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Austria's Waltz takes Cannes best actor prize as polyglot Nazi
2009-05-24
CANNES, France (AFP) - Austrian soap star Christoph Waltz clinched the Cannes film festival's best actor award Sunday for his role as a multilingual Nazi in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds." Waltz plays the smooth-talking villain of the flick, SS colonel Hans Landa, whose memorable one-liners had the Cannes audience chortling throughout the film. Critics widely agreed that the 52-year-old -- who spent most of his career in television acting -- outshone a star cast that included Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger or rising Irish star Michael Fassbender. Trained as a stage actor, he spent most of his 30-year career playing bad guys and melancholic types on German television, picking up a string of awards. But he also notched up a handful of film credits including alongside Kevin Spacey and Colin Farrell in the 2000 movie "Ordinary Decent Criminal." Describing his performance as "absolutely sensational," the Huffington Post said he had created "one of the wittiest, smartest and most compelling villains ever," one "who can make offering a glass of milk seem dripping with menace." "Waltz maintains a playful, silken menace, turning in an OTT performance that is somehow exactly right," wrote The Guardian. Tarantino's "Basterds", a genre-blurring Jewish revenge tale, displays the US director's trademark mix of snappy dialogue, extreme violence, quirky humour and cinematic allusions. Hitler, Goebbels and other members of the Nazi top brass appear in the movie which culminates in an outlandish plot to take out the German leadership at the Paris premiere of a Nazi propaganda film.
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