Authorship in Cinema CW2 PDF

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Discuss whether an analysis of Pulp Fiction (1994) and Kill Bill Vol.1 (2003) proves Quentin Tarantino’s status as a postmodern auteur. Word Count: 1,948

The meaning of an ‘’auteur’’ is when a filmmaker makes films that portrays their unique style and creative vision. They tend to have some sort of ‘’signature’’ in their work, themes that are consistently used in their films that the audience will recognize. Postmodernism is a late 20th century movement and concept in the arts which departs from modernism. This essay will investigate whether if Tarantino can be classed as a postmodern auteur. This will done by forming an analysis of his two films Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, US, 1994) and Kill Bill Vol.1 (Quentin Tarantino, US 2003). The analysis of the two films will delve into the styles and themes Tarantino uses in these films which makes it postmodern. The use of genre in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill Vol.1 is an example of Tarantino’s postmodernism because the two films are ‘’blurring the genre boundaries’’ (Page, 2005. Pg.19). In Pulp Fiction, there are elements of crime and gangster because of the excessive use of graphic violence and the characters such as the hitmen, the mob boss and the mob boss’ wife. There are also hints of black comedy as few dramatic scenes can be humorous. This is shown in the scene when hitman Vincent Vega (John Travolta) accidentally kills a man named Marvin in a car but acts nonchalant as soon as he realises what he has done. The mixture of genres also apply to Kill Bill Vol.1 as Tarantino states that the film ‘’crosses the genres of Spaghetti Westerns, Kung Fu and Samurai. It crosses every genre… Hamlet was a revenge story’’. (Peary, 2014. Pg. 128.) This is a departure from the crime/gangster genres of Tarantino’s previous works such as Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, US, 1992) and his screenplay of From Dusk Till Dawn (Robert Rodriguez, US, 1996). Even though the editing in Pulp Fiction is traditional in terms of continuity, the movie overall is told in a Non-Linear Narrative. The movie, split into seven parts is jumbled up in non-chronological order to challenge viewers. An example from the film which may confuse the viewers with its non-linear narrative is shown in part five of the film, titled ‘’The Gold Watch’’ where boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) goes to his apartment and shoots Vincent. Suddenly the viewers sees Vincent well and alive later on at the end of the film, where he is seen eating in a diner with Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) The non-linear narrative also applies in Kill Bill Vol.1 where the movie is split in to five parts in no order and the story continues in its sequel Kill Bill Vol.2 (Quentin Tarantino, US, 2004). Even though the first part of the film, titled ‘’2’’ is set after former assassin Beatrix Kiddo’s (Uma Thurman) battle with O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) and the Crazy 88, Tarantino leaves the big battle as the last part to build a climactic moment in the film. Kill Bill Vol.1 also cuts to flashbacks throughout the film to show Beatrix’s wedding day where she gets shot by Bill (David Carradine). The flashbacks indicate the backstory which leads to the main storyline of Beatrix’s revenge. There are many camera techniques that serves as Quentin Tarantino’s ‘’trademarks’’: The ‘’Trunk shot’’ is widely used in many of his films including Pulp Fiction (When Vincent and Jules are getting their shotguns from the trunk) and Kill Bill Vol 1. (Beatrix talking to Sofie Fatale who is inside the trunk). This technique is somehow a low angle shot and it is filmed from inside the trunk of the car, looking up at the actors. This shot is used to intimidate and threaten the audience by having the characters looking down on them as a dominating figure.

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Tarantino also uses long takes and tracking shots in order to follow the characters without any cuts or edits. When the camera pans to follow Jules and Vincent walking down the hallway to meet Brett in Pulp Fiction, the camera then stops moving by the door as the characters continue to walk and talk for another minute. During the ‘’House of Blue Leaves’’ showdown in Kill Bill Vol. 1, the viewers see a long tracking shot of Beatrix walking into a bathroom cubicle then quickly pans to a woman leaving the bathroom. The camera then follows who the woman is looking at to which it pans left to the owner of the restaurant. The camera begins to follow the owner as she and a man in a yellow robe walk to ORen’s private room and walks past Sofie Fatale. Now Sofie is the subject that the camera follows back to the bathroom where Beatrix is in. Another recurring element that Tarantino does as a postmodern filmmaker is the way he experiments with sound and dialogue in his films. In terms of dialogue in Pulp Fiction, Jules and Vincent often talk about topics that can be random and irrelevant. An example of this is in the scene where they are on their way to see Brett, they start talking about television pilots and foot massages. This builds the characters and makes the viewers get to know them. Tarantino uses music in many ways. Sometimes it is used as a cue for the viewer such as the alarm sound when Beatrix sees her enemies in Kill Bill Vol.1 or just for entertainment like the scene in Pulp Fiction where Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) and Vincent are dancing to Chuck Berry’s ‘’You Can Never Tell’’ in a Jack Rabbit Slims restaurant. (Page, 2005. Pg.18). When interviewed about his trademark of music in his films, Tarantino quotes: ‘’…So, what I do, as I'm writing a movie, is go through all those songs, trying to find good songs for fights, or good pieces of music to layer into the film. Looking for that music is finding the rhythm that the movie has to play in. It's me finding the beat.’’ – (http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2003/10/06/quentin_tarantino_kill_bill_volume1_interview.shtml) Postmodern films also tend to be playful by having a sense of self-reflexivity or in other words metareference. This is when characters are aware that they are in a film and make the audience aware that they are watching a film. When Mia Wallace is in a car with Vincent outside Jack Rabbit Slims, she draws a square on screen in order to jolt the audience with the fact that this is not reality. This technique somehow mirrors to how the French New Wave made the audience aware that they were watching a movie: by adding jump cuts. The postmodernist works of the French New Wave has influenced Tarantino, who named his production company ‘’A Band Apart’’ after the new wave film Bande a part (Jean-Luc Godard, Fr, 1964) (http://thefilmstage.com/features/the-classroom-frenchnew-wave-the-influencing-of-the-influencers/) Even though this does not really happen in Kill Bill Vol.1, There are meta-references in the second part of the story, Kill Bill Vol.2 where Beatrix Kiddo breaks the fourth wall and recaps to the audience the events which occurred in Vol.1. Intertextuality is a major element of postmodernism that Tarantino uses in his films. This technique references older films or other forms of art as a way to refer back to the past. (Hayward, 2012. Pg., 201). It has become somewhat of Tarantino’s signature as an auteur mainly because many of his films are filled with references from other works in the visual sense and also in dialogue. The memorable scene where Vincent takes Mia Wallace to the Jack Rabbit Slims’ restaurant in Pulp Fiction is filled with many references of the 50s era. It ‘’almost serves as a metaphor for the activity of the spectator at whom the film throws dozens and dozens of references.” (Polan, 2000. Pg. 17). The décor of the restaurant stays true to the 50s theme by having posters of films from that time period on the walls such as Attack of the 50ft woman (Nathan Juran, US, 1958) and Sorority Girl (Roger Corman, US, 1957). The restaurant also uses cars as dining tables to reference the drive thru theatre 2|Page

