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Pulp Fiction (1994)

Blessed is he who, in the name of the charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers
Jules Winnfield

Narrative structure

Pulp Fiction‘s narrative is told out of chronological order, and follows three main interrelated stories: Mob contract killer Vincent Vega is the protagonist of the first story, prizefighter Butch Coolidge is the protagonist of the second, and Vincent’s partner Jules Winnfield is the protagonist of the third.

The film begins with a diner hold-up staged by a couple, then moves to the stories of Vincent, Jules, and Butch. It finally returns to where it began, in the diner. There is a total of seven narrative sequences; the three primary storylines are preceded by intertitles:

“Prologue – The Diner” (i)
Prelude to “Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife”
“Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife”
Prelude to “The Gold Watch” (a – flashback, b – present)
“The Gold Watch”
“The Bonnie Situation”
“Epilogue – The Diner” (ii)

If the seven sequences were ordered chronologically, they would run: 4a, 2, 6, 1, 7, 4b, 3, 5. Sequences 1 and 7 partially overlap and are presented from different points of view, as do sequences 2 and 6. According to Philip Parker, the structural form is “an episodic narrative with circular events adding a beginning and end and allowing references to elements of each separate episode to be made throughout the narrative”. Other analysts describe the structure as a “circular narrative”.

Summary

Hitmen Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega arrive at an apartment to retrieve a briefcase for their boss, gangster Marsellus Wallace, from an associate, Brett. After Vincent checks the contents of the briefcase, Jules shoots one of Brett’s associates, then declaims a passage from the Bible before he and Vincent kill Brett for trying to double-cross Marsellus. They take the briefcase to Marsellus, but have to wait while he bribes champion boxer Butch Coolidge to take a dive in his upcoming match.

The next day, Vincent purchases heroin from his drug dealer, Lance. He shoots up, then drives to meet Marsellus’s wife Mia, whom he had agreed to escort while Marsellus was out of town. They eat at a 1950s-themed restaurant and participate in a twist contest, then return home with the trophy. While Vincent is in the bathroom, Mia finds his heroin, mistakes it for cocaine, snorts it, and overdoses. Vincent rushes her to Lance’s house, where they revive her with an adrenaline shot to her heart.

Butch double-crosses Marsellus and wins the bout, accidentally killing his opponent. At the motel where he and his girlfriend Fabienne are lying low and preparing to flee, Butch discovers she has forgotten to pack his father’s gold watch, a beloved heirloom, and flies into a rage. Returning to his apartment to retrieve the watch, he notices a suppressed MAC-10 on the kitchen counter and hears the toilet flush. Vincent exits the bathroom and Butch shoots him dead, leaving the gun inside.

As Butch waits at a traffic light in his car, Marsellus spots him by chance crossing the road and chases him into a pawnshop. The owner, Maynard, captures them at gunpoint and ties them up in the basement. Maynard is joined by Zed, a security guard; they take Marsellus to another room to rape him, leaving “the gimp”, a silent figure in a bondage suit, to watch Butch. Butch breaks loose and knocks out the gimp. He is about to flee but decides to save Marsellus, returning with a katana from the pawnshop. He kills Maynard; Marsellus retrieves Maynard’s shotgun and shoots Zed. Marsellus informs Butch that they are even, as long as he tells no-one about the rape and departs Los Angeles forever. Butch picks up Fabienne on Zed’s chopper and they drive away.

Earlier, after Vincent and Jules have executed Brett in his apartment, another man bursts out of the bathroom and shoots at them wildly, missing every time; Jules and Vincent kill him. Jules professes their survival was a miracle, which Vincent disputes. As Jules drives, Vincent accidentally shoots Brett’s associate Marvin in the head. They hide the car at the home of Jules’ friend Jimmie, who demands they deal with the problem before his wife comes home. Marsellus sends his cleaner, Winston Wolfe, who directs Jules and Vincent to clean the car, hide the body in the trunk, dispose of their bloody clothes, and take the car to a junkyard.

At a diner, Jules tells Vincent that he plans to retire from his life of crime, convinced that their “miraculous” survival at the apartment was a sign. While Vincent is in the bathroom, a couple dubbed “Pumpkin” and “Honey Bunny” hold up the restaurant. Jules overpowers Pumpkin and holds him at gunpoint; Honey Bunny becomes hysterical and trains her gun on him. Vincent returns with his gun aimed at her. Jules recites the biblical passage, expresses ambivalence about his life of crime, and allows the robbers to take his cash and leave. Jules and Vincent leave the diner with the briefcase.

Inglourious Basterds. (2009)

You know, fighting in a basement offers a lot of difficulties. Number one being, you’re fighting in a basement.
— Lt. Aldo Raine

Plot

In 1941, SS Colonel Hans Landa interrogates French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite about the whereabouts of the last unaccounted-for Jewish family in the area, the Dreyfus family. Landa suspects that they are hiding under the floor, and in exchange for the Germans agreeing to leave his family alone for the rest of the war, LaPadite tearfully confirms it. Landa orders his SS soldiers to shoot through the floorboards, killing all but one of the Dreyfus family; Shosanna, the daughter, escapes. As she runs, Col. Landa decides not to shoot her.

