Tarantino has called Sergio Leone his favourite director and described Inglourious Basterds as a western, and the film opens by saying so: the first title card reads "Once upon a time... in Nazi-occupied France". What is Leone's:
- The opening sequence. A long, almost silent scene at an isolated farmhouse, built out of waiting, tiny gestures and a threat that stays conversational far past the point of comfort, which is Once Upon a Time in the West's opening restaged
- Extreme close-ups on eyes cut against wide landscape, held longer than the information requires
- Duration as the weapon. Leone's scenes are long because the length is what hurts, and the tavern scene and the strudel scene use exactly that
- Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack, in cues written for Leone's westerns and reused here
Filed MEDIUM because it is a register and a method rather than a story: Basterds borrows how Leone films a scene, not what happens in one.