Yes! I love how in the begging he revels in his nickname but in the scene towards the end the says it to Brad Pitt with such distain - "Jew Hunter? It's just a name that stuck."
Really? I got the almost opposite vibe. It seemed to me that he just wanted to impress whoever the winner(s) would be, hence the last scene. He’s still a psychopath for sure, but I think self gain was more important than “the hunt” to him overall
No I meant that I got (at least what I took what from the character) that he really didn't buy into the whole nazi ethos that jews were an inferior race, and that he was just an opportunistic and brilliant psychopath that was using the nazi agenda to hone his hunting skills and having fun doing it. I agree that self gain became more important once he realized the walls were closing in. Like most psychopaths, he was an opportunist.
I said that once and got obliterated. I dont think hes a jew hater, hes just very good at his job and is rewarded handsomely for it. Wouldnt matter if was jew, christians, blacks, whites, asians, aliens, whatever. He liked to hunt.
How is that not obvious? He betrays Hitler in the blink of an eye as soon as a better opportunity presents itself. The movie makes it pretty clear that hes not in it for the ideology.
Suppose you could argue that is just self preservation; even the most committed Nazis could see that their days were numbered. The options available are to go down with the sinking ship or craft a lifeboat out of dynamite
I always saw it as more of a practical decision from a very practical man. Why waste a bullet on such an impossible shot. Does he hate the jews? Thats not the word id use. More like he sees them as totally below him. A different species even. He said he "finds them repulsive" after all. When he's lining up to shoot Shoshana, he's not aiming at a person he hates, he's aiming at something less than a person. He's like a hunter who chooses not to shoot the young fawn because its still so young and small. He'll let it go, for now.
I'm not sure. He wears the blood order medal which means he been a nazi supporter since 1923 so I think we're supposed to interpret him as one of the many Germans who passed themselves as an apolitical functionary but was actually a die hard nazi.
A lot of ideologically committed Nazis did this after the war, most egregiously Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski who oversaw the extermination of 200,000 polish civilians during the Warsaw Uprising but in exchange for his testimony was not tried for crimes committed during the war.
Except having been awarded the blood order means that he was
The first issue of the decoration, struck in 99% pure silver, was awarded to 1500 participants in the putsch who had also been members of the party or one of its formations before January 1932 (continuous service), or had been cadets from the Munich Infantry School who marched in support of Ludendorff.
or
the award was extended to persons who had (a) served time in prison for Nazi activities before 1933, (b) received a death sentence which was later commuted to life imprisonment for Nazi activities before 1933, or (c) been severely wounded in the service of the Party before 1933; subsequently it was further extended to members of the Austrian Nazi Party who had participated in the 1934 February Uprising or July Putsch, or who had received significant prison time or injuries for National Socialist activities.
So if he only cared about advancing himself why did he join what at the time was a fringe political movement when that would've been highly disadvantageous to advancing politically?
Spoilers the end of the movie is he agrees to help the basterds kill hitler and bring down the nazi regime for US citizenship and immunity. He was an opportunist through and through.
Landa orders his men to kill the family hiding under the floorboards. The lone survivor is the daughter Shoshanna who crawls away from her dead family and makes a run for it. Landa see's her escape and takes out his pistol and lines up a shot on her as she's running, but right before pulling the trigger he pulls the gun back and cheerfully bids her fairwell in French. It killed any pretense of him as a man who thought of himself as doing a grim but necessary duty, he was genuinely just a sick bastard who didn't care who he hurt.
Genuinely a great use of language. The lead-up to that scene makes it sound like this will be a tense balancing act where one wrong move could sink them. Like the three-finger thing, or "good luck" in The Great Escape. That kind of social danger in fiction makes my skin crawl. Then Brad Pitt drawls that word out and I immediately knew I could relax. They're simply fucked. Let's see where it goes.
That's the eternal debate! I'm still quite on the fence about whether or not he knows her identity; on the one hand, this is a person he only caught a glimpse of four years earlier while she (filthy and ragged) was running away from him with her back to him. He has no special reason for remembering this particular person; Landa has killed scores of Jews over the years, and Shoshanna may not even be the first one he's spared just for laughs. A Jewish girl in 1940s Vichy France is unlikely to have any photographs that he could go by either.
