Quentin Tarantino’s signature style can be seen to have began in his lost film My Best Friends Birthday, which featured his comedic editing and use of volatile language and snappy dialogue. Tarantino’s career began with Harvey Keitel’s dedicated support to the Reservoir Dogs script, whose career had been diminishing. His name helped the film to be made, as other stars began to consider the project. Tarantino’s style seemed unconventional to more experienced members of the industry.
He was heavily criticised for leaving in a graphic torture scene in the film. It was pegged as a revelation at Cannes, and won at the Toronto Film Festival the prize for best film. It made $3 million in the USA, only shown in 26 theatres in the first week, and 10 in the UK, making £100,000 in the first weekend. It was considered the best directing be but since Citizen Kane.
Tarantino thinks in oeuvres (body of work), considering his films connected. He is eager to avoid creating lesser works that affect the overall quality of his oeuvre, believing that his filmography would be healthier if all his films were well-made.
His films are distinct in their use of fast and witty dialogue over seemingly pointless subjects, chaptered plots and story’s following 1970s crime thriller cliches that he puts his own spin on via unique characters, dialogue, soundtrack and nuanced use of extreme violence for comedic effect. Tarantino’s filmography is consistently highly-praised and many, if not most of his films are considered masterpieces. There are many aspects of Tarantino’s films that make them recognisable as being made by him, including extreme, often ridiculous violence, clever and nuanced use of dialogue, non-linear/interesting approaches to narrative, obscure 1970/80s compiled soundtracks, re-occurring actors and riveting plots told through unique structure and use of perspective/audience positioning. He often also includes crude language used casually in his dialogue and many pop-culture references, of which are very specific to him and his tase in pop-culture, e.g films, music, etc., which make his films individually more unique to him as a stand-alone director.
He includes an abundance of subtext to his dialogue, which makes his more fun to watch. He also creates and holds suspense over the course of long scenes. All of his films include scenes like this, some include many of them. He will do this often through dialogue with subtle and hidden meaning, even if on surface level it is over pleasantries and/or seemingly unrelated topics. He will give the audience implicit information and often create constantly building tension by bringing the scene closer to a climax or realisation, and continues the tension even after that realisation. The characters take their time and chat over normal, even realistic matters. They do not speak quickly or purposefully for long periods of time, instead Tarantino establishes their motivations and goals to create binary oppositions and set the possibility for a climax, thereby establishing tension and building it through subtle dialogue slowly but evidently building to that climax. These scenes also rarely involve music, instead long, drawn out silence to draw the audience inti the scene, alongside the dialogue with subtext.
His films have become highly recognised, respected, discussed and aspired to in the film industry. He is considered an independent auteur director, all of his films instantly identifiable to him and his body of work, different in each story but connected through signature features of his style of directing and his striving for consistent success in his oeuvre.
Finley Cairns A-Level Film Studies Blog 
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