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The Holocaust, Tarantino-style: Jews scalping Nazis
By Assaf Uni
Tags: Quentin Tarantino 

BERLIN - For weeks, Germany's tabloids and culture pages have been preoccupied with Quentin Tarantino's film "Inglorious Bastards," slated to start filming next week in Germany.

While the tabloids are drooling over the movie's star, Brad Pitt, who is moving with his wife Angelina Jolie and their children to a villa close to Berlin ("The most beautiful couple in Wannsee," one headline declared), the serious media is focusing on another angle: Is Germany ready for a Tarantino-style treatment of World War II?

An early draft of the script leaked onto the Internet three months ago suggested the film would contain scenes of bloody vengeance exacted by Jews against Nazis. One campaign would be carried out by Jews in the U.S. Army intent on scalping Nazi soldiers on occupied French soil; another would be a Jewish refugee's revenge against the Nazi officer who murdered her parents.
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Pitt is to play Jewish-American Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of a revenge squad known as "The Bastards," who launch a killing spree in which they hang, torture, disembowel and scalp German soldiers and engrave Swastikas on their foreheads, according to the leaked draft.

The film is raising controversy in Germany, where the subjects of World War II and the Holocaust are usually restricted to historical discourse.

"This is pop culture meeting Nazi Germany and the Holocaust with unprecedented force," said the film critic of SuedDeutche Zeitung, Tobias Kniebe. "The effects of this collision are utterly unpredictable."

German film critics blasted last week's decision to grant the film money from the German Film Fund and another local fund, saying that Germany cannot finance a movie that uses Jewish-Nazi relations as entertainment, especially one by Tarantino.

The SuedDeutche Zeitung warned that the film may be no less explosive than the Hollywood film Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise, about German officers' abortive attempt to assassinate Hitler toward the end of WWII. The movie, filmed in Germany and scheduled to be released in spring 2009, has already drawn fire from German historians.

"All the German historians and critics who were left gasping for breath by Tom Cruise and his worthy attempts to produce a correct image of Stauffenberg will be so shocked by 'Inglorious Bastards' that they will savage it on the spot," writes Kneibe.

Tarantino's film is not supposed to mix history and fiction, but to offer the pure, hyper-violent entertainment that the American director of "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill" is known for.

"It is sort of a spaghetti western set in World War II," Tarantino told the German News Agency DPA. "I am not going to call it this, but if it had a subtitle for it, it would be called, 'Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France.'"

Films that treat the Holocaust period as pure entertainment could be destructive, says Alexander Kluge, a noted film director and author, who has been dealing with the Holocaust and its memory for more than 50 years.

He cites Swiss-Jewish director Dany Levy's comedy "Mein Fuehrer" as a case in point. This film raised a storm in Germany two years ago, when it portrayed for the first time a neurotic, empathy-evoking Hitler. "Such films can obscure the events' true significance," says Kluge.

Tarantino's film received a 300,000 euro grant from the state of Brandenburg, because it will be filmed in Potsdam's Babelsberg studios. Founded in 1911, this is the world's oldest major film studio. Films including Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and "The Blue Angel" with Marlene Dietrich were filmed there in the 1920s and 1930s, as were numerous Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda films.

Tarantino's film is also expected to receive 20 percent of its budget from the German Film Fund because it is being filmed in Germany. It is scheduled to be released in June 2009.


