The Night Porter (1974)

Gabriele Ferzetti: Hans

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Quotes 

• Hans : I'm only here to ask you some questions on behalf of myself and the others, and to have a look at you. Look, I could have come at another time to see him too, but, I don't need to speak to him. I don't need to speak to him... in front of you. Useless. With this business of the trial, he's... become too diffident.

  Lucia : He's right.

  Hans : What do you mean?

  Lucia : Because then for the first time he saw you all clearly. Nothing's changed, has it?

  Hans : You're wrong. We've all had our trials. Now we are cured and live in peace with ourselves.

  Lucia : There's no cure.

  Hans : It is you who are ill. Otherwise, you wouldn't be with somebody who made you...

  Lucia : That's my affair.

  Hans : Very well. But nevertheless, your mind is disturbed. That's why you're here, fishing up the past.

  Lucia : Max is more than just the past.

  [Lucia crawls under a table] 

  Hans : Listen. Why don't you go to the police? If you want to, I'll take you. Hm?

  Lucia : Dr. Fogler, I remember you so well. You gave a lot of orders.

  Hans : Then you can't have forgotten that your Max was an obedient Sturmscharführer. Remember?

  Lucia : I don't remember.

  Hans : I certainly can't oblige you to remember if you don't want to.

  [clears his throat] 

  Hans : I'm only here to ask you to testify, to find out... if the situation in which you find yourself is of your own choice.

  Lucia : I'm all right here.

  Hans : Yes. You both want to live in peace, right? One lives in peace... when one is in harmony with one's close friends, when one respects an agreement. Tell Max that. We could have denounced him to the police for the murder of Mario. But we didn't. Max is ill. He mustn't be too far away from us! He's locked you up here. We could go to the police about that, too, no?

  Lucia : I'm here of my own free will. This chain is because of you, so none of you can take me away.

  Hans : If we wanted to carry you off, would this chain stop us? You poor fool. A chain can be cut. None of us is thinking of violence.

  Lucia : Hmm, I know how your, your witnesses end up. Max told me.

  [Lucia crawls out from under the table, away from Hans] 

  Hans : Max doesn't know what he's saying or doing. His mind is disordered.

  Lucia : [crawling into the bathroom]  Get out. Go away. Go away!

  [slams the door] 

  Hans : If you change your mind, if the chain grows heavy... call me.

• Hans : Max, our trials are held in private. They're also therapeutic, right? And the more shock value they have, the more effect they have. Only eyewitnesses can provoke this; because they go into details, they blurt out everything, they... you've seen it, haven't you? Only when confronted with *their* accusations can we discover how far we're able to defend ourselves!

• Hans : Remember. We must try to understand if we are victims of guilt complexes or not. If so, we must be *freed* of them. A guilt complex is a disturbance of the psyche, a neurosis.

  Klaus : Let's not delude ourselves. Memory is not made of shadows, but of eyes which can stare straight at you and fingers which point at you.