Inglourious Basterds

If Tarantino's use of music in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and the 2 Kill Bills was anything go to by, his new black war comedy Inglourious Basterds was going to a musicinthemovies event. So I made the most of it and went to Leicester Square Odeon big screen in anticipation of getting my socks blown off.

In a TV interview Tarantino recently said something like (and I paraphrase here slightly), 'I was going to get a composer in for this movie but I decided not to because who wants someone putting their s**t all over your movie'.

That's one way of expressing his particular type of creative control, which is to use classic music to enhance the meaning of his movies and heighten the viewer / listener experience. Who could forget the ear-slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs without humming Dylan rip-off 'Stuck In The Middle With You'. Who rushed out and bought the Delphonics back catalogue after Jackie Brown? If you understand the music you get more out of the film.

I knew this new movie had 'old' or 'pre-existing' music rather than specially composed (which had been previously hinted at), alongside a couple of smash hits. Well, one smash hit, actually, Bowie's 'Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)'. So dig this. The movie is full of old (or pre-existing) movie soundtracks by (especially) Morricone. This is a neat swerveball by T. We get a new twist on movie scoring, he gets control over what music he uses (no pesky composers to contend with, spreading their s**t on his movie), and his music budget probably comes in under, enabling him to wack on the stupendous 'Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)' (and the word 'fire' is key here, go see the movie) and pay off Senor Bowie as handsomely as he deserves.

Unfortunately this strategy is limited in successfully communicating extra meaning to viewers unless they know the original sources of the pre-existing movie scores. A meaning that requires film-buff knowledge rather than the pop-culture knowledge required to appreciate the value of, say, Chuck Berry's 'You Never Can Tell' in the junked-up twist scene in Pulp Fiction.

In other words, if your audience is full of film-buffs they'll get the gig. Quentin's probably walking on the right street for this type of approach and knows that's who's taking notes during his films nowadays while the mainstream have probably bought 'Beatles Rock Band' with their pocket money and are not too bothered about a new Tarantino movie. In this respect, hats off to a master of the unexpected. Long may he do crazy stuff.