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      1.   They Did Exact Some Revenge But... 06:28  |  Yosemite 07/10/08
      2.   DESERVE AND NOT DESERVE 09:47  |  indrajaya 07/10/08
      3.   WW2 and the Holocaust as pure "entertainment-spectacle"..... 09:48  |  Swiss (Dino) 07/10/08
      4.   short cinematic memory 10:42  |  soggy liberal 07/10/08
      5.   ww2 10:52  |  michel 07/10/08
      6.   Indrajaya..........some bit parts still available 11:33  |  Axel 07/10/08
      7.   # 6 Indi 12:25  |  petra 07/10/08
      8.   yosemite 1 12:28  |  potobac 07/10/08
      9.   Shame to Germany 12:36  |  Hastaroth 07/10/08
      10.   indrajaya 13:03  |  JonathanInTelAviv 07/10/08
      11.   # 6 13:03  |  Axel 07/10/08
      12.   Beware: new gen.of spectators may take this for "truth"! 13:17  |  Alicia 07/10/08
      13.   Tarantino 13:32  |  Yakov 07/10/08
      14.   indrajaya and the two cents 13:53  |  Yakov 07/10/08
      15.   # 9, AXEL 14:01  |  indrajaya 07/10/08
      16.   POPULATION EXPLOSION DURING HOLOCAUST? INDRAJAYA?? 14:01  |  judith 07/10/08
      17.   Swiss (Dingbat): Is Tarantino Jewish? 14:20  |  Tex 07/10/08
      18.   German officers, slapstick clichees 14:36  |  Fritz T. 07/10/08
      19.   # 16, JUDITH 14:49  |  indrajaya 07/10/08
      20.   Indra..it`s always been about Revenge 15:11  |  Edithann 07/10/08
      21.   What discourse? 15:28  |  ManintheMiddle 07/10/08
      22.   "Jewish-Nazi relations"??? 15:44  |  bluecollarbytes 07/10/08
      23.   Well...... 16:10  |  danite 07/10/08
      24.   Hastaroth; #9 "Shame on Germany" ??? 16:12  |  Gray 07/10/08
      25.   Of course 16:14  |  Seth J. Frantzman 07/10/08
      26.   Judaism Discovered, by Hoffman 16:15  |  Gavin Cato 07/10/08
      27.   plot sounds awful 16:25  |  Roo 07/10/08
      28.   Oh well Another Hogans Heroes.... 16:29  |  Big Sur 07/10/08
      29.   Stranges 16:42  |  Dav 07/10/08
      30.   Tarantino 16:48  |  Pandoraha 07/10/08
      31.   another abomination in God`s sight;twisting the truth/speaking 16:50  |  glenna 07/10/08
      32.   I`m Just Thinking... 16:50  |  Yosemite 07/10/08
      33.   Frits T 16:58  |  Rani Habelgi 07/10/08
      34.   #12 Alicia 16:59  |  Chris Linthwaite 07/10/08
      35.   sarah palin 17:03  |  soggy liberal 07/10/08
      36.   Tarantino`s next movie... 17:42  |  Jay 07/10/08
      37.   The Holocaust 17:49  |  Terri Higgins 07/10/08
      38.   what about the CAPOS 17:56  |  observer 07/10/08
      39.   Who Cares, its history 18:05  |  ronjamin 07/10/08
      40.   Sounds like a great film! 18:09  |  Craig Miller 07/10/08
      41.   The Holocaust, Tarantino-style: Jews scalping Nazis 18:11  |  Martin 07/10/08
      42.   Unthinkable Dino? In what context? 19:30  |  Jacob Blues 07/10/08
      43.   =======`Uncomfortable German Historinans`======= 19:38  |  dp 07/10/08
      44.   # 26 19:49  |  Fritz T. 07/10/08
      45.   Hastaroth; #9 "Shame on Germany" ??? 19:53  |  Gray 07/10/08
      46.   # 32 Jacob Blues Casablanca..??? You must be kidding... 20:39  |  Swiss (Dino) 07/10/08
      47.   Holocust Myth 20:50  |  Jah Cure 07/10/08
      48.   Ouch! Correction on #39 21:08  |  Gray 07/10/08
      49.   hogan`s hero`s redux 21:20  |  ringo fonebone 07/10/08
      50.   Correction to #39...Sorry 22:52  |  Gray 07/10/08
      51.   Backdrop Jews & Nazis 23:08  |  Jon Tanker 07/10/08
      52.   #39 gray dont delay your visit to poplar springs hospital 23:21  |  victor hardman 07/10/08
      53.   tarrantino 23:27  |  joey whiteman 07/10/08
      54.   Hollywood and historical accuracy 23:43  |  W 07/10/08
      55.   Historical record 23:43  |  Howard 07/10/08
      56.   Whoops, correction to my previous TB 00:36  |  Alex 08/10/08
      57.   truth fears no investigation 01:51  |  alois brunner 08/10/08
      58.   Sad comic-booker wants free money 02:08  |  Eric Wilson 08/10/08
      59.   Tarantino is a gifted,talented,Degenerate 04:10  |  DK 08/10/08
      60.   #2 the palestinians who are not palestinians/hagar`s children got 04:32  |  glenna 08/10/08
      61.   An idea for a "sequel" 05:13  |  PADDY 08/10/08
      62.   the holocaust, Tarantino-style: 05:29  |  herdzcatz 08/10/08
      63.   comtemptible, inexcusable confusion of right and wrong 06:31  |  dante 08/10/08
      64.   Indrajaya 06:57  |  Yosemite 08/10/08
      65.   #57 Too few and too late 08:23  |  No mercy 08/10/08
      66.   Dino, our deep thinking European 10:30  |  FOX 08/10/08
      67.   Quentin Tarantino 13:54  |  John 08/10/08
      68.   Tarantino Stupido 15:41  |  Andreas 08/10/08
      69.   tarantino is a nerd 19:36  |  sop 08/10/08
      70.   TO number 12 07:42  |  David 09/10/08
      71.