Quentin Tarantino made Inglourious Basterds with the intention of making it his definitive work – his masterpiece. While it didn’t quite turn out to be his masterpiece, it is one of his best movies. He wrote and directed a World War II movie in the style of a spaghetti western, and the result was a weird, unconventional, ultraviolent movie with a novelistic approach.
The ensemble cast and intertwining storylines make the narrative structure a delicate tapestry – it’s Pulp Fiction set in the Second World War, just what Tarantino fans would want. Anyway, here are the 10 Most Memorable Quotes From Inglourious Basterds.
Updated by Ben Sherlock on May 6th, 2020: Inglourious Basterds remains one of Quentin Tarantino’s most popular movies, even with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood being hailed as a new peak in the filmmaker’s career. The boldness of killing off Hitler meant that Tarantino’s World War II epic would not soon be forgotten about. Over a decade after it hit theaters, Inglourious Basterds still has the capacity to shock audiences who discover it late. We’ve updated this list with a handful of new entries.
“We Ain’t In The Prisoner-Takin’ Business; We’re In The Killin’ Nazi Business.”
From his very first on-screen appearance, Lt. Aldo Raine makes it very clear that the titular death squad’s mission is plain and simple: killing Nazis. He puts together a team of eight Jewish American soldiers to head behind enemy lines and start killing Nazi officers and collecting their scalps until Hitler gets the message and backs down.
“You probably heard we ain’t in the prisoner-takin’ business; we’re in the killin’ Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin’.”
“Gorlami!”
In the third act of Inglourious Basterds, Aldo Raine and a couple of the Basterds join Bridget von Hammersmark at the premiere of a new Nazi propaganda movie to assassinate Hitler. They pose as Italians, but Aldo is hopelessly terrible at speaking Italian.
The movie’s use of spies botching foreign languages and social customs to build tension is hilariously deconstructed with Brad Pitt’s painful butchering of Italian words.
“I, On The Other Hand, Love My Unofficial Title, Precisely Because I’ve Earned It.”
While a lot of the characters in Inglourious Basterds don’t like the nicknames they’ve been given – like Utivich and his nickname “the Little Man” – Hans Landa loves his. He’s been nicknamed “the Jew Hunter,” and he explains that he enjoys it because he’s earned it.
“Watching Donny Beat Nazis To Death Is The Closest We Ever Get To Goin’ To The Movies.”
On one level, Inglourious Basterds is a love letter to the power of cinema. Quentin Tarantino believes that cinema had a major influence on World War II. Hitler was a massive film buff and propaganda was a huge part of his political strategy.
“Actually, Werner, we’re all tickled to hear you say that. Quite frankly, watching Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to goin’ to the movies.”
And when Werner accepts his fate at the hands of the Bear Jew, Aldo Raine smiles and says that watching the Bear Jew beat Nazis to a pulp is “the closest we ever get to goin’ to the movies.”
“Can You Americans Speak Any Other Language Besides English?”
As far as the most iconic characters in the Tarantino oeuvre go, Bridget von Hammersmark doesn’t get nearly enough love. As a German movie star spying for the Allies, she’s a fascinating character caught in a series of daring, intense situations.
Multilingualism is a big theme in Inglourious Basterds, as the languages spoken by spies are taken seriously for the first time in the genre’s history. At one point, Bridget jokingly asks, “Can you Americans speak any other language besides English?”
“So, you’re ’the Jew Hunter.'”
Pretty much every character in Inglourious Basterds has a nickname. Aldo Raine is “Aldo the Apache,” Donny Donowitz is “the Bear Jew,” and Hans Landa is “the Jew Hunter.” However, while the former two embrace their nicknames, Landa rejects his. Instead, he believes he is a detective whose work involves tracking down Jews, simply due to the demands of the time.
“A detective. A damn good detective. Finding people is my specialty, so naturally, I work for the Nazis finding people, and yes, some of them were Jews. But ‘Jew Hunter?’ It’s just a name that stuck.”
“Teddy f****** Williams knocks it out of the park!”
Quentin Tarantino’s original choice to play Donny “the Bear Jew” Donowitz was Adam Sandler, which certainly would’ve been interesting. It would’ve forced us to see the typically family-friendly comic in a new light – a violent one.
“Fenway Park on its feet for Teddy fin’ Ballgame! He went yardo on that one, out to fin’ Lansdowne Street!”
