Tarantino on use of nitrate film in 'Inglourious Basterds'

[David Pierce]

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49565

[from a longer interview:]

Ryan Gilbey: The climax centres on what will be, for cinephiles, something of a taboo. You set fire to a cinema. You blow the place up. You must know this is sacrilege.

Quentin Tarantino: [laughing] Oh yeah! It's a beautiful theatre. And using all that gorgeous old 35mm nitrate film, which was highly flammable, as your explosives. It was like, “What films are they going to destroy? Could that be… no! Is it Grand Illusion? The only print?” [laughs]

To me, there are so many interesting connotations in just the ending alone. On the one hand, it's a really juicy metaphor, the idea of cinema bringing down the Third Reich. On the other hand, it's not a metaphor at all, it is actually what's happening: 35mm film is bringing down the Third Reich! I can honestly say that when I conceived of that ending, it was one of the most exciting moments of inspiration I've ever had as a writer. I was like [voice drops to a breathless, excitable whisper]: “Use the nitrate prints to blow up the theatre!” Because it could do that. And when I came up with that idea, it was one of the eureka moments of my artistic life. It really was. “Oh my God, how come nobody ever thought of that before?”

Also, it's practical. It could work. The number-one job of cinema owners back then was not showing the movie - their number one job was to keep the fucking theatre from burning down. It's almost shocking to think we have film as an artform when you remember all the theatre fires that happened, particularly during the silent era: 200, 300 people just dead - boom! - in six fucking minutes. Because it was just so fucking flammable. It was dangerous. A 35mm nitrate print can explode just 'cause it feels like it.

So there's that, but there's also more there in that ending. For instance: let's contemplate that pile of film stock for a second now. What if that pile of film - and I don't talk about it in the movie, but let's think about it now - what if it is Shosanna's collection of 35mm films that've been banned by the Nazis? Let's say that's Grand Illusion. Let's say that's Mayerling. Duck Soup. The Kid. Let's say it's all those. If that's the case, then it's almost as if Papa Jean Renoir himself is helping to bring down the Nazis! OK. But now, let's look at the other possibility. Let's say those are all Goebbels' films. You're looking at 300 prints of Nazi propaganda, so now it's Goebbels' own creations that are bringing down the Third Reich.

RG: It's a win-win situation.

QT: Exactly! The point being that there's a lot of food for thought there, the more you dig into these metaphors of cinema, the use of the cinema itself, the film stock and so on.

[Brooksie]

One of the most famous shots in Australian silent film is the spectacular burning of a ship at the end of Norman Dawn's `For the Term of His Natural Life' (1927).

To make the fire particularly intense, Dawn apparently loaded it up with tons and tons of old nitrate film. Yes, you actually get to watch an enormous proportion of Australian silent film heritage burn up before your very eyes.

[moviepas]

For the Term of His Natural Life(Norman Dawn). The producers thought they had actually employed Allan Dwan which I find remarkable if they made that kind of error. It has always been said that the nitrate used was old newsreels which are of infinite value today but who knows what really was used. What did they use when they burnt Atanta in GWTW???

[Brooksie]

For the Term of His Natural Life(Norman Dawn). The producers thought they had actually employed Allan Dwan which I find remarkable if they made that kind of error.

I've heard that too, and on good authority.

The making of that film would make a good film in itself. Some day, some nut (possibly even myself) might write it.

[Einar the Lonely]

It would have been a nice inside joke, if Tarantino had shown a few labels on the film cans, and all of them would have been prints of now lost movies like "London after Midnight", "The Patriot", etc. All that stuff Henri Langlois started collecting around 1940 when nobody else cared about it...