Leary- Inglourious Basterds (favorite character)

Throughout the movie, Inglourious Basterds, I favored the character, Shosanna Dreyfus. Shosanna was introduced at the very beginning of the movie when Col. Hans Landa and his men shot her family. She luckily escaped and made it to France where she inherited a theatre, Le Gamaar, from her Aunt. She then met a German soldier who seemed to fall for her the minute he laid eyes on her. He convinced Goebbels to move the movie premiere to Shosanna’s theatre so that he could get closer to her. Shosanna thought it would be the perfect time to get revenge on the Nazi’s for killing her family and burn down the theatre.

The reason I favored Shosanna out of all the other characters is because she stood up for what she believed in, and was very strong even after what had happened to her at such a young age. She knew that what the Nazi’s were doing was wrong and that since no one was standing up for the Jews, she would have to. She was brave enough to risk loosing her life and her whole theatre just so she could make a point that if the Nazi’s go around acting like killing Jews is okay, then she can burn down the theatre, killing them all. She knew that killing these specific Nazi’s would end it all.

One particular scene that really describes Shoshanna’s bravery was when her face was projected on the big screen, telling the Nazi’s that they are all going to die. This scene starts with Shosanna saying that she has a message for Germany. She is the dominant in the scene since it is a close up on just her face, she is towering over every one making it so that she seems more powerful, her face is the center of the screen, and she is in black and white while the rest of the picture is in color which makes her really stand out among the crowd. This scene has very low-key lighting on everyone in the room but her. The lighting in the movie playing on the screen makes her face look very dark gray that really seems to stand out which may mean that she has this dark side of her. Throughout this scene, people in the audience start to stand up and shout at the screen, but her voice over powers everyone else’s and the people also look very inferior compared to her. After this, the screen starts to go up in flames. Shoshanna starts to do an “evil laugh” while the fire starts to burn her face. This seems to send kind of an evil message like she is the devil with the effect that the fire is giving off. Then, the first thing you see burn is the bright red Nazi signs that are hung above the audience throughout the movie theatre. I think that the mise en scene analysis for the Nazi signs could be that since they are hung high and are brightly colored, the Nazi’s are the ones in power. This gets turned around when the signs are the first to burn, which gives the message that the Nazi’s aren’t in power anymore. This part really seems to sum up the entire scene. Shosanna is showing that she is the most powerful character in this scene and that the Nazi’s are no longer in power.