Cassimere; Ingourious Basterds

My favorite character in Inglourious Basterds is Shosanna Dreyfus. After escaping Col. Landa and his men in the French countryside, she moved to Paris where she ran a small
movie theatre. She was able to stay under the Nazi radar because she was smart and kept a low profile. Shosanna knows what she has to do in order to survive and is able to keep her cool in heated situations, even when she comes face to face with the man responsible for the death of her family. She is the only one in the movie to successfully get rid of the Nazi high command without being found out. She is a strong female character who is brave and ambitious, and rightfully takes revenge on those responsible for the wrongs done to her.
Shosanna’s character is best displayed in two particular scenes: the scene where she is “invited” to lunch with Frederic Zoller and the following scene when she is talking to Landa about the premier of Nation’s Pride being moved to her theatre. Both of these scenes display Shosanna’s ability to appear calm and collected, even when she is scared.
The scene where Shosanna meets up with Frederic Zoller at the restaurant has natural lighting and light dark colors. It is obvious that she feels uncomfortable in this situation and this feeling is emphasized by the frame and camera proxemics. The frame is tight when the whole group is included in the shot, leaving Shosanna on the edge of the screen. When she speaks, the camera focuses only on her and leaves everyone else out of the shot, emphasizing that she is not one of them. When Col. Landa enters, the camera moves to Shosanna’s face, and then slowly up to Landa, as if it was parallel to where she was looking. Since Landa’s face is left out of the shot until Shosanna looks at it, the audience feels as though they are anxiously looking up to meet his gaze along with her. When she is talking to Landa alone, only her face is in the shot and she has very little room to move around in the frame. Once he leaves, the camera slightly moves over, allowing her more space, as she finally begins to breathe.

Roulakis - Inglourious Basterds

My favorite character in this movie was Colonel Hans Landa. Christopher Waltz played this role magnificently and although I hate to say “the bad guy” was my favorite character, he was. This character constantly gave me the chills and continuously kept me guessing whenever he was in a scene. The first scene in particular with the dairy farmer created a distinct character that we could recognize throughout the movie. There is constant irony whenever he is in a scene and he easily instills fear to his victims as well as the audience (me!). For example, in the first scene when he asks the dairy farmer to use his pipe, he brings out this huge pipe, basically showing that he believes he is bigger, more important than others. Something else that makes him stand out is that he is always acting and playing a role as the detective. He is constantly playing dumb, and often uses comedy to “lighten” situations before preparing what is normally a verbal attack on his victims. In every scene he questions his victims, he acts friendly and plays mind games. His dialogue is normally somewhat comical and he often uses silly expressions.

The scene with the dairy farmer is shot in a social setting while he is questioning him, and he is pretending to not know that he is hiding anyone. Normally you can see the both of them up until he stops his act, the camera zooms into his face, making it an intimate shot. This is when he confronts the farmer about hiding Jews in his home. The camera then switches to the farmers face and it keeps switching back and forth to the characters as the farmer confesses, zooming in closer and closer to their faces as their conversation continues. The lighting in this scene is somewhat dark, which is because the daughters close the window, but it creates a dim mood which makes the viewer understand that something bad could potentially happen.

Lighter - Col. Hans Landa

My favorite character in Inglourious Basterds is Col. Hans Landa because of the charm he has even though he is known as the “The Jew Hunter.” Tarantino did an amazing job of picking all of his character for this movie, they are authentic in the way that they speak their own language and have the proper accents. I think the scene that one of best scenes that illustrate Landa is the very first scene in the movie. Landa seems to know that Perrier LaPadite is hiding Jews in his floorboards but goes about it like he doesn’t know. He caresses his way into making Lapadite tell him that he is in fact hiding “enemy’s of the state” in the floorboards. The scene is very dark which makes the mood of the scen very dramatic. Also, when the Jewish family is shown hiding in the floorboards, it is shown from up above looking down into the floorboards. This represents them as weaker than Landa. Landa has all the power in this scene. A very interesting part in the scene is at the end when Shoshana is running away and Landa seems to be very relaxed about catching her. He has no sense of urgency to kill her, which may show a compassionate side of him that wouldn’t be expected of him.

Lucio Inglourious Basterds favorite character

My favorite character would have to be Colonel Hans Landa. He captures my attention from the beginning of the movie in the first scene. The performance of Christoph waltz is magnificent because he is able to portray a very unique character in Landa. Like the majority of Nazi officers Landa has a hatred of Jews, but he is completely aware that he has no real reason for this hatred. He knows that what he does is wrong yet he does it anyway because he truly enjoys it. There are absolutely no rationalizations in his mind about his actions. And one more thing, he is extremely intelligent and very good at what he does. The first scene of the movie is what best demonstrates these attributes. In this scene, Landa manages to be absolutely despicable yet brilliant at the same time. That is what makes the scene so intriguing to me. Landa approaches the house in his uniform with his crew. Their uniforms symbolize their unity and authority over everyone else and bring fear into the eyes of the citizens. Landa, however, enters the house alone to question the family. I think this means that he is the head of the group, but it also symbolizes that he is somewhat different from the others. He sits down at the table and is brought a glass of milk while the others stand around him. This demonstrates even more his power and the fear he brings out of others. He interrogates the family about their neighbors who were Jewish, but he is aware the entire time that the Jews were being hidden in the house. He went along with his deceiving smile and false friendliness to trick and manipulate the man. In the end, he gets the man to admit what he was doing and kills the Jews hidden in the floor, but one escapes