So, thinking again of the two scenes between Shosanna Dreyfus and Col. Landa:
Why did he let her go when she was a child? He could easily have shot her, or had his men do so, but chose not to. Even though he had no way of knowing what she would grow up to do, it doesn’t make sense.
In the streudel scene - “Attendez la creme!” does he recognize her, or not? If he does, why does he let her go once again? If he doesn’t, why does he torment her in that particular way? He had to have seen that she was more than usually nervous, even given that she was being interviewed by a high-ranking member of the occupying army. He was way too smart and observant not to.
It seemed to me that she was too far away for him to shoot.
I don’t think he recognized her – after all, he had only seen the back of her head for a few seconds, years before. He could tell she was nervous and hiding something, but he wasn’t able to get anything out of her.
As far as I can tell, Landa isn’t dedicated to the Nazi ideology. But he is a sadist, and uses his position to inflict emotional and physical pain on people under his control. He lets Shoshanna live, knowing she has to bear the grief and pain of her family’s death, mercilessly teases her with the creme[sup]*[/sup], and strangles the traitor actress to death.
[sup]*[/sup]I believe in that scene he knew who she was, as he was very far from stupid or unobservant, but then I’m generally accepting of fictional characters with an uncanny ability to ferret out hidden information. But even if he didn’t, he knew he was making her nervous, and he enjoyed messing with her.
I think that’s a good analysis, Bosstone, although I still feel he didn’t know who she was in the creme scene. But he definitely enjoyed making her squirm.
#1 - I think Landa just enjoys the hunt, and he thinks it would be interesting and/or amusing to let her go and see what happens.
#2 - This has been debated endlessly. Personally, I think that the scene is deliberately ambiguous. There’s no clear answer, and the plot works either way.
Landa tells the French farmer (I believe- it may be another character he tells) that he was an investigator, obviously of some renown, before the war. I think he lets Shoshanna go purely for sport, the way a fisherman might let a small trout go to grow so he can catch it later. I don’t think he recognized her at the restaurant but he did find her intriguing, and playing with someone who is ill at ease by being completely charming is his M.O…
He lets her go because Landa’s interest is in finding his prey, not necessarily killing them (sort of like a cat playing with a mouse). From a practical standpoint, he wasn’t likely to hit Shosanna (I remember thinking when I first saw that scene that it would be a helluva shot, especially with a handgun, and was glad that he didn’t take it). He had accomplished what he set out to do – find her family – and it didn’t matter to him that she got away.
It also makes him more unpredictable – from that point on, you never had any idea about what Landa would do in a situation. He could kill you, or he could let you go – purely on whatever whim he felt. That makes him a much more interesting villain. (It also made Landa’s turnaround in the end perfectly in character.)
I doubt he knew. He had never seen Shosanna’s face, so he had no way of recognizing her years later. He was playing with her because that’s what he liked to do.
Landa is cruel and sadistic. There is no indication that he has ever seen a picture of the girl, and since he only saw her back, she was not recognized. Landa does see that she is nervous, but he enjoys making people nervous and doesn’t understand why because he is too used to it. And he is obsessed with milk. All coincidence.
Unless, he too is planning on selling out the high command at that early stage.
And his fickle character that Reality Chuck describes is necessary to establish. And it would have been a helluva shot, although his support troops could have run her down.
1)Long shot, and secondly would have been difficult to justify (and in france the Germans were for the most part well behaved) shooting a young girl in the back, the family in the house could be waved off as “having resisted”.
Not entirely indifferent to the killing of his prey. Shooting Shossana’s family through the floor was a comeuppance only he could appreciate it. And by the look on his face, he did. Not so much the actual killing, but that by killing them he was letting them know he won.
Inglorious Basterds is in the Tarantino-verse which includes the screenplay for Natural Born Killers. For those who haven’t seen it, the main characters of NBK are husband-wife mass murderers who always leave one person at the crime scene alive so that he or she can tell the story. Perhaps Landa is somehow connected to this or at least of the same mindset.
But, thereagain, perhaps it’s to compare/contrast Landa to them. For example, there’s a scene in which the Basterds kill a German officer who is so stoic and brave that they receive absolutely no satisfaction from killing him, but they kill him anyway because that is what they do; meanwhile it is the villain- and no mistaking he’s a villain- who lets a Jewish girl go when he could easily kill her. (Perhaps not with his sidearm, but he could send some of the men who accompanied him on motorcycles after her- the French countryside in that scene wouldn’t be an easy place to hide and it’s doubtful many farmers would take in a Jewish girl whose family was just wiped out and who’s on the run from the Nazis.)
If I may add on a question, does it ever explain how Shosanna becomes the owner of the movie theater? She says, IIRC, that her aunt and uncle left it to her, but this is obviously false since she’s using an assumed name and any aunt/uncle she had would most likely be Jewish and long gone from Paris.
He was a hunter and a killer because he liked it and was good at it. He targeted Jews because that’s what the Nazi’s wanted, not because he shared their passion. He let her go because it was sporting, she’d shown some balls in making a break for it when all the others were cowering and would provide him with good hunting some other day.
He didn’t recognize her later, he was just toying with her because he could, and it’s in his nature, just like he toyed with the actress.
You’re misremembering that scene. The Basterds definitely do get some satisfaction — they’re all whooping it up at the end. I don’t think there’s really a contrast going on in that sense — both the protagonists and the antagonist are nasty people, but one is on the good side, and the other isn’t.
Col. Landa, from the script, as Shosanna runs away:
So he knew who she was just by looking at her from behind as she ran. If that’s true, he should have easily recognised her in the restaurant. The dialogue even foreshadows it.
But, just before the strudel scene, as Landa asks for a private word with Shosanna, Zoller says:
Which suggests to me that maybe, regardless of whether or not Landa knew who she was, he has a reputation for douchebag antics with anyone he’s suspicious of. And she certainly was acting suspicious. So maybe he really is just a sadist. It’s deliberately ambiguous but I’m inclined to think he was aware of her true identity, but he had nothing to gain from outing her as he didn’t care for Nazi doctrine. He just liked torturing her.
Well, not necessarily. They certainly didn’t have photos of everyone, just ledgers with names, ages, and the like. If he knew the family had a mother, father, young woman, and very young boy (don’t remember the exact family composition), a young woman running away could only be one person.
I think it was explained: the “aunt” and “uncle” were a French couple who took her in and told the Nazis she was their niece. They died during the war and she got the theater.