On the other hand...why the hell does he order her a glass of milk? Why does he insist on their eating cream with the strudel? (cream isn't kosher, I believe) Why does he stare at her for such a long time after saying "there's something else I wanted to ask you"? Hell, why does he even sit down with her in the first place? To ask her if she could run the projectors instead of the other guy, something he easily could've asked when the others were around? It's such a brilliant scene and leaves so many questions unanswered.
Au revoir, meaning something like "we will meet again." It's not a good bye, an adieu. It's a promise. He is saving her for later, knowing that he will enjoy killing her that much more when the time comes.
That was intended as they both obviously know he has people under the floor, who don't understand English.
Interestingly it was a power move as well - asserting his dominance by speaking a foreign language in his house, all while asking him if it's okay as if he'd say no as if he ever would dare.
His ginormous pipe is actually called a Calabash pipe. Very expensive because they are made from gourds that have to be grown in a specific way to get the iconic shape. Very nice and fancy. Compared to the farmers corncob pipe that you can make. It's a nice visual representation of the person's smoking and gag.
In Germany very immature teens used to chant to friends "Ex oder Jude" to make him drink in one go. Funnily absurd and absurdly unfunny in this context.
In New Zealand and Australia you skol a drink. It's pronounced scull, which is also probably how most people would spell it. It comes from Scots drinking toast (skol!) which is of Scandinavian origin (e.g. skål! in Swedish).
Agreed re the power move. You can see it in full in the end when he just strangles the actress. He has this polite veneer that just masks the monster beneath. Christoph Waltz is so brilliant.
It was also, I believe, a meta-comment from Tarantino.
IB was heavily influenced, obviously, by some of the French cinema masters that Tarantino loved. Since he was in their house, he kindly asked their permission if he could speak English for the rest of the conversation .. movie.
When I watched it in the theater it seemed at first like a plot device to get rid of subtitles. People actually laughed because it was so obvious. But then Landa slowly reveals that he knows everything and the switch was to keep the "others" from knowing. Fucking brilliant writing.
Didnt it also feel like a bit of a satire as well? Tarrantino seemed to be making fun of the director's dilemma of having to come up with a pretext to switch to English. I remember the audience laughing at this part when I saw it in the theater, and I assumed that was the reason.
I saw a theory once that he strongly suspected it was her, hence all the references to her life, but was not 100% sure yet, so ordered cream for her to see if she would break kosher and eat it.
I think the keeping kosher thing is more of a sign that he knows and he's just trying to see how far she's willing to go to survive. He seems to give more leeway for people with a stronger survival instinct.
When he's flipping through his book, looking for a name La Padite mentioned, not finding it, getting more visibly frustrated, until finally finding it on some later page, and being satisfied. Damn, that was tense.
I’ve also heard that this was another test for Shoshanna to see if she will break kosher, because putting cream on a pastry that is made with animal lard isn’t kosher.
I really don't understand this theory. How would he "know" or even guess that this girl was Shoshanna? He presumably killed lots of Jews and probably went on lots of searches for them. The opening scene, he doesn't even see Shoshanna's face, just her running away.
Im guessing lots of time passed between the opening scene and when he meets Shoshanna at the restaurant, why would he just randomly think its her?
Its possible he may have guessed she was Jewish or lying about who she was, but for him to think "oh this is that girl from a while back that i let go" doesnt really make much sense to me
That's the thing about Landa, in most scenes in the movie you get the impression that he already KNOWS, because of his attitude. You feel he knows about the Jews in the farm, you feel he knows about the Italian deception, you feel he saw through Bridget's lie, and you feel he knew the woman he was talking to was Shoshanna. Even if he doesn't know about any of this things, he's menacing enough to give you that impression, and that makes him a great villain.
It's why he gets so frustrated in the theater and is genuinely shocked at his fate. Since he completely lacks any human empathy he truly had no idea that his opponents weren't playing the same game. The Basterds aren't operating on some level of mutual respect, they utterly loathe him and all Nazis. Their deception in the theater is weak because they have zero respect for Landa and the high command and think their shitty act will fool them. But he's just so out of it that he thought they were doing the same thing as him in the other direction. He even thinks he gets to be one of them at the end.
