During a podcast recorded with Roger Avary, Quentin Tarantino reveals that he was inspired by the fantastic film “The Black Fortress” by Michael Mann for his “Inglourious Basterds”.
In Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, there is a bit of… Michael Mann! This was revealed by QT last August duringan episode of The Video Archives Podcast recorded with director and screenwriter Roger Avary, with whom he had collaborated on Pulp Fiction.
In the podcast in question, Tarantino explains that Inglourious Basterds was influenced by The Black Fortress by Michael Mann, a fantastic film released in theaters in 1984. A work whose endless filming was a nightmare for the future director of Heat and Collateral with difficult weather conditions, technical problems, the death of the visual effects supervisor during production or even a conflict with the producers on the editing…
The cursed work The Black Fortress, like Inglourious Basterds, offers a reinterpretation of History. In Michael Mann’s film, Nazis are tasked with guarding an old and mysterious Romanian fortress. One day, one of them, by mistake, let Radu Molasar, an unknown force that was trapped within the walls, escape…
If Tarantino does not really like The Black Fortress, he nevertheless appreciates some elements, such as the beginning of the film, which sees the Nazis invading a village. But it is a passage in particular that has had its importance for the sequel, the one where the Doctor Theodore CuzaIan, played by Ian McKellen, tells Radu Molasar that the Nazis are exterminating the Jews. The creature then replies that it will “destroy” the Nazis.
Disappointed that this promise of Radu Molasar is not kept in The Black Fortress, Tarantino will keep the idea in the back of his mind. A quarter of a century later, he will materialize it in his own way with Inglourious Basterds, which tells the story of a lieutenant (Brad Pitt) forming a group of American Jewish soldiers to carry out punitive actions against the Nazis.
If you are fans of Michael Mann, know that his detective series Tokyo Vice, immersed in the middle of the Japanese mafia with Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, has recently been available on Canal+.
The trailer for “The Black Fortress”: