Inglourious Basterds Review

What's a Spaghetti Western?

Spaghetti Western, also known as Italian Western, is a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success, “A Fistful of Dollars”. The term was used by critics in USA and other countries because most of these Westerns were produced and directed by Italians. According to actor Aldo Sambrell, the phrase 'Spaghetti Western' was coined by Italian journalist Alfonso Sancha. In the beginning the term was used in a derogatory sense, but over time it has become accepted as descriptive. The typical Spaghetti Western team was made up of an Italian director, Italo-Spanish technical staff, and a cast of Italian, Spanish, German and American actors, sometimes a fading Hollywood star and sometimes a rising one.

Why would Tarantino use this genre for a World War II movie?

It allows for there to be a "hero" figure that really was a "bad guy" trying to show that he is a good person. The actual hero is then taking the WW2 element and using it to defeat "the bad guy" and then eventually parish but succeeding in getting rid of the enemy (The germans). And using a jew getting revenge and using the WW2 element to make fun of the germans and to kill a theatre full of germans lets the director then use the spaghetti western element of the hero defeating the "bad guy".

List three ways Tarantino subverts the audience's expectations?

1. By using WW2 it made thought it would be like every other war movie making it seem glorious but actually it does the opposite making inglorious.

2. Instead of leaving out the violence he uses violence (but not too much) to show how it really was in the war and how gruesome it was and only using as necessary.

3. Using spaghetti westerns as inspiration brought in a different element and brought a plot-twist to the how the film went with a hero and villain situation with the germans being the bad guys and the basterds and Shosanna being the heros one using revenge and one just to defeat the germans.