Cat Ballou In Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds

Lady in red.

I rewatched Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) this afternoon I believe for the third time since it came out, and I enjoyed it the most this time probably because I’m older and I’ve been a film critic¹ now for many years and just notice more than I used to when I was young. I was 28 when this movie hit theaters. Fifteen years have passed.

Spoilers ahead.

In any case, watching the film this time I couldn’t help but notice something. When Shosanna gets ready for her big night, she puts on a striking red dress and a black pillbox hat, replete with veil. She’s very elegant, decked out in the colors of her enemy. It’s almost camouflage as she passes through the cinema, now bedecked in Nazi banners. Red on bloody red.

I instantly thought of another revenge movie, in which the heroine puts on a florid red dress: Cat Ballou, the 1965 western starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin, and one of my favorite films since childhood. Jane Fonda is not only stunningly beautiful in the film, she’s also tough as nails. And Lee Marvin gives the performance of a lifetime—or, rather, two performances, that together snagged him the Best Actor Oscar that year. Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye’s musical narration is the cherry on top.

The resemblance here is certainly striking. Two blond women who previously wore unassuming clothes, now in glamorous scarlet, each carrying a little purse with a gun tucked away inside. Both are also now in close proximity to their enemies: Adolf Hitler and his cronies, in Shosanna’s case—and then Fredrick Zoller—and Sir Harry Percival, the head of the Wolf City Development Corporation, in Cat Ballou’s. The Nazis killed Shosanna’s family. Percival hired the man who killed Ballou’s father. In both films, a brief seduction plays out before the gun is drawn and shots are fired.

When Shosanna can’t rid herself of Zoller, she brings him into the projectionist booth and tells him to lock the door. “There isn’t much time,” she tells him, suggestively. Percival is pretty sure he’s getting lucky from the moment “Trixie” walks in the door of his opulent suite. Both men get what’s coming to them. Of course, Tarantino’s version is quite a bit bloodier and Shosanna doesn’t make it out alive, though she certainly gets her revenge. Cat Ballou is set to be hanged for her murder, but things don’t go according to plan.

There are other little clues that lead me to believe that Tarantino purposefully mirrored the Cat Ballou revenge scene in Inglorious Basterds, or that it was on his mind at some point during the making of the film. Probably not a clue, but I chuckled when the painting on the ceiling in Cat Ballou was a “Tintoretto” which, well, it just sounds like Tarantino.

I already mentioned the guns in purses, but I’ll just post the pic anyways. Not the same gun, obviously, but both small enough to hide in a small purse and both deadly enough when it counts.

A final observation. As Shosanna prepares for the evening, a very distinct and memorable song comes on. It’s David Bowie singing a song called “Cat People.” I mean . . . .

We know that Tarantino is a fan of Cat Ballou and director Elliot Silverstein’s other western, A Man Called Horse. While Inglourious Basterds isn’t a western, you can see the genre’s influence throughout, especially in the music, and it’s no great shock that Tarantino’s next two films were both westerns, and his more recent—Once Upon A Time In Hollywood—was about western film stars. Interestingly, Tarantino listed Cat Ballou as one of the films that influenced that picture.

What is the point of all this? I suppose I’m just curious to see what people think, especially if you’re fans of both movies. I haven’t seen anyone discuss the parallels between these two scenes and characters, probably because they’re so different. One is a WWII revisionist history war fantasy; the other is a western with musical interludes. But both are also revenge films about women who ultimately fight back against the powerful, power-hungry, wicked men who ruined their lives. And win.

If nothing else, it’s something to think about. I recommend both these films, by the way. Inglourious Basterds is tremendous, with so many great, tense moments and some genuinely funny bits scattered throughout. Christoph Waltz is so frighteningly brilliant as SS officer Hans Landa. Cat Ballou is one of my favorite old westerns, with lots of great humor and fun characters. I think it’s the first thing I saw Lee Marvin in and I had no idea as a kid (until I was told) that he played both Kid Shelleen and Tim Strawn. It blew my mind at the time. What sorcery the camera plays on us, what magic the editors wield!

The second movie I saw Marvin in was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, where he plays antagonist to John Wayne’s Tom Doniphon and James Stewart’s Ransom Stoddard. That’s also a terrific film and certainly one of my favorite John Wayne movies. And watching Inglourious Basterds again reminds me of another old WWII picture I haven’t seen in years: The Dirty Dozen, starring Lee Marvin.

In any case. Cat Ballou, meet Shosanna. Hats off to the both of you.

P.S. If you look at the images I included, there are some really interesting parallels as well. In the top image, both women are looking down and to the side in the same direction, and both are framed by curtains that look incredibly similar to one another, though clearly not exact.

In the next two images, we see Cat Ballou near a gramophone, and Shosanna near the film projector. I may just be seeing things at this point, but these scenes definitely seem to mirror one another in more ways than one.

1. Just like the dapper Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) who screws everything up but manages to go out with a smile and a great last line: “There’s a special place in hell for people who waste good Scotch.”