Credit: Far Out / Miramax Films
Mon 8 June 2026 18:45, UK
If there’s any director who deserves the title of being a cinema expert, it’s Quentin Tarantino. I mean, just look at his movies – they’re jam-packed with references to other movies, to the point that, to some, Tarantino’s work is nothing more than an endless body of homage.
It can be hard to argue with this idea at times; every Tarantino movie pays tribute to genres, lines of dialogue, characters, musicians, and specific scenes that have come before him, although he arguably takes these references and injects them with his own distinctive mark… The fact that something can be identified as Tarantino-esque is proof, even if what makes up a Tarantino movie is a heavy load of references to pre-existing works of art.
But isn’t every filmmaker inspired by the movies that came before them? Tarantino just so happens to have a pretty intense love for immersing himself in the history of cinema; his interest in discovering the most obscure B-movies as much as classic blockbusters cannot be separated from his approach to bringing his own ideas to the screen.
Having worked in a video rental store during the 1980s while trying to break into the industry, Tarantino’s life has always been consumed by cinema. Surrounded by endless rows of movies waiting to be watched, he seems to have indulged in every title imaginable. You only have to read any interview with the director to see that he really has seen pretty much everything. He seems to be an expert on every genre, every cinematic movement, every director. Well, not quite.
Tarantino might have seen enough ’50s sci-fi B-movies and Japanese martial arts films to make him an expert on these specific cinematic niches, but he’s actually never watched the classic 1965 musical The Sound of Music.
The impact of the movie cannot be glossed over – it was consistently number one at the box office for months, grossing $287.8million and earning the hearts of people the world over. Julie Andrews charmed audiences as Maria, a governess who cares for the seven von Trapp children before marrying their father, all set against the backdrop of the Anschluss in Austria.
With classic hits like ‘My Favourite Things’, ‘Do-Re-Mi’, and ‘So Long, Farewell’, the musical is arguably one of the most popular and enduring, and it’s actually bizarre that Tarantino has never seen it. It’s not like he’s against musicals, either.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
A few years back, he called Steven Spielberg’s version of West Side Story “a true cinematic spectacle”, which presumably means he has seen the original 1961 film, too. But when asked by Jimmy Kimmel to name the biggest movie he has never seen, Tarantino was honest with his reply, “I’ve never seen The Sound of Music.”
Many of us have cinematic blind spots because, let’s be real, there are just too many movies for a single person to get through in their lifetime. For Tarantino, it’s a beloved musical classic widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made, and one that he’d probably quite enjoy.
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