Tarantino's Promising Debut

Tarantino’s Promising Debut

Jake Schmidt

University of Tampa

Abstract

This paper explores the formal qualities of Quentin Tarantino’s first film, Reservoir Dogs. Specifically, it deals with Tarantino’s use of a nonlinear plot progression and long, uninterrupted shots to create suspense.  It also addresses how Tarantino worked around a low budget to produce a film that was both entertaining and engaging, and explains some of the industrial deviations that Tarantino decided to experiment with. This paper will also explain the film’s social impacts, some of which can still be observed today.  It includes references from film critics and analysts across a extended period of time.  Many of the sources are contemporary analyses of the film, but some are from sources produced around the time of the film’s release in 1992.  

Tarantino’s Promising Debut

For most filmmakers, debuts are rather mediocre in comparison to their later works.  For example, Ron Howard’s first film Grand Theft Auto is widely recognized as his worst by far, much like Oliver Stone and his horrific first endeavor, Seizure, which never even made it to official DVD release (Ward, 2014).  However, this was not exactly the case for Quentin Tarantino.  His debut film, Reservoir Dogs, burst onto the scene and immediately showed the filmmaking world just how much potential this talented young filmmaker had.  The film did accentuate some of his weaknesses as a novice filmmaker, but these shortcomings were more related to Tarantino’s writing ability than his directorial ability.  From a purely stylistic standpoint, this film was an exciting precursor to some of his greatest works, such as Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill series.  Tarantino uses Reservoir Dogs to experiment with stylistic techniques such as temporal deformations and long, uninterrupted shots, which would go on to become trademarks for many of his later films. Although slightly rough and unrefined in certain aspects, he skillfully works around the constraints of a low budget to produce a raw, brutal, even slightly humorous film that deviates from the industrial norm for crime fiction thrillers of the time. One of Reservoir Dogs’ most notable deviations from industrial standards is the film’s methods of production and release

        Originally, Tarantino wanted it to be filmed in black and white and produce it with the modest budget of only $50,000, but after Harvey Keitel told Tarantino that he wanted to be a part of the film, fundraising efforts were increased and the budget was raised to $1.2 million (Lyttelton, 2012).  Released as an independent film at the Sundance Movie Festival in Cannes, it quickly earned praise from audiences and critics alike.  It even had some walk outs during its first screening due to scenes of graphic violence and excessive brutality (Zimmerman, 2012).  Specifically, the scene that triggered many of these walk-outs was the cop torture scene in which Mr. Blonde (Micheal Madsen) tortures Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz), a police officer he had kidnapped after the heist went wrong.  After turning on Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You,” Mr. Blonde begins to do a little jig that makes it seem like this is an every day occurrence for him.  He then proceeds to cut Nash’s ear off, but immediately before the audience is shown this horrific scene, the camera pans up toward the warehouse wall while the music continues to play over the sounds of Nash’s screams.  To many audience members, this scene is too much to handle because of how casually Mr. Blonde goes about these heinous acts. Leaving the violence and gore to the audience’s imagination also effectively creates a high suspense scene. Purposely excluding the act of Nash’s ear being cut off was a stylistic choice by Tarantino to create suspense, but one can also imagine that it is related to Reservoir Dogs’ frugal budget.  The cost of faking an ear that is being sliced off would be rather high, so simply having the audience imagine it was a clever, yet budgeted decision by Tarantino.

Despite the exclusion of some higher budget effects, the quality of the editing does not show the minimalist budget that Tarantino had to work with.  He uses continuity editing as well as long, uninterrupted shots to create a world that is spatially contiguous with the real world.  For example, immediately after Mr. Blonde cuts off Nash’s ear, there is a long, uninterrupted shot of Mr. Blonde leaving the warehouse in order to get gasoline from his car.  The camera tracks Mr. Blonde out of the warehouse and much like it would be in real life, the diegetic music stops as soon as he exits the warehouse then begins again once he reenters.  This scene is widely regarded as one of the most influential torture scenes of all time, not only because of its raw brutality, but also because of the inherent believability of this occurring in every day life (Nussbaum, 2015).  This plausibility is suggested by the fact that Mr. Blond simply strolls out of a completely natural, normal looking warehouse in the middle of torturing a police officer to grab gasoline then returns without anyone but the three men in the warehouse knowing what terrible things were going on inside.  

This scene is also significant because it suggests the spatial continuity of the world that extends beyond the film’s frame.  Because of this spatial continuity and the inherent plausibility of the problems presented in the film, this genre film can be assigned to the style of realism.  Most of the film takes place in a post-industrial warehouse in the middle of Los Angeles, but there are other locales for scenes in this film, which include, but are not limited to, Pamela’s diner for the opening scene, the streets of Los Angeles for Steve Buscemi’s chase scene, and Joe Cabbot’s office for his meetings with Mr. Blonde and Mr. White, none of which include non-diegetic music (the only exception is the title sequence).  All of these settings are possible, even likely, for a realist film.  Its genre, however, is a slightly more complicated designation.  It includes features of thrillers, action adventure, mystery, drama, and crime fiction, which all blend together to create the dark humored, neo-noir crime thriller seen on screen (Heaton, 2011).

        As with any film, Reservoir Dogs’ industrial and social context had a major impact on its narrative, but instead of following along with industrial conventions, Tarantino decided to stray away from them completely.  Most films have a definitive rising action that is driven by some central conflict towards an easily identifiable climax.  After that climax occurs, there comes a resolution that answers the question of why the plot progressed as it did. However, Reservoir Dogs denies this standard of story telling.  There is disruption after disruption as the plot hurtles toward its bloody end.  The final scene is a rather unsatisfying conclusion because it never really answers the age old question; “what is the point?”  Calling the ending a resolution would be a misnomer because none of the conflicts in the film’s story are actually resolved.  Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Eddie (Chris Penn), and Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) end up shooting each other while in a standoff that began after Joe correctly accuses Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) of being the rat that sold out the group.  In the very last scene, Mr. Orange tells Mr. White that Joe’s suspicions were correct; he is in fact an undercover police officer.  The ensuing close up, low-angle shot of Mr. White’s reaction to this news makes the pain Mr. White feels very real and identifiable, but after the final shot goes off, the audience is left with absolutely nothing substantive.  A bank was shot up, innocent people were killed, and every robber is dead on a warehouse floor in the middle of Los Angeles.  The conclusion of this film is simply the death of every character.