Hitchcock and the Flintstones: what inspired Quentin Tarantino to create Pulp Fiction

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

On May 12, 1994, Quentin Tarantino presented his iconic work at the Cannes Film Festival. We offer an analysis of the director's interesting finds.

Quentin Tarantino is one of the brightest directors of our time and a recognized representative of postmodernism in modern cinema. Add to this the director's irrepressible passion for cinema of all kinds (from penny Japanese horror films to Hollywood peplums), and you get a huge number of references and homages to Tarantino's favorite films in his own works.

Quentin never hid this, sometimes even honestly telling where this or that find came from in his next film. And today we will analyze one of the most famous works of Tarantino, with which he won in Cannes - "Pulp Fiction".

Opening credits

Let's start from the very beginning, that is, with the credits. The title of the film (more precisely, its typeface) is copied from the little-known film "Women-Police" in 1974.

Titles "Pulp Fiction"

Policewomen credits

But the font of the rest of the credits of "Pulp Fiction" repeats the typography from the 1972 movie "Cabaret" with Liza Minnelli.

Titles "Pulp Fiction"

Titles "Cabaret"

Suitcase

The iconic shot with golden light from Tarantino's suitcase was spotted in the detective story of the 50s "Kiss Me Dead".

But if in the black-and-white film by Robert Aldrich the radiance had a practical meaning (there was a radioactive isotope inside the suitcase), then in Tarantino's tape light has a symbolic meaning - this is the pure personification of McGuffin McGuffin - Wikipedia.

Shot from "Pulp Fiction"

Shot from "Kiss Me Death"

Biblical quote

The passage from the Bible that Jules (the hero of Samuel L. Jackson) reads before the next murder is not taken from the Bible, as it might seem. In the book of the prophet Ezekiel itself, there is indeed a 25th chapter and a 17th verse, but it is much shorter. Only the end of Jules's monologue coincides with it:

And I will perform great vengeance on them with fierce punishments;

And they will know that I am the Lord when I take My vengeance on them.

And before that, the original verse mentions the Philistines (that is, no "ways of the righteous" and "selfish tyrants"). Quentin actually took the text from the 1976 Japanese martial arts film Bodyguard. There, a pseudo-biblical quote is placed in the opening credits, symbolizing the protagonist's rage and his desire for justice.

Sonny Chiba starred in the Japanese film. The actor liked Tarantino so much that he later even invited him in his film "Kill Bill" for the role of Hattori Hanzo, a sword maker.

Drawing a square in the air

When Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace arrive at the restaurant, Mia tells her companion: “Don't be like that…” and draws a rectangle with her fingers.

By this she hints at the stable expression “Don’t be a square”, which means “Don't be a bore” (if literally - “Don't be a square”).

And the technique itself with the visualization of the dotted rectangle Tarantino borrowed from … "The Flintstones"! In one of the episodes of the cartoon, Betty Rubble described Fred Flintstone with the same gesture.

The Flintstones

Images from "Pulp Fiction"

I will not analyze the scene in the restaurant separately. There, every frame is filled with the spirit of films and music of the 50s and 60s, from Buddy Holly to Marilyn Monroe, but the references are plain text.

Dance

Later, one of the film's most famous scenes takes place at the restaurant - a twist of Mia and Vincent at a local dance competition. There are two main allusions in this scene. In terms of the shot and some of the movements, this is "Eight and a Half" by Federico Fellini.

Scene from "Pulp Fiction"

Scene from "8 and a Half"

And Tarantino himself said that the fragment was inspired by a dance scene from The Gang of Outsiders by Jean-Luc Godard.

The Gang of Outsiders is one of Tarantino's favorite films. He even named his studio after the film's original French title, A Band Apart.

Lips and microphone

Close-up shot of female lips at the microphone is copied from the 1979 cult film Warriors.

Shot from "Pulp Fiction"

Shot from "Warriors"

Syringe with adrenaline

The plot, when a girl dying of a heroin overdose is saved by an adrenaline shot in the heart, was taken from the documentary "American Boy". The documentary was directed by Martin Scorsese.

Shots from Uzi

In the episode when Butch shoots Vincent Vega with a machine gun, the weapon model, the shooter's pose, and the color tone of the frame (brown and black) repeat a fragment of the 1974 McQ film with John Wayne.

Scene on the road

The episode when Butch leaves his apartment after the murder of Vega and sees Marcellus Wallace crossing the street, also appeared for a reason. It is copied from the famous film "Psycho" by Alfred Hitchcock.

By the way, you can see that Marcellus is carrying two glasses of coffee - he goes just in time to Butch's apartment, where they were sitting in ambush with Vega. Butch arrived there a few minutes earlier and caught Vincent by surprise, because the bandit thought that his partner had returned.

Murder in the bathroom

The shot with the murdered Vincent Vega (and the fact that Vega falls into the bathtub after the shots, tearing off the curtain behind him) repeats the shot from the 1975 film "Three Days of the Condor".

Shot from "Pulp Fiction"

Still from the film "Three Days of the Condor"

Motorbike

Butch's motorcycle, which he borrowed from Zed, is a clear allusion to a motorcycle model from the 1969 film Easy Rider.

Shot from "Pulp Fiction"

Still from Easy Rider

For "Easy Rider" motorcycles were made to order in single copies (now they are in the museum), so there was no way to get one for filming. But Tarantino easily solved the problem by using the motorcycle that Rider machines were based on, the Harley Davidson Super Glide.

Incidentally, this is not the only nod to Easy Rider: in the closet, Mia Wallace is quoting Steppenwolf's song Pusher, which was the film's theme song.

Cleaner

In the film, the character Winston Wolfe, played by Harvey Keitel, appears - a man who solves problems and gets rid of the unwanted consequences of murder.

Exactly the same role he played in the 1993 film Killer, playing Victor the Cleaner. This is a remake of the French film "Her Name was Nikita", where the role of Victor was played by Jean Reno.

Purse

The wallet of Jules, the hero of Samuel L. Jackson, has a very characteristic bright inscription. Considering Jules' skin color, this inscription refers us to the title theme of the cult film "Shaft" about the African American cop John Schaft.

The phrase "Bad motherfucker" is mentioned in the song, and after the release of the film, it stuck for a long time as a designation for a tough and brutal black man.

This title theme, by the way, was written by Isaac Hayes (he even received an Oscar for it), who is familiar to most of us from the voice acting of the Chief from South Park.

And in the 2000 remake of The Shaft, Samuel L. Jackson played the main character. In June this year, by the way, it is expected to continue.

Despite the fact that all Tarantino's films are woven from pieces of other iconic works, they are not only copies, but themselves become cultic already as completely independent works. This is the nature of postmodernism - to take already created things and rethink them according to the author's vision.

Let us wish Mr. Tarantino success in his future films, especially since his next work is waiting for us in the summer - “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”.