that was popular in the 50s and the employees are dressed up as iconic 50s stars such as Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. When it comes to the actual dance sequence of Mia and Vincent, there are references to different eras such as the twist dance which was popular in the 60s. John Travolta’s dancing could possibly give a sense of nostalgia from Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, US, 1977) where he is also seen dancing on the dance floor. Kill Bill Vol. 1 also has many references to other works, mainly western and Kung Fu films. For example, Beatrix’s yellow jumpsuit during the final showdown references Bruce Lee’s outfit in The Game of Death (Bruce Lee, HK, 1978) and the shot where Bill shoots Beatrix on her wedding day refers to The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966). The film also makes references to previous Tarantino films for example, when Beatrix talks to Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) in the kitchen after their fight, she draws a square on screen. This refers to Uma Thurman (as Mia) doing the exact same thing nearly a decade before in Pulp Fiction. Another scene in the film where Beatrix suddenly wakes up from her four year coma mirrors the same action Thurman did in Pulp Fiction where she as Mia overdoses from heroin and experiences a violent awakening by a shot of adrenaline being stabbed in her chest. Not only does Quentin Tarantino references other forms of art in his films, he also uses pastiche where he intentionally imitates the styles of an artist’s work. Tarantino admitted in an interview at Cannes in 1994 that he ‘’steals from every movie ever made…Great artists steal, they don’t do homages’’ (Dawson, 1995. Pg. 91) This is most notably shown in the hospital scene which introduces the villain Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) in Kill Bill Vol.1. The scene shows a backwards tracking shot of one eyed assassin Elle, a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, walking down the hallway in a hospital while whistling ‘’Twisted Nerve’’, a tune which was originally from the film Twisted Nerve (Ray Boulting, UK, 1968). When Elle enters one of the hospital rooms, the camera continues tracking down the hallway and stops by a hospital room to view Beatrix in her hospital bed through the window. When the camera zooms down to a close up of Beatrix’s face while in a coma, the screen then splits into two so on the other side the viewers can see close ups of Elle putting on a nurse costume and applying poison in a syringe in order to try and kill Beatrix. The split screen technique is another way other than cross cutting to show two events happening at the same time. This scene is seen as pastiche because it is exactly an imitation of a similar scene in Black Sunday (John Frankenheimer, US, 1977) where the character Dahlia (Marthe Keller) disguises as a nurse in hospital and attempts to poison David (Robert Shaw) (Peary, 2014. Pg.120) Quentin Tarantino has consistently shown throughout his entire body of work that he is not afraid to take risks and break rules to tell a story. His use of pop culture references, characters, witty dialogue and music has become trademarks that many movie fans would recognize and imitate in their own work. He recreates the past to blend with the present. This proves that not only is he an auteur but he is classed as a postmodern auteur. Even though he uses ideas from past films for his work, he makes these ideas into his own unique style to inspire a new generation of cinephiles.

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Bibliography: Books:

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Dawson, Jeffrey (1995). Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool. Minnesota. Applause Theater Book Publishers. Hayward, Susan (2012). Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts. 4th Edition. London. Routledge. Page, Edwin (2005). Quintessential Tarantino. London. Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd. Peary, Gerald (2014). Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, Revised and Updated. Mississippi. University Press of Mississippi. Polan, Dana (2000) Pulp Fiction. London. British Film Institute

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Coates, Kristen (2010) French new wave: The Influencing of the Influencers. The Film Stage. Viewed 11th January 2016. http://thefilmstage.com/features/the-classroom-french-new-wavethe-influencing-of-the-influencers/ Latham, Michaela (2003) Quentin Tarantino – Kill Bill Vol. 1 Interview. BBC. Viewed 11th January 2016. http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2003/10/06/quentin_tarantino_kill_bill_volume1_interview.shtml

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