Okay, I'm new to this board and a major Tarantino-fan to boot. I just saw IB last week and I have a few questions regarding certain scenes that I'm little confused about:
1) Did anybody else notice Landa staring at the farmer's younger daughter after complimenting all three of them? Am I the only one who noticed that small little detail? There was something very strange about Landa intensely staring at her like that...I didn't really understand what Tarantino was trying to convey to the audience with that little staring contest going on between the younger daughter and Landa. What was the need for that small little detail in the script? Was there some kind of a sexual motive behind landa's stare?
I chalked it up to showing that if Landa wanted to take the girl with him, he could have. He had that power. And if the father saw it, all the better since the girl's father knew he could take her and there would be nothing he could do.
This is what I thought too. It's just the same as the milk-drinking or the bigger pipe or whatever in the back and forth that demonstrates that Landa is in control at all times. Plus it is creepy.
I was just re-reading the older posts and started doing a little googling on sexual abuse and rape during world war 2. I came across this website
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/actu/actu00/doc2000/womensex.html which contained a lot of information and interviews, taken of some of the female survivors.
I found out that it was in fact very common for SS officers to rape/sexually abuse Jewish women. So since it is a historical fact, I would not be surprised if Landa actually didn't live up to his promise of letting go of La padite's family. For all we know (as I have mentioned before on this thread that we never got to see what happened to La Padite and his daughters) Landa might have instead shot La Padite and his eldest daughters and he and the other three SS officers with him gang-raped and murdered the youngest daughter.
Another thing I've been thinking about lately is what do you think Landa was up to in the four days that passed after the theater got blown up and before he arrived at the forest near the American lines? What do you think transpired in those four days? Landa obviously spent those four days with Raine and Utivich tied up. The audience never got to see this interaction, which means it is a "missing moment". I for one would have loved to see the conversations and chatting going on between Raine and Landa in those four days that passed!
Not only that but I would have loved to see the look on Landa's face if he had ever come to know about Shossana's plan! Do you think there were any survivors from that explosion? If there were what would have happened if the Basterds questioned or interrogated the survivors and came to know about Shossana's plan? What would have happened if Landa came to know from some of the survivors (or the Basterds reveal this information to him at some point) that the theater owner's real name is Shossana Dreyfus (which Shossana anyway reveals to the audience as the smoky figure of her face was burning on the screen before the bombs were set off. So if there were any survivors from that explosion, the survivors will most probably remember her name) and not only that but of Shossana's successful plan of burning the theater? I'm sure Shossana's plan must have spread through word-of-mouth (few weeks after the explosion) from some of the survivors from the explosion as the American soldiers investigate the explosion and interrogate the survivors.