Quentin Tarantino names one of his “favourite movies to show modern audiences”
There may perhaps be no director who has had a bigger influence on the tastes of modern movie lovers than Quentin Tarantino, the great revolutionary of 1990s independent cinema. With his radical approach to movie violence and pulpy screenplays, Tarantino has instilled a love of cinema history in just about every teenager across the globe thanks to such memorable classics as Reservoir Dogs, Django Unchained and Kill Bill.
Indeed, even though he’s only made ten (technically nine) movies since 1992, he remains one of the most pertinent filmmakers on the scene, with almost each and every new independent film coming out owning some sort of debt to the idiosyncratic creative. Neither is Tarantino down and out, either, with the director still deciding what his tenth and supposedly final movie should be about after ditching The Movie Critic.
Instead of directing, one of Tarantino’s favourite hobbies is interviews and podcasts, where he does what he does best: waffles about the history of cinema. But, don’t be mistaken, Tarantino isn’t a waffler like your uncle is at Christmas when someone brings up ‘the modern youth’, the filmmaker is far more informed about his chosen subject and has the ability to school even the most egotistical movie academic.
One such interview took place in 2008 when Tarantino sat down with Elvis Mitchell on Under the Influence to discuss his impact on contemporary cinema. Discussing a whole range of topics, from his fabulous career to date to the forthcoming release of his exploitation war drama Inglourious Basterds starring Brad Pitt, at some point, the conversation moved on to some of the director’s biggest inspirations.
While we’re fond of his appreciation for the likes of Sergio Leone and Takashi Miike, Tarantino treated fans by talking about a filmmaker he has never given much airtime. “If you don’t like full-blown melodrama, then you have no business watching a Douglas Sirk movie,” he told Mitchell, referencing the great German film director and lover of marvellous technicolour romance who made such celebrated classics as 1955’s All That Heaven Allows and 1959’s Imitation of Life.
“In a weird way, the more preposterous the movie, the better he handles it,” Tarantino added regarding the filmmaker, “He really is one of the true forerunners of, say, Martin Scorsese…What I love about his tackling of themes is just the complete embracing of the soap opera melodramatic material. One of my favourite movies to actually show modern audiences, and when it comes to the old classic films, is Magnificent Obsession”.
Released in 1954, Sirk’s film stars Rock Hudson, Jane Wyman and Barbara Rush, and tells the story of a man who mistakenly kills a beloved doctor and then proceeds to fall in love with his widow. Beloved at the time of its release, Wyman received an Oscar nomination for her performance while earning just over five million at the box office.
“The thing that’s so much fun, and I’ve watched it with women and men, is they really get into that story,” Tarantino explained, “Because they don’t see melodramas, they see TV movies, they see Lifetime movies, they think that’s melodrama. They don’t know the true fun of ever-escalating emotions building up to a volcanic pitch, and they’re actually hanging on every wild, crazy, improbable twist and turn in the storyline, but Sirk’s believing it, and he’s selling it to you”.
Although you may think the melodramatic romance of a Douglas Sirk flick is the exact opposite of a Tarantino movie, the frenetic energy that the German filmmaker injects into his flicks can certainly be seen reflected in such high-energy love stories as Kill Bill or even Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Don’t sleep on this icon of European cinema, or you’ll have Tarantino to answer to.