Quentin Tarantino’sOnce Upon a Time in Hollywoodserves a double purpose for its writer-director in terms of moviemaking and history. Firstly, it’s part of a series of movies that began withInglorious Basterds, in which Tarantino seeks to rewrite history in favor of specific victims, in his own inimitable style of genre filmmaking. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly,Once Upon a Time in Hollywoodis Tarantino’s love letter to Tinseltown. As such, it’s peppered with references to some of Hollywood’s most venerated movies.
Set in 1969,Tarantino’s pseudo-historical epic focuses on the cinematic history of the 1960s. At the time,Hollywood’s Golden Agewas coming to an end; New Hollywood was on the horizon, being propelled forward by auteur directors like Sharon Tate’s husband Roman Polanski, and movie subgenres such as the spaghetti Western had recently come into being. WhileOnce Upon a Time in Hollywoodnecessarily aims its lens at the film industry of its setting, Tarantino still has time to work in a few older movie references while he’s at it.
John Huston’s seminal film noirThe Maltese Falcongets a knowing wink from Tarantino inOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood,during a scene in which Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate enters a Los Angeles bookstore. In the store, there’s a replica of the falcon statuette that serves as the motive driving Humphrey Bogart’s private investigatorSam Spade inThe Maltese Falcon. In case any fans of Huston’s movie miss the statuette, Tate bends down, admires the statue, and strokes its head when she walks into the bookstore. The reference is over in a flash, but it’s unmistakable.
Another one ofHumphrey Bogart’s classic film noir moviesis referenced in the same bookstore scene ofOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood. In fact, the whole point of Sharon Tate entering an LA bookstore is to emulate Bogart’s character Philip Marlowe, in Howard Hawks’The Big Sleep.
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Tarantino’s bookstore scene is a shot-for-shot recreation of Bogart’s walk across a busy streetand into the Acme Book Shop inThe Big Sleep, from the direction the camera faces when Robbie’s character crosses the road to the side of the screen from which she enters the store. Viewers not familiar with Bogart’s hard-boiled detective characters might wonder what the purpose of this scene inOnce Upon a Time in Hollywoodactually is, but Tarantino includes these references all the same, for his own amusement as well as the enjoyment of noir fans.
Not content with including two nods to film noir in a single scene, Tarantino makes further reference to the genre with a shot of Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth entering a movie drive-in. This shot is lifted from Raoul Walsh’sWhite Heat, in whichJames Cagney’s gangster Arthur “Cody” Jarret stops over at a drive-in theaterduring a police chase. Tarantino recreates the feel of the scene, down to the neon lighting of the drive-in sign. The difference is that Cliff Booth actually lives behind the drive-in theater in a trailer, an interesting representation of the position of a stuntman in the movie industry.
The 1956 Western movieGiant, directed by George Stevens, is one of justthree feature films to have starred actor James Dean. There’s a mural of the movie, paying homage to Dean’s character Jett Rink, inOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood. This mural appears briefly in Tarantino’s picture, on a wall next to which some of the young women in Charles Manson’s so-called family are dumpster diving.Dean was a highly mythologized figure in Hollywood by the 1960s, owing to his premature death as well as the power of his cinematic performances.
8The Great Escape (1963)
Rick Dalton’s Missed Career Opportunity
The Great Escapeis one of the movies most prominently referenced inOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood, as an entire subplot revolves around the 1963 war epic. Leonardo DiCaprio’s protagonistRick Dalton claims to have narrowly missed out on the part of Captain Virgil Hilts in the movie, which in reality went to Steve McQueen.
Tarantino actually goes as far as incorporating a scene fromThe Great Escapefilm itself into his movie, with DiCaprio’s Dalton inserted into one ofMcQueen’s most iconic roles. The director was clearly having a blast utilizing the modern filmmaking techniques at his disposal to explore classic cinema.
Although Sergio Leone’s movies are never directly referenced inOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood, it’s clear that a whole storyline in the film is meant as a homage to the spaghetti Western genre. More specifically, Rick being hired by Sergio Corbucci for his upcoming movie being shot in Italy following a stint on an ailing TV Western mirrors the story ofClint Eastwood being hired by Leone forA Fistful of Dollars, the first movie of Leone’sDollarstrilogy, in 1964.
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There are also obvious similarities between Dalton’s story and that of Burt Reynolds, a friend of Eastwood who was hired by Corbucci to appear in his 1966Navajo Joe, immediately after appearing in the Western TV showGunsmoke. Like Dalton, Reynolds traveled to Italy to shoot the movie, whereas Leone took Eastwood to Spain for the production of theDollarstrilogy.
6The Green Hornet (2011)
Based On The 1966-1967 TV Show
Another major Hollywood star of the 1960s actually makes an appearance inOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood.Bruce Lee is played by Mike Moh in Tarantino’s movieand is a loudmouth primadonna who believes he can take down just about anyone in hand-to-hand combat. He challenges Cliff to a fight, in which Booth puts Lee in his place.
This incident is based on the story of stuntman Gene LeBell, who allegedly lifted Lee up in a headlock after the actor beat someone else up on the set of the 1960s action showThe Green Hornet(viaSouth China Morning Post). Different sources tell different versions of LeBell’s story, but something went down between him and Lee, which inspired Tarantino’s version of the event. More recently, in 2011,The Green Hornetwas turned into a modestly-rated movieby Michel Gondry.
5Valley Of The Dolls (1967)
Sharon Tate’s Breakout Role
Valley of the Dollswas Sharon Tate’s first major success in Hollywood, with the actress playing a leading role on the big screen for the first time at the age of 24. The movie is only mentioned briefly inOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood, by the teller at the box office when Tate tells them who she is. However, the historical significance of this reference can’t be understated.
Less than a year after Tate was murdered by the Manson Family, a sequel toValley of the Dollswas released calledBeyond the Valley of the Dolls, which ends in a scene of drug-fueled violence inspired by her untimely death. WhileValley of the Dollsrepresented the height of the Swingin' Sixties, full of luxuriant excess,Beyond the Valley of the Dollsportrayed the violent destruction of this lifestyle, reflecting the real-life crimes of Manson and his followers.
Stanley Kubrick’s2001: A Space Odysseyis one of the most important films ever made, a futuristic sci-fi epic that meditates on the entire history of human civilization, as well as the role of automation in the progress of our species. The movie’s staggering visuals and prescient use and depiction of technology changed cinema forever. It’s only fitting, then, that it should be referenced in a love letter to Hollywood that’s set in the home of American cinema just a year after2001: A Space Odysseywas released.
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InOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood,Tarantino places the advert for Kubrick’s movie on an illuminated billboardabove the entrance of the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills. Blink and you’ll miss it, but the director just manages to squeeze arguably the greatest movie of the 1960s into his big-screen time capsule.
2001: A Space Odysseymight have been the most important movie of 1968, butfew other titles epitomized that year in film quite like Peter Bogdanovich’s crime thrillerTargets. The movie was one of the first to signal the birth of New Hollywood, with its young director hailed as a genius by his peers, containing key elements of the genre revival that would later become known as neo-noir. We see a shot of the trailer for this movie behind the screen of the drive-in theater that Cliff lives next to. It is a sign of things to come, the harbinger of a new age for American cinema.
