Quentin Tarantino’s work of director as a DJ
Reservoir Dogs is Quentin Tarantino’s first film as a director and it became really huge. The film was made partly by reappropriating Ringo Lam’s film City on Fire, but it was better than City on Fire and became a classical one. While Ringo Lam’s film City on Fire was a typical Hong Kong feature film which included gangster loyalty, cops’ infighting and beauties, Reservoir Dogs was more like an artwork, a masterpiece. It jumped out of the threadbare pattern of a heist film by making dauntless innovations by Quentin Tarantino. He used remix elements and his own auteur style to make a totally new ‘Tarantino film’.
Michael Rennet, a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, proposed a concept …show more content…
In Ringo Lam’s film City on Fire, there exists the whole story of robbery including the plot like infighting in police office and the traditional ‘beauty and love’ storyline. However, Tarantino didn’t do that. He made a bold try by removing all these complicated plots and focusing only on the most classical part, which is the last part of City on Fire, the warehouse. The whole Reservoir Dogs started from there and ended there. In that case, Tarantino had more space and freedom to tell the story about the fierce infighting between Mr. Colors more detailed. Furthermore, Tarantino used a non-linear narration. The story started with Mr. Orange’s blood squirting out and Mr. Colors surmising who was the undercover. Then the movie went back and inserted the things happened to each Mr. Color before the robbery to leave audiences endless imagination for who exactly was the undercover. We didn’t know it until Mr. Orange shot Mr. Blonde. Finally, almost every main character showed up in the movie died in the warehouse except Mr. Pink, who is “distant, pragmatic, calculating, and unsentimental.” (Weinberger 50) He seemed weak and creepy throughout the movie but he was the only one kept alive and took the diamond in the end. Tarantino used none-linear narration to show Mr. Pink’s creepiness again and again from the very beginning of the story to the final and gave …show more content…
Music is an important part of Tarantino's filmmaking style, and he said that he would listen to music in his bedroom and create scenes which correlated to the music that was being played. Tarantino has also said that he feels the music to be a counterpoint to the on-screen violence and action. He stated that he wished for the film to have a 1950s feel while using '70s music. A prominent instance of this is the torture scene to the tune of "Stuck in the Middle with You". (Wikipedia) In Reservoir Dogs, he selected songs mainly from the 1960s to '80s and a lot of clips became classical partly because of the soundtrack. The clip which impressed me a lot was actually ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ before Mr. Blonde poured the gasoline all over the cop. “He walked out of the warehouse, opened the trunk, pulled out a large can of gasoline and walked back to the warehouse.” (Reservoir Dogs screenplay 55) Mr. Blonde walked all the way in relaxed dance moves with the pop song which formed a sharp contrast to the bloody torture against the cop. This created limitless artistic effect and we are hard not to respect Tarantino’s talented skill of ‘Director as DJ’ because he did the mix and match job so
Reservoir Dogs is Quentin Tarantino’s first film as a director and it became really huge. The film was made partly by reappropriating Ringo Lam’s film City on Fire, but it was better than City on Fire and became a classical one. While Ringo Lam’s film City on Fire was a typical Hong Kong feature film which included gangster loyalty, cops’ infighting and beauties, Reservoir Dogs was more like an artwork, a masterpiece. It jumped out of the threadbare pattern of a heist film by making dauntless innovations by Quentin Tarantino. He used remix elements and his own auteur style to make a totally new ‘Tarantino film’.
Michael Rennet, a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, proposed a concept …show more content…
In Ringo Lam’s film City on Fire, there exists the whole story of robbery including the plot like infighting in police office and the traditional ‘beauty and love’ storyline. However, Tarantino didn’t do that. He made a bold try by removing all these complicated plots and focusing only on the most classical part, which is the last part of City on Fire, the warehouse. The whole Reservoir Dogs started from there and ended there. In that case, Tarantino had more space and freedom to tell the story about the fierce infighting between Mr. Colors more detailed. Furthermore, Tarantino used a non-linear narration. The story started with Mr. Orange’s blood squirting out and Mr. Colors surmising who was the undercover. Then the movie went back and inserted the things happened to each Mr. Color before the robbery to leave audiences endless imagination for who exactly was the undercover. We didn’t know it until Mr. Orange shot Mr. Blonde. Finally, almost every main character showed up in the movie died in the warehouse except Mr. Pink, who is “distant, pragmatic, calculating, and unsentimental.” (Weinberger 50) He seemed weak and creepy throughout the movie but he was the only one kept alive and took the diamond in the end. Tarantino used none-linear narration to show Mr. Pink’s creepiness again and again from the very beginning of the story to the final and gave …show more content…
Music is an important part of Tarantino's filmmaking style, and he said that he would listen to music in his bedroom and create scenes which correlated to the music that was being played. Tarantino has also said that he feels the music to be a counterpoint to the on-screen violence and action. He stated that he wished for the film to have a 1950s feel while using '70s music. A prominent instance of this is the torture scene to the tune of "Stuck in the Middle with You". (Wikipedia) In Reservoir Dogs, he selected songs mainly from the 1960s to '80s and a lot of clips became classical partly because of the soundtrack. The clip which impressed me a lot was actually ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ before Mr. Blonde poured the gasoline all over the cop. “He walked out of the warehouse, opened the trunk, pulled out a large can of gasoline and walked back to the warehouse.” (Reservoir Dogs screenplay 55) Mr. Blonde walked all the way in relaxed dance moves with the pop song which formed a sharp contrast to the bloody torture against the cop. This created limitless artistic effect and we are hard not to respect Tarantino’s talented skill of ‘Director as DJ’ because he did the mix and match job so