One of the coolest things about Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is the multi-lingual dialogue. The standard formula in mainstream movies is for characters to adopt some dodgy accent to tell audiences that they are speaking a foreign tongue (witness Daniel Day Lewis in ‘Nine’).
In this movie we hear English, French, German and Italian with SS Jew hunter Col. Hans Landa (played brilliantly by Christoph Waltz) being the most linguistically gifted. Tarantino takes huge liberties with historical accuracy but when it comes to language he is deadly accurate.
With this simple gesture he exposes the ridiculous notion that audiences will be put off by having to read subtitles.