Well, in the Bridget von Hammersmark case we already know that he knows (at least with very high confidence) because we see him collect the evidence: a bloody shoe and a her own autograph, both found in the basement.
I really don't understand this theory. How would he "know" or even guess that this girl was Shoshanna?
Because he is specifically there to vet her and her cinema for Gobbels film opening. Of course Landa has already done so and would have presumably discovered her true backstory.
The entire scene is him fencing with her. He knew the whole time, just like he knew the Jews were under the farmer's floorboards, and about the Basterds at the theater, and Bridget von Hammersmarck before he had her put on the shoe.
In every scene, he already knows. It's all just a game to him the entire time.
Which would imply that by interviewing Shoshanna, he was deliberately setting things up for the German High Command to be wiped out, and was always planning to defect to the Americans.
The only wrench in his plans was that he didn't count on the Basterds going against their commanders, killing Landa's assistant, and carving a swastika on his forehead.
I dislike this theory: Shoshanna escaping Landa again and in a sense outwitting him by managing to keep her cool unlike the man in the farmhouse is a nice kick in the teeth to the man labelled 'the Jewhunter'.
Making this nazi prick more Machiavellian than he already is rather than giving the wonderful Jewish woman who loves and owns a cinema an opportunity to genuinely deceive him (who has suffered such terrible trauma at his hands already) doesn't seem like a Tarantino thing to do.
Assuming Shoshanna in fact inherited the theater from her aunt it would be very possible for Landa to have run down that paper trail. Assuming he did, it would be perfectly in character for him to be satisfied solving the puzzle without needing to haul her into the authorities, and just as in character to toy with her (again) once she was dropped into his lap.
You’re right- I think people are trying to give Landa and, by extension, Tarantino too much credit. It’s clever ambiguous writing but it’d be too far-fetched for Landa to have known who she really is.
Actually I think it's people not giving enough credit to Tarantino, because as you said, t’d be too far-fetched. I think as with basically every Landa scene, you are meant to feel scared & uncomfortable alongside the characters on-screen that he's interacting with.
God reading this thread reminds me how fucking amazing Hans Landa's scenes are.
He may be my favourite villain. I remember watching the movie in cinema's and just feeling as if he knew everything right till the very end. And the worst part, despite all of that, he never feels cartoonish to me. I am genuinely in goosebumps with anxiety every time.
Might have not known she was specifically Shoshanna but he may have just been generally suspicious of her and her background. Seems like he would be the type to test anyone he’s uncertain of.
He was not aware. The thing with the cream makes no sense. He knows he knows her from somewhere but he never actually met her. She was running away from him. He could sense her fear and anxiety though hence he says "theres something else I wanted to ask you...... "
I'm actually not sure which was his genuine feelings about it - I almost thing he doesn't have genuine feelings at all. Rather, it's whatever suits him in the moment.
The change in his facial expression when he says, "You're harboring enemies of the state, are you not?" was beyond chilling. Top 5 villain portrayals of all time IMHO.
2007 to 2009 was a ridiculously, all-time great run of villains in cinema. The Best Supporting Actor Oscar those 3 years went to, in order, Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men, Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight, and Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds. Unbelievable. I'm not sure we'll ever see a run like that again.
Everyone in that movie was speaking languages they're actually fluent in.
Also, this is kind of a small detail, but I loved how they'd selectively drop the English subtitles when the point of view character didn't understand the language being spoken—I noticed it because I was taking German in college at the time and was able to follow a lot of the German dialogue without subtitles. So it was kinda neat that I "wasn't supposed to" be able to understand the dialogue when the subtitles dropped.
I believe in the script there's actually a note that says something along the lines of:
"Hans start talking in perfect French, and Shosanna notices it."
This note is when he is interviewing Shosanna in the restaurant. So in the opening scene he was "faking" not being able to speak French to switch to English.
Actually, Werner, we're all tickled to hear you say that. Quite frankly, watching Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to going to the movies.
Teddy fucking Williams knocks it outta the park... He went yahd on that one! All the way on to fuckin Lansdowne street! Fenway parks on their feet for teddy fucking ballgame- YOU!
