Tarantino Again

Dear Students,

Tarantino Again
Sept 23

Dear Students,

As I say, I’m no film critic, but it really seemed to me that Inglourious Basterds was, in part, at least, about language. The very first scene, a masterpiece of directing (so says the non-critic! — sorry), made me certain this flick would have a linguistic base. The Frenchman spoke real ‘country French' and his tense, three-word communications with his daughters as the Nazi motorcycle brigade approached set the tone. An Austrian colleague tells me that the Austrian background of the character played by Christopher Waltz is apparent at once from his references to “Hitler taking me out of the Alps” and, indeed, in his Austrian courtesies and charm. Speaking accented but fluent French, the colonel declines wine for a glass of his host’s milk and praises “vos fillettes et vos vauches,” ‘your daughters and your cows’. Then comes the ominous switch to English, as I mentioned last time, but I had missed the clear reference to Austria. My colleague wondered whether the reception of the film in Austria might have been reserved (was it?) because of this character and Austria’s blemished reputation of being the first to accede to Nazis in the Anschluss in 1939. Have you seen The Sound of Music? Here the heroic Austrian van Trapp, played by Christopher Plummer, I believe, stands up to the Nazis and the family flees across the Alps, never to return. That was a legend of another kind, I suppose.

I can tell you that the Salzkammergut, the Salzburg mountains, are as beautiful as you see them in that old film, and it’s no legend that Austrian sportsmen run up the mountains while we (or I, at least), huff and puff at a walker’s pace. Gustav Mahler, by birth a Czech, used to compose in Austria, first along the shore of the Attersee, then in the Wörtersee, and finally in the dolomite mountains of the Tyrol.

Another very ‘linguistic’ scene in Basterds is that set in the basement bar, where Brad Pitt’s Nazi hunters, or two or three of them who can speak some German, are meeting with the double agent Diane Kruger. Here one of Brad’s men, who is fluent in German, gives away his British origins — not by an overtly bad accent, but, that same colleague tells me, by “misspeaking one or two words enough to give himself away as non-German.” The Germans pointedly ask him about this: “Where are you from? Why do you speak like that?” and Diane Kruger makes up some story to document his German heritage. In the end, the Brit gives himself away by ordering three Scotches as we might, with forefinger, middle finger, and ring finger held up to the waiter. The Germans will show thumb, forefinger, middle finger. He’s doomed. So the poor fellow, with a Walter pointed at his privates, makes a show of enjoying the thirty-year-old Scotch, saying, “well, if I am never to leave this place alive, I might as well try this.” Very sophisticated, noir touch. I would have done the same thing in his place. Why grovel? Live in the moment, as Joseph Campbell said.

Having seen the movie only once, I still maintain that Waltz is a non-speaker of Italian — just a hunch. If anyone in my classes can find out for me, I’d appreciate it.

In many European language communities the living presence of dialects is a badge of provenience, for good or for ill. You can tell a North Russian by his okanie, non-fricative g, and v, v’ devoicing to f; you can tell someone from the south by the fricative g. In Czech, Prague speech is unmistakable for its melody (especially in the speech of women), and Brno-Moravian speech by both phonetic features and Germanic slang. Some people claim they can peg an individual so precisely to his geographic origin that it seems just too unlikely. My colleague tells about the Austrian dialect specialist who could tell you what village you came from in Austria, and not only the village, but what part of the village: “up to the church, but not beyond; or, up to and behind the church.” He’s joking, of course. Thanks to Dietmar Felber.

gmc