5. The Opening Scene - Redemption For LaPadite
A homage to a similar scene in his favourite movie The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, the opening of Inglourious Basterds perfectly showcases Quentin Tarantino's trademark inventive use of language and love for dialogue as Col. Hans Landa (
Christoph Waltz) interrogates a French farmer Perrier LaPadite
(Dennis Menochet) over whether he knows the whereabouts of the missing Jewish family the Dreyfuss's in Nazi occupied France. We are informed by a smart camera pan that they are living underneath the floorboards. After enjoying a glass of milk, toying with poor LaPadite in a Sherlock Holmes impression, even philosophizing with him and subtly threatening the lives of his own family, Landa promises LaPadite a pardon for hiding Jews and promises him anonymity from the Germans for the rest of the war if he was to give the Dreyfuss family up to him today. LaPadite, a good and religious man (notice the cross above his door in the image above), with a heavy heart, gives in to Landa's questioning for the sake of his own family and is traumatized to point to where the Jews are hiding. As the scene goes, Landa instructs his Nazi's subordinates to open heavy fire on the floorboards, killing the Dreyfuss family in hiding, except for one girl... Shosanna (
Melanie Laurent), who then runs for her life through the open fields. Landa, like a hunter pointing out a rat, sees her flee and she doesn't get very far before he points his Luger up at the back of her head as she's running away. After a considerable amount of time, as the prey is in the hunter's site, 'The Jew Hunter' lifts his gun to point to the sky, smiles, and says 'Au Revoir, Soshanna'. Whatttttttt?
The allowing of Shosanna to so easily get away in Inglourious Basterds always bugged me. I can only presume Tarantino ended the scene in such a manner perhaps to show that Landa, a character who always seems to be a head of the game - the one character who always seems to see the bigger picture of what is happening and how things will play (note the end scene and how he plays with Soshanna with the strudel) - knows that she will play a huge part in his life further down the road and that's why he lets her live, but I still don't like it. In a brief moment that was in the slightly longer Cannes cut of Inglourious Basterds but was since removed for the theatrical release, Landa remarks to his soldiers that the girl would likely freeze to death on the run in the coming winter anyway but it's an undeniable fact that the Jew Hunter, had his prey in his sights, and for reasons not obviously explained, he let her go free. Here's how I would have played the same scene... So LaPadite gives up the Dreyfuss' family under his floorboards and they are massacred in the same manner, except for Soshanna who once again makes her dash for freedom escape. BUT this time, just before Landa is to shoot her, the French farmer grabs his bottle of milk, hits Landa on the back of the head, temporarily stunning him. Landa's Nazi's then open fire on LaPadite, shooting a thousand bullets into his stomach, sacrificing himself to allow Soshanna to get away. LaPadite is redeemed for giving up the Dreyfuss' and it's Soshanna's ability to live like a rat that allows her to survive.