Modern cinema according to Quentin Tarantino

Firstly, ‘Once upon a time Hollywood‘Released in mid-2021, it was not a novelization of Tarantino’s last film to date, but rather a kind of supplement, in which aspects outlined in the film were developed and appearances were screened. .on cassette.

The latter is compatible with this. If ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ is a fiction about American cinema in the late ’60s, ‘Cine Meditations’ (Reservoir Books) is a very personal reflection on the same subject. cinema. Tarantino, the New Hollywood of the 60s-70s (‘Bullitt, ‘Dirty Harry’, “Escape”, “Brothers”, “Salvation”, “Taxi Driver”, “Harcore, a secret world”) and more general texts about this moment of pivotal change that had a marked effect for him beyond his fondness for ‘cheap’, martial arts, European westerns, ‘blaxploitation’ or double billing sessions.

It begins with a request for the Tiffany Theatre, a movie theater in the area, not on Hollywood Boulevard. Sunset Strip with hippie bars and rock venues. “Tiffany didn’t show movies like ‘Oliver’, ‘Airport’, ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ or even ‘Thunderball’. Tiffany hosted ‘Woodstock’, ‘The Rolling Stones (Gimme Shelter)’, ‘Yellow Submarine’, ‘Alice’s Restaurant’, ‘Trash’, ‘Meat for Frankenstein’, both by Andy Warhol.” writes Tarantino in the foreword. And he adds that this is the room that has become legendary. Midnight sessions of “The Rocky horror picture show”.

Although it was written both actively and passively that Tarantino’s film education was edited in Video Archives, the video store where he worked for a long time, everything started in that cinema. Don’t forget his first double bill at the age of seven. Appears to evoke adult movies “a blast” (‘MASH’, Sergio Leone’s dollar trilogy, ‘The Godfather’, ‘Dirty Harry’, ‘Bullitt’‘Against the drug empire’) and others that are “a rock for an eight or nine year old”: “Sex, ‘Isadora’, ‘Sunday, damn Sunday’ or ‘Klute’.

He passionately quotes Robert Altman from ‘MASH’, the wild comedy about the Korean War that he watched no more than three times as a child, but then turns to the director and gives him no respite: “’Flying is for birds’ is the cinematographic equivalent of a bird droppings on the head, and ‘Quintet ‘ lousy, boring and ridiculous”. “Remember the excellent Spanish horror movie ‘La residencecia’. What a great night!” –Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s debut feature – and “I was very impressed with the initiation ceremony of ‘A Man Called Horse’, where the eagle’s claws pierced the hero’s chest”.

There are no half measures, no vague opinions. Tarantino writes as he returns. While he doesn’t aspire to be an expert critic, his little essays are illuminating. He is a historian of the not-so-distant times when it comes to cinema. His own historian. The ‘Dirty Harry’ analysis is flawlessas well as a reminder that this is the first ‘thriller’ to focus on the search for a serial killer before ‘The Hunt’, ‘Silence of the Lambs’ or ‘Seven.

The episode dedicated to New Hollywood is also fierce and straightforward. There, Sam Peckinpah claims to be John. Cassavetes, Bob Rafelson, Hal Ashby and William Friedkin, whose films appeared immediately after, without Coppola, Lucas, Scorsese, Spielberg and De Palma. He puts himself in the shoes of any North American city audience that doesn’t distinguish between New and Old Hollywood. “They liked that ‘Grey Complain’ was tougher than your usual John Wayne western, the street rhythm of ‘Against the Drug Empire’ and Dirty Harry hitting the Black Panthers while they were eating hot dogs. But that’s the guttural in ‘The Wild Bunch’ It doesn’t mean they’re ready for the cutscene or the “singing in the rain” scene in “A Clockwork Orange.”

Surprisingly, ‘Movie Meditations’ is not just a series of texts about movies Tarantino loved or hated. It is also a historical chronicle and a reflection of the sociological contexts in which these films were produced.

Coinciding with the publication of the book Movistar Plus+ has unveiled ‘Universo Tarantino en M+’, a temporary channel where you can see films that have influenced the director (until February 12).