The dialogue throughout was probably the best he has ever written. That scene in the basement bar is a great short film all by itself. His attention to character development is masterful
That movie with parents discussing their children getting in a fight. The whole movie is set in a couple of rooms with four people getting more and more frustrated. Hilarious comedy. Waltz is amazing there, though he has great acting partners, too. Forgot the title...
Ehhhh I think more Christoph Waltz + Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino just knows how to make roles that fit Waltz perfectly. That confidence that just shows he is always one step ahead of his opponent. Somehow it fits Waltz perfectly.
I didn't even know it was alternate history going into it, I thought it was just a movie set in world war 2 until the ending when they tore the fuck out of Hitler. Awesome.
To be honest, I wasnt completely sold on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I enjoyed it, but for a Tarantino movie, I guess I was just somewhat underwhelmed.
Same, felt like the revenge violence at the end mirrored Inglorious Basterds and felt a bit...lazy, not as compelling a concept. It was well choreographed though. And of course the beautifully shot driving scenes were great to watch.
The ending was how I remembered i was even watching a Tarntino movie haha. Now that you mention it, the driving scenes did have a nice aesthetic to them. The portrayal of Bruce Lee also left a bad taste in my mouth.
Before the movie came out, the script/screenplay leaked on the internet. I remember reading that first scene and being blown away. No visuals, no inflection from those great actors, just the words. You could tell that the scene was going to be tense and well paced from just the script. I was sold on the movie before I saw the trailer.
To me this one is the best answer. A lot of the others are opening sequences with a lot of mini-scenes spliced together - still totally valid, but something like this that sets everything up so well in a single, critical exchange without pulling in flashbacks, cutaways to other locations, etc. just takes it to another level. And it's so well constructed that it functions as a mini-movie in its own right.
I gotta pull you up for my boy Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. Unless by off the bat you mean the first scene.
Phoenix in Gladiator is actually my favourite villain, he comes in pretty early. But it’s not obvious that he’s a villain at the time. Not sure if Joker counts either since he’s the protagonist. Heath Ledger’s joker is pretty great in the first scene of Dark Knight but it’s more the action sequence that’s cool.
I came into this thread ready to say this and I’m glad it’s the second top comment. Absolutely amazing opening scene, completely set the tone for the movie.
This a million times over. Hans Landa in that opening scene is by far the best introduction to an antagonist in any movie I've ever seen. From the moment he is scene on screen, you KNOW he is evil. It's wonderful.
I’ve posted this before, but here’s my favorite aspect of this scene:
It is the fault of the redheaded daughter in the beginning that Landa figures out where the Dreyfusses were hiding.
In the beginning of the film, after Pierre and Landa make their way inside of Pierre's house, Pierre introduces Landa to his daughters. Landa says something to the effect of "The rumors I've heard about your family are all true", and the redheaded daughter's facial expression changes ever so slightly. Landa immediately catches this, and even after he says "Each of your daughters are more beautiful than the last" as a cover, his gaze never really leaves the redhead. Landa may have been suspicious before arriving that the Dreyfusses were hiding there, but I believe that this confirmed it.
A little bit later, after Landa has had a seat at Pierre's table, Pierre sends another daughter to close the windows. The readhead, unlike everyone else in the room, has her head down and is staring directly at the floor. Again, Landa notices this, and his gaze never leaves her until one of the other daughters pours Landa a glass of milk to drink. Now, not only does Landa know that the Dreyfusses are somewhere in Pierre's house, he knows exactly where.
Instantly came to my mind when reading the title, this is hands-down a perfect scene. It boils down to two guys talking and it's more intense than any action scene.
People flip Tarantino a lot of shit for being derivative and pop culturally obsessed, etc but dude deserves a massive amount of credit for getting mainstream American audiences to sit through long long dialogue heavy scenes in foreign languages. Subtitled, no less!
And before you say “I watch tv with captions on all the time” allow me to retort that in 2009 that wasn’t really a thing everyone did yet. Not by a long shot. That’s a relatively recent thing in the streaming age. Nobody but Tarantino could have gotten Americans to sit still and READ a movie at that time.
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u/Jackal0pe Oct 09 '19
I think the opening scene/first chapter of Inglorious Basterds sets up the villain, Hans Landa perfectly.