Inglorious Basterds is a war film that takes place during World War II in Nazi-Occupied France. The film is broken up into five main parts: Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France, Inglorious Basterds, German Night in Paris, Operation Kino, and Revenge of the Giant Face. The thing that I would like to point out, especially in Revenge of the Giant Face, is that it is excessively gory and violent unlike any other movie that was studied.
Building up to the fifth and final part of the movie, Shosanna Dreyfus (currently under the name of Emmanuelle Mimieux) has been forced under the influence of Frederick Zoller to premiere Nation’s Pride at the movie theater that she works at. After the interrogation, Shosanna talks with Marcel and plots to set the theater on fire on the night of the premiere when the Nazis arrive.
Revenge of the Giant Face takes place on the night of the premiere of Nation’s Pride. During the final act of this movie, there is a lot of events that go on that ultimately builds up the burning of the movie theater. On the night of the premiere, the Basterds disguise themselves as Italian guests of famous actress, Bridget Von Hammersmark. It doesn’t take long for Hans Landa to figure out that something is off with the Italian guests and Von Hammersmark. He then proceeds to take Von Hammersmark into a private room to find out that the shoe she left at the tavern fits her and then strangles her to death. Shortly afterwards, he takes in two of the basterds as prisoners and forces them to make a deal with him.
Back at the movie theater, Zoller comes into the projection room to see Shosanna. After rejecting him once again, he starts to get aggressive with her, leading up to her shooting Zoller and Zoller shooting her just before he dies. As the movie reaches the climax, it stops as Shosanna tells them that they are going to be killed by a Jew and that the whole thing was a setup. Marcel then lights the nitrate film on fire as the movie theater quickly rises up in flames as the Nazis are closed in trying to escape.
The climax of this movie was on of the most over-the-top and violent climaxes that I have ever seen for this class. It definitely stands out from the rest of the movies that have been studied. I would say that this movie definitely over-dramatizes the events that occurred in this movie during World War II because of how over-the-top the fight scenes were. After watching this movie, I felt like I had to watch something else in order to get my mind off of it because there was so much that went on throughout. Overall, I wasn’t that big of a fan of the movie because of all the goriness and over-the-top violence throughout it.
Lauren's Movie Blog 