My favorite character in Inglourious Basterds is Colonel Hans Landa. He is a cruel and ruthless, but charming, and intelligent German SS officer in the Nazi army. He is nicknamed "The Jew Hunter" in reference to his keen ability to locate Jews hiding throughout France. He is a high ranking member of the National Socialist German Workers Party holding the rank of Standartenführer Colonel in the SS. Despite several loyalty awards in the SS, Landa does not believe in Nazi ideology, and by the end of the film he is revealed to be driven by ambition and gladly switches sides over to the winning party when opportunity strikes. Tarantino, through mise en scene, depicts the evilness of Landa and is able to portray his true character.
Chapter One of "Inglourious Basterds" begins in rural France, during the first year of the German Occupation, by depicting a French farmer named Perrier Lapadite, who’s hiding a Jewish family in the cellar of his house. In the first heavy-duty dialogue-driven scene, the Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) unexpectedly arrives at the farmer’s house and begins interrogating him. Two glasses of milk later, the farmer is forced to reveal the whereabouts of the Dreyfuses, the Jewish family he’s hiding, which leads to the first of many massacres of bullets flying all over the place.
In this scene and throughout the whole movie you can see the wicked evilness of Landa. In almost every scene he is in he is the dominant image. Throughout the movie, Landa is positioned in the center of a scene; he is usually talking or giving orders showing his power over others. Also, he wore many awards on his uniform showing his supreme authority over others. Tarantino does a really good job at getting the point across that Landa is a sly, manipulative, and ruthless SS officer and that is why Landa is my favorite character in this movie.