3. Deaths Switch Over
There's two significant female deaths in the final act of Inglourious Basterds - one where the German movie star/British wartime spy Bridget Von Hammersmark (
Diane Kruger) is strangled viciously to death by Col. Hans Landa for betraying the Nazi's (0r is it because she insulted his intelligence by the ski story???) and the other where Soshanna is shot to death by German war hero Frederick Zoller (
Daniel Bruhl). Two cool death scenes that work on there own merit but I can't help but think Tarantino made a mistake in how he arranged the death scenes. Why didn't he write them the other way around? In all the scenes involving Zoller and Shosanna, it's made clear the German war hero has a deep lust for Soshanna... and in that red dress, well it's pushed his animalistic instincts over the edge. Shosanna has flirted with Zoller to get the Nazi officer inside the projection room to avoid shouting in the corridor (and giving her game away) only to once again reject him. But this time, instead of Shosanna shooting him in the back as a pre-emptive shot, why not have Zoller force himself on Soshanna and to stop herself being raped, she reaches for her gun and shoots Zoller. Zoller strangles Shosanna in a mixture of anger and sexual desire, despite being wounded, and Soshanna, now almost breathless manages to shoot him again... but Zoller's grip on her remains tight and he kills her, before then expiring himself from his wounds, lying on top of her. Looking like two lovers exhausted after making love, though blood and not semen is the giveaway for what happened. For Bridget Von Hammersmark's death at the hands of Landa... all the Tarantino foot fetish stuff could work as before but just have Landa shoot her. He's not somebody who is previously built up to be someone who has the anger in him to kill someone by his own hands and he's so neat and precise, why wouldn't he use the gun?