A Revisionist History of Violence: The Nostalgia and Fantasy of 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'

Nostalgically evoking a long-gone Los Angeles and its golden-age movie industry, Quentin Tarantino once more uses cinema to fantastically avert a grim real-life tragedy: in this case, the Manson Family murders. As Mel Campbell argues, the relative restraint of the film – broken by a darkly comical explosion of violence near its conclusion – only serves to mask the various off-screen horrors hinted at in its narrative, both real and fictional.

Additional keywords:
New & Notable, senior secondary, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Bruce Lee, Charles Manson, Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski, Asian-American, Inglourious Basterds, Reservoir Dogs, western, New Hollywood, hippie, revisionism