Christoph Waltz: Hans Landa – Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Quentin Tarantino’s movies are not ‘blockbusters’ in the traditional Hollywood sense of mega budgets and big names, all flung against vast CGI set pieces. And yet he does cast big names, and he does use effects. The difference is simply that every last moment of a Tarantino movie is saturated in his own unique style. His movies are blockbusters on the basis of how the word should truly be defined. Pieces of cinema that triumph through extraordinary and visionary film-making.
For Tarantino, however, his commitment to his method has occasionally led to major production problems. We have been witnessing this for the past couple of years with the stilted development of The Hateful Eight – but never was a project closer to being shut down once and for all than 2009’s World War Two saga, Inglourious Basterds.
Tarantino had written the script in 1998, and after Death Proof in 2007 finally felt in a position to put it on the front line. But Inglourious Basterds contained something very specific, something on which Tarantino would refuse to compromise. This was the part of Nazi Colonel SD Standartenführer Hans Landa – The ‘Jew Hunter.’ A deeply sadistic, murderous and egotistical man who is also impeccably courteous, ridiculously intelligent and thrives on passive-aggression, Landa was, according to Tarantino, the best character he had – or ever would – write.
Every A-lister in Hollywood wanted the role (the exit’s that way, Leo) but Tarantino’s drive for character authenticity also required that the actor was fluent in at least English, German and French, and that he was as unfamiliar as possible. As actor after actor passed by, Tarantino began to believe that he had basically created a character that was simply ‘unplayable.’ He insisted to the producers that if this turned out to be the case – that if they could not find someone who could deliver Tarantino’s precise vision of Landa – the movie would not go ahead.
Just a few hours after Tarantino had said these words, the German casting director, scouting around in Berlin, made a suggestion. There was a German actor, who met the language criteria and who despite having been a prolific in German theatre and TV for over 30 years, was completely unknown to the English-speaking world. His name was Christoph Waltz. At this, the eleventh hour, Tarantino sent him the script.
Waltz recalls being attracted by the script’s front cover, with its misspelled title written in Tarantino’s own ‘squiggly’ handwriting (the same writing of the movie’s onscreen title.) He was asked to come for a short script reading with Tarantino. They read through the entire thing.
Capable of not only Landa’s linguistic prowess, but also of both his civility and his violence, Tarantino knew that in Waltz he had found what was to be, ‘his secret weapon.’ Tarantino was able to exploit Waltz’s obscurity not just for the audience but also for the cast, rehearsing and talking the part over with him in private so that when the full force of SS Col. Hans Landa was released during the actual takes, the other actors felt the impact of the performance almost as much as the viewers.
And what an impact it was. If ever there has been a truer ‘discovery’ story than Waltz’s, it is difficult to find. He arrived into international consciousness with eloquence, a quiet assuredness, and amidst a meteor-shower of awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Many actors who come from nowhere into major roles contribute in some way to making that movie what it is. Very few, however, could claim that they actually ‘saved’ it. But this is the case for Waltz. When he gave his characteristically composed Oscar acceptance speech, he thanked Tarantino for having found him, and for ‘giving him back his vocation.’ Tarantino’s response was simple: “You gave me my movie.”