That accursed armoured train connects both filmmakers directly. Keoma broadens the view of Castellari without inventing a review for Tarantino.
The tribute does not turn the films into a remake
Quentin Tarantino has acknowledged the link between the title of Inglourious Basterds and The Inglorious Bastards, Enzo G. Castellari’s film released in 1978 and known as That Accursed Armoured Train. In the Q&A at the Castro Theatre, which Michael Guillén covered for ScreenAnarchy on 24 August 2009, he explained his fascination with that title and with the general idea of a group on a mission. He did not present his film as a reworking of Castellari’s plot.
This clarification avoids a persistent misunderstanding. Two works can share an expression, a family of stories or an explicit admiration without having the relationship of original and new version. A remake requires a more concrete narrative continuity. A tribute can operate on a different level: acknowledging a tradition and prompting the audience to remember another film while entering a new story.
The filmed conversation between Castellari and Tarantino included in the 2008 edition of The Inglorious Bastards is another document of that connection. Its existence allows us to talk about a cinephile exchange, but it does not authorise us to fill the dialogue with praise that has not been verified. The relationship is interesting enough when it rests on identifiable encounters and statements.
That Accursed Armoured Train and the group adventure
Castellari’s film works with soldiers turned fugitives and with a mission that makes the boundary between criminality and heroism unstable. The organisation of the group creates conflicts before the final objective appears. The characters do not begin with complete trust or a comfortable institutional position. They must coordinate while retaining different interests, temperaments and ways of reacting.
That starting point favours action in which initiative can change hands. One character finds a way out, another complicates the plan and another contributes a necessary ability at a precise moment. The viewer needs to recognise each member well enough to understand what changes when they intervene. Characterisation can be quick and rely on clear gestures without ceasing to fulfil a narrative function.
The film uses war as a space for adventure, with an energy that does not match that of a solemn historical reconstruction. Uniforms, weapons and vehicles provide visible rules, but attention is focused on the group’s journey. That tonal choice can be debated; the important thing is to identify it. Asking it to function exactly like a testimonial drama would prevent us from appreciating what kind of experience it is trying to create.
The train, as both objective and moving machine, offers a particularly fertile action structure. It forces the relationship between timings, positions and access points. One task must be coordinated with another, and movement reduces the possibility of stopping to reorganise everything. The excitement arises when the film allows us to understand the plan and then shows which part has become uncertain. The geography of danger is as important as the number of explosions.
Keoma and another side of Castellari
Keoma, released in 1976 and starring Franco Nero, provides a useful contrast. Its western combines return, exclusion and family conflict within a much darker atmosphere. The protagonist enters a space marked by domination and illness, and his intervention pits him against both a collective order and personal ties that complicate the idea of belonging.
The way memories and figures from the past are presented alters the continuity of the action. Memory can burst in as a presence that shares the emotional space of the present, rather than functioning only as explanatory information. This device makes the character’s return feel laden with experiences that have not been left behind. The adventure is crossed by an intimate history that the protagonist’s body seems to carry.
The music contributes to a tone that may seem hypnotic or excessive depending on the viewer. It does not merely accompany the scenes discreetly: it makes itself heard as a voice that comments on or intensifies the characters’ fate. That presence helps to distinguish Keoma from a uniform idea of the Italian western. The genre allows for significant differences in pace, gravity and the relationship between word, image and song.
The comparison also affects the duration of a gesture: a pause can load Keoma’s face with doom, while a delay during the train mission threatens a coordination that needs to keep working. The rhythm changes with the dramatic problem.
Comparing Keoma with That Accursed Armoured Train allows us to see Castellari beyond a single label. The first proposes an experience of return and doom; the second organises the pleasure of a collective mission. This contrast is not intended to attribute to Tarantino a specific review of Keoma that is not documented. His admiration and the tribute to the title open the door to a filmmaker with a body of work of his own, whose interest does not depend on reducing every film to a precursor of another that came later.
See the selection of directors and actors admired by Tarantino.