Auteurs- Quentin Tarantino

By Aminatta Sylva

Pulp fiction is an American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino and produced Lawrence Bender. From its release it has earned an Academy award, BAFTA, Cannes Film Festival, Golden Globe Award and received awards from The National Society Film Critic as being the Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay. In the opening week they received £4,243,233 (UK) (11 November 1994) from box office sales, which is a lot of money so it must have been a very popular film due to the famous actors that starred in it and Tarantino was well known for his nonlinear storylines, long dialogues, comic characters that can somehow relate to the audience and aestheticizing violence (making violence seem beautiful).

Pulp Fiction

Jackie BrownJackie Brown (1997) is an American crime drama film directed by Quentin Tarantino and produced by Lawrence Bender. This film was nominated for many awards but only won at the Berlin Film International Festival for best Actor which went to Samuel L Jackson. It was Tarantino’s third success after Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. During the production they had a $12 million dollar budget but made a huge profit of $72,673,162 this was probably because it starred popular actors like Samuel L Jackson and Robert Forster. The uses and gratification audience could relate to the movie because they might have went to see the movie due to the actors, so that they can aspire to be like them. The film was made from an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Rum Punch this was the first film for the novel. This might have made the film have more viewer because Leonard’s booklovers might have wanted to see how whether the film is like the book or not. Jackie Brown is a Blaxploitation film as this genre attracts the urban black audiences and creates a sense of diversity in the film industry during the 1970s. The title of the film also sounds like an African American’s name.

Kill Bill Vol 1Kill Bill Vol.1 (2003) is an American Action Crime film directed and written by Quentin Tarantino, the film is followed by a sequel Kill Bill Vol.2. The film starred popular actors/actresses such as Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu and Vivica Fox. The film had a budget of $30 million but gained a profit of $70,098,138 5 months after the first screening. In this film just like Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown the aestheticization of violence is used and turned into art or comedy. Tarantino was inspired to write this film from a Japanese film called Lady Snowblood (1973) which has a similar storyline to Kill Bill, in which a woman kills off the gang who murdered her family.

Similarities amongst the three films

First of the thing that sticks out the most the use of the colour yellow, however in Kill Bill Vol 1 the background is yellow and the writing is in red. In Pulp Fiction the title is in yellow and the background of the header is in red. In Jackie Brown the title is in yellow but it is outlined with red/dark orange and the cast is written in red. So the main colour scheme is red, black and yellow. The writings are san serif in, Pulp Fiction is inspired by the wild west, Jackie Brown is inspired by the hippie era of the 1970s, Kill Bill Vol 1 is inspired by the east. However Kill Bill Vol 1 isn’t in san serif this probably because it was made in the 00s, also shows us that the film is set in modern days.