His 1996 film Pulp Fiction was an instant success, earning $108 million at the box office, the first independent film to reach blockbuster status. Pulp Fiction was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. This film is a veritable patch-work quilt of classic cinematic references that is chopped up and left for the audience to piece together.
Endless Cinematic References in Pulp Fiction
The long camera shots are reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s directorial style. One of the main characters, Jules, rambles off a haunting diatribe before killing. This is nothing new in cinema and can be found even contemporary classics like Batman’s Joker character when he says “Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?” before executing a victim.
Most Recognized Scenes in Pulp Fiction
The pop-culture references are constant when the film is examined. The most prominent references by Pulp Fiction fans include:
- The dance competition with John Travolta and Uma Thurman from Goddard’s film Bande A Parte, (1964) after which Tarantino named his production company.
- The briefcase with mysterious contents is homage to Aldrich’s film Kiss Me Deadly, (1955).
- Butch stops at the lights and sees Marcellus crossing the road, similar to Hitchcock’s film Psycho when Janet Leigh stops at a set of lights to see her boss crossing the road. Also probably homage to Hitchcock himself, who was one of the first directors to “glorify” violence.
- 'The Bonnie Situation' contains Jules and his friend Jimmy, clearly a reference to Francois Truffaut's film, Jules et Jim.
- The character of Wolf in this story is taken from Jean Reno's portrayal of a 'cleaner' in Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita, a role reprised by Keitel himself in the American remake Point of No Return. (IMDB)
The references get even wackier when Butch goes back to rescue Marcellus from the shopkeeper’s basement and finds a treasure trove of “villain” tools he can use:
- hammer—The Toolbox Murders (1978)
- baseball bat—Walking Tall (1973); The Untouchables (1987)
- chainsaw—The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974);The Evil Dead II (1987)
- katana (samurai sword)—many, including Seven Samurai (1954); The Yakuza (1975); Shogun Assassin (1980) (Wikipedia)
Pulp Fiction and Its Namesake
In addition to paying homage to the history of cinema, Pulp Fiction also is styled after the paperback model from which it gets its namesake. The plots are violent and the dialogue punchy, which is just how the first pulp magazines were originally penned in the early 1940s. The book that the character Vincent is reading in the bathroom just before he gets killed is called “Modestly Blaisé,” a famed pulp novel with similar themes to the movie. In fact, the original title of the movie was Black Mask, which was homage to the pulp magazine of the same name.
While Pulp Fiction may have really been a mere mosaic of “reference and allusions” but Tarantino certainly can be credited with forming his own unique format on the shoulders of the past that now influences and entertains a whole new generation of movie geeks.
References
- IMDB.com
- Screenwriter’s Monthly
- Entertainment Weekly
- Wikipeda.org
