So were the undergrad references to Pabst, Reifenstahl, and UFA. If he’d cracked open Eisner’s “The Haunted Screen” or Kracauer’s “From Caligari to Hitler,” he might have brought some depth to the interplay between German movies and their reflection of the Third Reich’s rise. Instead of being Godard, he settles for pretending he’s Godard and wastes the premise he sets up. The irony here is that the French girl sees what’s happening in the films she shows, while the German sniper is clueless. Without explaining that–either outright or showing us some revealing clips from UFA’s heyday–it’s pointless for most audiences. And that’s why the picture’s fantastic climax dissolves into a cartoon sequence. The majority of the audience never gets what’s on the screen is as evil and seductive as the villainous Philistines cheering it. Hitler, Goebbels, and the rest deserve to die because they hijacked one of the greatest studios in movie history. That’s why it’s funny. But if Tarantino even gets his own joke, he’s too carried away to let his audience in on it.

Never mind that he fails to make the connection between the Jewish GI’s scalping of Nazis and the Apaches vengeance on racist settlers in American Westerns. (Or the business with the baseball bat and anti-Semitism in American sports.)

We expect adolescent self-indulgence from Quentin. It’s his calling card. But self-inflicted ineptitude is not to be indulged.