knowledge is deliberately given to the audience in order to create stronger emotional investment in the story. The scene becomes ten times more suspenseful now because they know that Perrier is lying to Landa about his knowledge on the whereabouts of the Dreyfuse family (the family he is hiding). It is now only a matter of time that the suspense and the tension is resolved, whether that is Landa finding the family or Perrier getting away with it, and the audience knows it. It can be directly compared to Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘ticking bomb’ theory of suspense. Hitchcock explains that if two people are talking around a table and suddenly a bomb explodes from underneath the table, there is minimal tension. There is only surprise for the audience and even that won’t last long. Instead, if the audience is told that there is a bomb underneath the table (the family) and it is going to go off, the scene becomes much more suspenseful. Tarantino’s ‘elastic band’ comparison adds to Hitchcock’s suspense theory. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he explains that the longer the scene can hold (the longer the elastic band is stretched), the more tension is built. The outcome or resolution is also much more impactful the longer the scene holds. Eventually, Hans Landa does get Perrier to tell him where the family is hiding, and he brings the soldiers in to shoot into the floorboards. There is so much dust, splinters, screams and blood that it is as if a bomb had indeed exploded from underneath the table.

To conclude, this opening scene is a textbook example on how to build suspense. It is so creatively written and every time I come back to watch this film, I am hooked by this scene and that is why it is my ‘cinephiliac moment’. This scene can be related to wider obdurate issues in film culture and history as an example on how to build proper tension in film and television. There are many films now, mainly horror films, that will opt for cheap jump-scares in order to scare the audience. However, scenes such as the one I have analysed and characters such as Hans Landa are much more terrifying, tense and suspenseful than any ‘demon nun’ screaming at something.