Hans Landa explained: Tarantino's greatest villain and Christoph Waltz's breakout

Hans Landa explained: who he is

Landa is a Standartenführer in the Sicherheitsdienst, the SS intelligence service, assigned to occupied France. He is proud of his nickname and compares himself to his boss Reinhard Heydrich, who disliked the name the people of Prague gave him. He speaks German, French, English and Italian, and uses languages as a weapon, switching between them to control a conversation. He is polite, circumspect and charming, and also arrogant, opportunistic and relentless.

What drives him

Landa says his job is to find people and that the fact they are Jews is of no consequence to him. Waltz described him as someone who understands how the world works and for whom the swastika means nothing. If anyone called Landa a Nazi, Waltz said, he would correct them: wearing the uniform does not mean believing the ideology. Waltz called him realistic to the point of being inhuman.

That is what makes him frightening. He is not driven by hatred but by vanity and survival, and he will serve whichever side lets him win.

Key scenes

Each of Landa's major scenes turns politeness into a threat.

• The opening interrogation of a French dairy farmer, which ends with the family hiding under the floor being shot and Shosanna escaping.
• The strudel scene with Shosanna years later, which Waltz discussed at length in interviews.
• His exposure of Bridget von Hammersmark through a lost shoe at the premiere.
• His negotiation with the Allies, in which he demands immunity and rewards for letting the theatre plot go ahead.

The ending: the swastika

Landa switches sides and lets the plan to kill Hitler and the Nazi leadership in the cinema succeed. In return he demands full immunity for his war crimes. The surviving Basterds honour the deal on paper, then kill his radio operator and carve a swastika into his forehead so that he can never shed his past. Tarantino later said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that, in his mind, Landa is celebrated as a hero in history books and retires to Nantucket, where he solves murders as an amateur detective.

How Christoph Waltz got the role

Tarantino originally wanted Leonardo DiCaprio, then decided the role needed a German-speaking actor. He feared the part was unplayable and was prepared to drop the film if he could not find the right Landa. When Waltz, an Austrian actor, read for it, Tarantino said he gave him his movie back. Waltz had no prior contact with Tarantino or producer Lawrence Bender and assumed the Landa scenes were just being used to cast other roles. He said he was most impressed by the dialogue and the depth of the character. Landa is based on SS officer Alois Brunner, and his name may come from SS officer Hans Latza.

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