Quentin Tarantino: a master class in cinema without mincing words

and

Carl Reiner's

in a double session at the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles .

At seven years old.

He did not fully understand both films.

What's more, he fell asleep from the middle to the end of Avildsen's drama, enjoyed the second movie and his mother back home (“Quentin, I'm more concerned that you watch the news. A movie is not going to hurt you” , he once told her) and his stepfather told him in the car what he had been missing.

(Reservoir Books) starts

, the book to which he dedicated his energy during confinement, the winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes and two Oscars for the scripts for

and

that is, two statuettes for their scripts, a curious success from the Academy for a guy who started writing before filming than shooting it.

Those are the movies, the ones he saw with his mother, with his mother's partners, with his roommates from the flat they lived in or when he sneaked into theaters, skipping the age limits thanks to his height, that make up the engine of a book that is better understood in its original title,

More information

Quentin Tarantino: "Only a 'nerd' would refer to himself as a movie buff"

Because Tarantino not only talks about that cinema, New Hollywood titles, comedies,

series B and yes, some Oscar winner, but he relates them.

Thanks to his infinite knowledge (later achieved by his passion and his work in a video store, although this book speaks of an earlier time), his intuition and his fame, his access to the creators.

And he reflects courage when he sets a chair: the filmmaker does not take prisoners, does not appease before living or dead authors, stars or unknown.

An example of him is his autopsy of Steve McQueen's career, which he reaches for

"One of the reasons for his popularity, for his image of the king of

and his unquestionable charisma, was that he, among the big three (Newman, McQueen and Beatty), made better films [...].

McQueen did not like to read.

He possibly did not read a book in his life of his own free will [...].

He wasn't illiterate, he read car magazines, and it's not that he wasn't smart.

Who read the material, then?

Neile McQueen [his first wife of his].

Of his importance in Steve's success as a movie star, all that is said is little.

Because Tarantino spoke with Neile, and he has spoken with Walter Hill, who assured him.

“Steve, while he was a good actor, he didn't just see himself as an actor [unlike Paul Newman].

He looked like a movie star, and that was one of his most captivating characteristics.”

Tarantino writes as he speaks, with bursts from a machine gun —the exceptional work of the translator, Carlos Milla Soler, who has protected that rhythm— as can be heard on his

made with his writing partner Roger Avary.

He enjoys the memories of him: “My mother took me to see her on one of her dates

and

with 11 years [...].

Some parents didn't even want me to play with their children at school because of the movies I watched and talked about [...].

For the record, when I say I saw them when I was 11—then and now—I'm bragging, of course I'm fucking bragging!”

And he knows how to position himself as an artist.

For example, in comparisons.

Like when he explains that Sam Peckinpah and Don Siegel were masters of genre cinema, but that they didn't make them like Jean-Pierre Melville, himself, Walter Hill, John Woo... "As scholars of genre cinema, we do it because we loves.

The two of them made genre films because they were good at it and because that's what the studios hired them for."

He also enjoyed a unique condition as a spectator: he saw that 70s cinema in neighborhood theaters in Los Angeles,

Film director Quentin Tarantino directs Bruce Willis in 'Pulp Fiction'.Cordon Press

That allows you to add a social tone to your comments, critical when you're facing, say,

and

He understands what they meant at the time and now.

Is

a fascist movie?

In its premiere, this is how the critics described it (to which it dedicates, in addition, a dozen delicious pages).

“Siegel described his character as a 'racist son of a bitch.'

However, that is not the movie character he did.

In the film Harry may be politically incorrect, but he is not a 'son of a pure racist'.

The movie would be better—or at least more serious—if it really were.

But then it would be

Tarantino goes further, talking about how Siegel used it to reflect his battle against the studios, and that Harry is traumatized by the times he has lived in: hence his box office engagement with many white Americans: "What Nixon called the

was scared.

Scared of an America he didn't recognize and a society he didn't understand.

Youth culture was taking over from popular culture.

If one was under 35, that was fine.

But if you were older, maybe not."

Analyzing even sequences, Tarantino concludes: "It's an aggressively reactionary film."

Nor is he scared by

Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader, whom he defines as a magnificent screenwriter, but a bad genre writer.

He faces

from the parallelism that his creators executed with

from what he told about society and the traps he hid (there were no white pimps like the one played by Harvey Keitel, but Columbia was scared by the initial idea that he was black);

he compares the version of this story that Brian de Palma would have directed, who had the script in his hands, and illuminates the limits that Scorsese assumed for a greater good, his work.

Quentin Tarantino, along with his actors from 'Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood' at his presentation in Cannes in 2019.ERIC GAILLARD (REUTERS)

Those limits are the filmic and social borders that Tarantino has always wanted to break down.

He speaks with disgust of the moralistic cinema of the studios in the eighties, which helps him, in contrast, to praise the courage of Ken Russell ("No director has had his balls") or that of Pedro Almodóvar

(He is fascinated by the opening sequence of

): “While I watched my heroes, the mavericks of the 1970s, capitulate to keep their jobs, Pedro's temerity ridiculed his calculated concessions.”

There is, by the way, a lot of Spanish cinema in the volume.

Tarantino knows about movies.

And he understands the cumbersome struggle of authors to create.

For that, he praises screenwriter Sylvester Stallone.

And he acknowledges his debts, which lead to a very personal final coda to the man who inspired him to write

It seems difficult that there is a better film book in 2023 than this rapturous

Unless Quentin publishes a second part.

'Film Meditations'.

Quentin Tarantino.

Translation by Carlos Milla.

Reservoir Books, 2023. 418 pages.

21.90 euro.

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