Three years later, Lieutenant Aldo Raine of the First Special Service Force rounds up and recruits Jewish-American soldiers to the Basterds, a paramilitary unit formed to instill fear among the German soldiers by killing and scalping them. The Basterds include Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz and Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz, the latter a rogue German soldier who murdered thirteen Gestapo officers. In Germany, Adolf Hitler interviews a young German soldier, Private Butz, the only survivor of a Basterd attack on his squad, who reveals the details of the attack and that Raine carved the Nazi swastika into Butz’s forehead with a knife so he could never hide that he served in the German Heer.

Four years after the murder of her family, Shosanna is living in Paris and operating a cinema under the name “Emmanuelle Mimieux”. She meets Fredrick Zoller one night as she’s setting up for movies. Seemingly the next day she learns about his reputation as a war hero as well. He is a celebrated German sniper who killed 250 soldiers in a single battle, and stars in a Nazi propaganda film, Stolz der Nation (Nation’s Pride). Infatuated with Shosanna, Zoller convinces Joseph Goebbels to hold the premiere of the film at her cinema. Landa, who is the head of security for the premiere, interrogates Shosanna about how she acquired the cinema at such a young age, while giving hints that he may know who she is. Landa ultimately forgets his most important question and leaves her to proceed with the premiere. Shosanna plots with her Afro-French lover and projectionist Marcel to kill the Nazi leaders who will attend the premiere by setting the cinema ablaze. Unknown to Shosanna, Intelligence Corps Lieutenant Archie Hicox has been recruited to lead Operation Kino, a British plan to attack the premiere with the Basterds.

Hicox goes to a basement tavern in German-occupied northern France with Basterds Stiglitz and Wilhelm Wicki to meet an undercover agent, the German film star Bridget von Hammersmark, who will be attending the premiere in Paris. Hicox inadvertently draws the attention of Wehrmacht Sergeant Wilhelm and Gestapo Major Dieter Hellström with his unusual German accent and mannerisms. Their covers blown, Stiglitz and Hicox shoot Hellström, triggering a gunfight that kills everyone in the tavern except Sergeant Wilhelm and von Hammersmark, who is shot in the leg. Raine arrives and negotiates with Wilhelm for von Hammersmark’s release, but she shoots Wilhelm when he lowers his guard. Raine, believing von Hammersmark set Hicox and his men up, tortures von Hammersmark, who convinces him that she is not a spy and reveals that Hitler will also be attending the film premiere. Raine decides to continue the mission.

Landa investigates the aftermath at the tavern and finds von Hammersmark’s shoes and a napkin with her signature. At the premiere, Omar Ulmer, Donny and Raine, who have explosives with timers strapped to their ankles, pose as Italian guests of von Hammersmark, hoping to fool the Germans unfamiliar with the language. However, Landa, who speaks fluent Italian, converses briefly with the Basterds before allowing Donowitz and Ulmer to take their seats. He takes von Hammersmark to a private room, verifies that the shoe from the tavern fits her, then strangles her to death. Raine and another Basterd, Smithson “The Little Man” Utivich, are taken prisoner, but Landa has Raine contact his superior with the OSS and cut a deal: he will allow the mission to proceed in exchange for safe passage through the Allied lines, a full pardon and various benefits after the war ends.

During the screening, Zoller slips away to the projection room to see Shosanna. After she rejects his advances, he becomes aggressive. She pretends to acquiesce, then pulls a pistol and shoots him. Zoller, mortally wounded, manages to shoot and kill her before he dies. As Stolz der Nation reaches its climax, spliced-in footage of Shosanna tells the audience in English that they are about to be killed by a Jew. Marcel, having locked the doors of the cinema, ignites a huge pile of flammable nitrate film behind the screen as Shosanna’s image laughs and the theater goes up in flames. Ulmer and Donowitz break into the opera box containing Hitler and Goebbels, killing them. They then fire their submachine guns into the panicked crowd until the bombs go off, killing everyone in the theater.

Landa and his radio operator drive Raine and Utivich into Allied territory, where they surrender. Raine however shoots the radio operator before ordering Utivich to scalp him. Despite agreeing to Landa’s deal, Raine has him restrained and carves a swastika into his forehead, professing it to be his “masterpiece”.

This is me

Hello, everyone! My name is Andreea, I am from Romania and I’m in my first year of college. I can call myself a movie addict, and with this I explained the title of this blog.

And because I know some things about movies, I decided to make this blog. I hope that through this platform, more people will know more about this movies and their impact on the cinematic world. I want to convince people this films, especially the younger generations, because this are movies which came out many years ago and settled a certain level in cinematography.

I’m obsessed with gangsters and mafia, so Martin Scorsese is impossible to miss from my lost of favorite directors. He made his name and reputation on this genre, but not only. Another “love” of mine is Quentin Tarantino. I think he is the most passionate director/writer that I’ve ever seen. This man loves cinematography with all his life. You can see that in his movies, all his references are very well put and researched and it becomes a masterpiece. And of course, how can we forget the man who did one of the best movies of all times? Francis Ford Coppola. He has “The Godfather” under his name and through his work influenced more directors and helped at the development of Hollywood.

Kinda…that’s it.