnold, in his disapproving tutting, has stepped out of the trenches and into the line of fire where the battle between the different schools of film scoring and soundtracking still rages. Tarantino’s policy, infamously, is to eschew such restrictive lacquering as traditionally emotive scoring or soundtrack music originating from the film’s ostensible epoch, and instead is keener on selecting pre-composed pieces of music from other film scores or pure pop music; often at odds with the tone or content of the scene. This is often (mis) construed by critics as Tarantino’s attempts to flaunt his cinephilia, pop music literacy and extensive record collection. The other usual lazy shorthand is that he is ‘paying hommage’ (that’s the correct spelling in French, as the multi-linguist Hans Landa might point out) to his cinematic or pop music heroes by reusing their works.
For example in Basterds (as he did in Kill Bill), after apparently trying but failing to get Ennio Morricone officially on board, he quotes Morricone scores from films such as The Mercenary, The Battle of Algiers and The Return of Ringo, among others. Again the usual school of thought is that Tarantino is taking a creative shortcut by simply re-using the music of those he admires, with little thought to the implications of those choices. Though the real meat of Arnold’s beef regarding Tarantino’s musical preferences remains unclear, it appears that Tarantino himself is now clearly very conscious of how his choices can jab musical purists in the ribs and wind up tetchy cinephiles.
Tarantino uses music in profoundly different ways to Arnold. Unusually, given his own self-professed cinephile nature, he does not revere other cinematic genres or other artists’ work to the extent that they cannot be touched. He loves them deeply, sure, but there’s always another dimension you can give them. In fact, he even tells you what he’s doing with the musical pieces and cinematic genres he cuts and splices in his deliberate misspelling in the title. He loves to bastardise. He even does it to the word ‘basterd’ as if to really carve (or score) the point in our foreheads.
Of course, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest Tarantino is also aware of the other functions of musical accompaniment – to give rhythm to cutting, character, camera movement or particular instrumentation to denote time, person or place (Morricone and Leone were masters of this). And, yes, he knows music can provide the unprofessed mood or emotion to a scene. He just also knows that there’s different ways to score a point. Or just set fire to it.
Tarantino, then, adopts other artists’ works and recontextualises them for his own ends as he does, rather brilliantly, in Inglourious Basterds with David Bowie and Georgio Moroder’s ‘Cat People (Putting Out Fire)’, a song originally used across the credits of Paul Schrader’s erotic 1982 fantasy, Cat People. The lyric ‘Putting out fire with gasoline’ doesn’t just point towards the films climactic scene, it further serves as Tarantino’s acknowledgment of how this hugely incongruent piece of music is going to provoke puritan reaction. Actually, on reflection, this piece is an excellent choice to drive this scene. Here are some of the reasons why:
What we know, or then find out about a particular artist whose work is used as accompaniment, can give insight to character, plot, theme or genre. Take Bowie again in Inglourious Basterds. David Bowie is the ultimate pop shapeshifter; long experimenting with identity, gender and difference. Man, alien or other being he is rarely definable and always transforming in name or appearance. Here the spacey electronic waves of the Cat People melodies accompany Shosanna’s transformation from cinema-owner to renegade, from repressed to murderous, from passive to active. Bowie’s persona is an ideal choice to compare, contrast and liquidise with Shosanna’s at that point. That Bowie and his music are anachronistic in relation to the WWII setting only serves emphasise the point and others he may be making around the fluidity of all things cinematic.
Audiences often forget that the lyrics of the songs accompanying the images may be chosen specifically. A good director will not just choose a song purely because it is popular or nostalgic or will get people swaying in their seats. The lyrics of a song can replace dialogue; throw light on the internal thoughts of a character or even those of the director. They can add comment to the situation on screen, signal plot developments or just make us think.
Bowie’s lyric ‘Putting out fire with gasoline’ obviously puns on what we know is going to happen to Shosanna’s cinoche, her film stock and the leaders of the Third Reich, but it could quite easily also refer to Tarantino’s attitude to his critics. The ‘I can stare for a thousand years’ line segues nicely with the previous scene’s toast to the ‘Thousand Years’ Reich’, and the ‘Red like jungle burning bright’ is a beautiful ode to Shosanna’s dress and the make-up/war paint she applies, completing the alignment. Thirdly, just because the same song or piece is used in a previous film, does not mean its use in another is not justified. It can be akin to the best and most creative sampling in pop music, dance or hip-hop. It acknowledges its heritage, takes its place within that heritage and then transforms it into something new and relevant.
Bowie’s Cat People was first lassoed around the credits of Paul Schrader’s eponymous film (itself a remake of the 1942 original by Jacques Tourneur), which played with ideas of transformation and ethics. Cat People is again a rich adjunct to Tarantino’s ideas of (il)legitimacy in Inglourious Basterds. Moreover, Paul Schrader embodies the different strata of the cinematic universe that Tarantino conflates in his fairytale. The universe that makes up Inglourious Basterds is populated by actors, filmmakers, film critics, producers and moneymen, among others.
Schrader is a critic, an academic, a writer, director and producer. He is someone who blows up the supposed cinematic gap between, what Schrader himself calls, ‘the transcendental cinema’ of Ozu and Dreyer and films about porn. Schrader is then a nice foil for Tarantino who, in Inglourious Basterds, looks to collapse traditional restrictive ideas of cinematic genre and language, high brow or low brow and, hell, even historical ‘truth’ itself.
So Tarantino’s hubris, self-promotion and garrulousness aside, it’s pretty clear that he can still nail the fusion of image with music when he wants. It’s also a good reminder that we shouldn’t be so quick to judge and simplify his musical selections. Tarantino appreciates the value of mastering the different musical languages of cinema just as he shows Hans Landa to know the value of mastering the verbal. To flammable effect.