In the end, Sandler decided to do Funny People with his old roommate Judd Apatow instead and Tarantino cast fellow director Eli Roth in the role, and he played the character as a loudmouthed Bostonian.
“Each and every man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps.”
Brad Pitt’s opening monologue as Lt. Aldo Raine, explaining the mission to the Basterds, is one of the best Tarantino has ever written. It ends with his demand that all of the men bring him the severed scalps of one hundred dead Nazis, which establishes his attack method as an Apache one, as that’s what the Native American warriors used to do.
“And I want my scalps. And all y’all will git me one hundred Nazi scalps, taken from the heads of one hundred dead Nazis. Or you will die tryin’.”
“My name is Shosanna Dreyfus…”
Revenge is a common theme in Quentin Tarantino’s work. But it’s not revenge in the sense of Charles Bronson in Death Wish, which is to say revenge against some fictional person for some fictional wrongdoing. It’s historical revenge fantasy.
“…and this is the face of Jewish vengeance!”
He’ll have a bunch of Jewish American soldiers and one Jewish refugee killing Hitler or he’ll have African slaves in the Deep South killing white slavers. It was a bold move by the writer-director to actually change the course of history and literally kill off Hitler, but it’s one that the audience goes along with.
“Oooh, that’s a bingo!”
One of the character traits that makes Hans Landa a human character and not just an evil, soulless, heartless Nazi is the fact that he’s only vaguely familiar with English expressions. He can’t remember the phrase “Looks like the shoe’s on the other foot,” so he just asks Aldo Raine, “What’s that English saying about shoes and feet?”
And when he’s celebrating the fact that he’s captured Aldo and he’s able to cut a deal with him to go down in the history books as a hero, he doesn’t know that it’s just “Bingo!” and says, “Oooh, that’s a bingo!”
“Say ‘auf Wiedersehen’ to your Nazi balls!”
Inglourious Basterds is easily one of the most rock ‘n’ roll war movies ever made. Usually, war movies are dark and gritty and treat the subject of war very seriously and delicately. But Inglourious Basterds has electric guitar on the soundtrack, it has freeze frames and cutaways, and every character in the cast is super cool.
Hugo Stiglitz is an example of one of those cool characters, as he made himself infamous among the Nazi community for slaying a bunch of them. As far as sign-offs during assassinations go, this one is pretty badass.
“You know, fightin’ in a basement offers a lot of difficulties…”
According to Quentin Tarantino, the basement scene in Inglourious Basterds was only supposed to be a couple of pages long. However, he started writing the “Who Am I?” game that the officers all play together in the basement and it ballooned to about twenty pages. What’s effective about that is that it’s so long that you’ve forgotten there’s any danger by the time someone pulls out a gun and a firefight breaks out. The longer you wait you devolve into violence, the higher the tension.
“…number one being, you’re fightin’ in a basement!”
“What a tremendously hostile world that a rat must endure.”
The whole opening sequence of Inglourious Basterds is one of the most intense scenes ever filmed. Although it’s just a couple of guys talking over a glass of milk, we know that one of them is a vicious, cold-hearted Nazi officer and there are Jewish refugees hiding under the floorboards, so a layer of tension is added.
“Yet, not only does he survive, he thrives. Because our little foe has an instinct for survival and preservation second to none. And that, Monsieur, is what a Jew shares with a rat.”
“You get that for killin’ Jews?” “Bravery.”
Quentin Tarantino understands that everyone is the good guy in their own opinion. A lesser writer would write S.S. officers as if they’re aware of their own evil, but not Tarantino. He writes S.S. officers who believe they are nobly fighting for their country in a just war, because that’s what they’ve been told.
That’s exemplified perfectly when the Bear Jew asks Sgt. Werner Rachtman if he got his Iron Cross medal for “killin’ Jews,” and he counters that he got it for “bravery” – right before the Bear Jew caves his head in with a baseball bat.
“You know somethin’, Utivich?”
There are a couple of meta, self-aware lines in Inglourious Basterds that point to Quentin Tarantino’s intentions with the film. He thought it was going to be his masterpiece, and so he threw in a few not-so-subtle hints. During the screening of the film-within-a-film Nation’s Pride, Hitler leans over to tell director Joseph Goebbels, “Extraordinary, my dear. Simply extraordinary. This is your finest film yet.”
“I think this just might be my masterpiece.”
But the most obvious suggestion is the final line of the film, uttered by Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine after carving one last swastika into Hans Landa’s forehead: “You know somethin’, Utivich? I think this just might be my masterpiece.”
