Elmer Bernstein enters Tarantino’s cinema through pre-existing works, with functions ranging from the memory of a star to the drive of an operation.
The Great Escape as a reminder of a possible career
Elmer Bernstein composed the music for The Great Escape, directed by John Sturges and released in 1963. The connection with Tarantino takes on an explicit form in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, when Rick Dalton recalls the possibility of having taken part in that film. The editing imagines him within the world associated with Steve McQueen and uses musical material by Bernstein, identified as Cooler.
The name Cooler refers to the isolation area associated with McQueen’s character. That reference concentrates an identity within The Great Escape: this is not simply an abstract evocation of soldiers trying to escape. Rick’s memory comes close to a very specific role, with an attitude and a way of occupying the screen. The music helps that fantasy retain the recognisable shape of someone else’s performance, even when the edit introduces another face in its place.
The function is not simply to add a famous march to a rescue scene. The music takes part in a professional fantasy: it helps the viewer recognise the film to which Rick feels he might have belonged. The quotation brings together image, role and prestige. For a few moments, a fictional career comes close to a real film history.
The passage expresses a difference between having had an opportunity and actually occupying the place. Rick can speak of his closeness to the project, but the film history known to the audience remains associated with McQueen. The score reinforces that recognition. Its familiarity makes the distance between the actor we see and the star whose position he imagines perceptible.
Bernstein did not compose for Rick’s frustration. The music comes from an earlier work and gains a new function by accompanying the counterfactual. The quotation allows a private feeling to be heard through a public legacy: a film known by many becomes the measure of a possibility a character could not fulfil.
Zulu Dawn and the energy of a war operation
Inglourious Basterds also uses Zulus, taken from Zulu Dawn, a 1979 film with music by Elmer Bernstein. The material forms part of the preparations for the cinema climax. Its origin should be distinguished from Zulu, the 1964 feature with music by John Barry. The similarity of the titles does not allow the films or composers to be swapped.
In the new context, the piece helps to organise the move towards a coordinated action. The viewer knows that several characters are moving with linked aims, even if not all of them share the same information. The music can gather those movements under a common pressure without needing to explain each connection verbally.
Its war-film origin establishes a kinship of energy, but not a historical equivalence. Tarantino is not literally comparing the conflicts depicted by the two films. He reuses a sonic structure capable of accompanying preparation, movement and threat. The fragment retains its past while the editing redefines what we expect to happen.
The difference from The Great Escape is clear. In Hollywood, recognising the quoted film is central to both the joke and Rick’s pain. In Inglourious Basterds, the music can do its job even if the audience does not know where it comes from. The same practice of reuse therefore produces two different relationships with the viewer’s memory.
Influence, credit and the scope of collaboration
Elmer Bernstein wrote for a wide range of genres, and reducing his contribution to generic epics would make it impossible to appreciate that variety. The Great Escape contains music capable of producing lightness, determination and suspense, in addition to its famous marching drive. Using a specific fragment selects one of those possibilities, not the whole identity of the score.
Its presence in Tarantino’s films concerns pre-existing music. It should not be presented as an original collaboration in which the two of them designed new sequences together. Accuracy in credit recognises Bernstein’s work and allows us to describe the director’s later intervention: listening, choosing, cutting and placing a recording in a different relationship with the images.
Nor should it be confused with Charles Bernstein, the author of White Lightning and The Entity. Both names appear in repertories used by Tarantino, but they belong to different careers. Full attribution prevents a soundtrack list from turning a coincidence of surname into an alleged stylistic continuity.
These examples help us understand influence as a concrete practice. Tarantino does not need to imitate a score from scratch in order to relate to it; he can bring it into his film and change its function. Bernstein then offers two forms of memory: that of a star and a role Rick desires, and that of a warlike energy driving other characters towards their action. The musical past remains recognisable, while the present of the edit decides what it means to hear it again.
Back to the Tarantino music collaborators guide.