Oskar Werner credited as playing...
Dr. Wilhelm Schumann
- La Condesa: I'm sure you never have any problems sleeping.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: No, never.
- La Condesa: Tell me your secret.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: A clear conscience, of course.
- La Condesa: [sarcastically] That's a neat trick: having a clear conscience when you work as a doctor on a ship which has six hundred people living on an open deck.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: What are you laughing at?
- La Condesa: My house has been burned, they have taken everything I had - now I am being taken to prison to an island I know nothing about, and you are giving me a Sunday School sermon.
- La Condesa: To think, isn't it wonderful: two strangers on a ship - we will never meet again. We can talk - we can talk like friends, or even lovers... we can talk like two people who meet on the other side of the grave.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Keep talking.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: [looks enchanted] You're so strange. Sometimes you're so bitter, then you're soft and warm like a child.
- La Condesa: [smiles plainly] I'm just a woman
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Who puts 600 people on a deck with only two outlets to wash?
- Lt. Huebner: Huh, you don't know them; they wouldn't wash if they could. You don't know what pigs they are.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: The deck is to be cleaned. Bring the hoses out.
- Lt. Huebner: The hoses?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Bring the hoses out, I said!
- Lt. Huebner: I cannot turn the hoses on them.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: It's better to turn the hoses on them than for them live this way, no?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: I wonder if it's true, that life is as stupid and meaningless as it seems to be on this ship.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: You just can't take pills every time you can't sleep or any time you want to be stimulated or sedated.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: When I had my heart attack, there was a dream I had. You can talk about death - I've seen it many times as a doctor - but you never know what it's like until it happens to you... I dreamt I had already died. I dreamt I was in a box with sweat broke out all over my body. I wanted to cry out 'I can't be dead, I haven't lived!'.
- Capt. Thiele: Who has?
- Capt. Thiele: I'm glad to get out of Veracruz. The whole damn country is ready to explode. Well, did you get a look at them? Anything interesting? Anything interesting at all?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: There is a dwarf. That high.
- [holds his hand level with his hip]
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: A couple of young American painters. And a Jewish salesman - with an infectious sense of humor.
- Capt. Thiele: Women, Willie. Women!
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Well, a rather attractive middle-aged American woman, but I'm afraid she's too far from the cradle for you.
- Capt. Thiele: Those are the kind that can sometimes appreciate what they are getting.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: What are you laughing at?
- La Condesa: My house has been burned. They've taken everything I had. Now, I'm being taken to prison to an island I know nothing about. And you're giving me a Sunday school sermon.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: You can put your robe back on, now.
- La Condesa: You gonna help me?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Your Doctor may have helped you to often.
- La Condesa: I'm very helpless at this moment.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: How old are you?
- La Condesa: Old enough, as you can see. Much too old.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Forty-five?
- La Condesa: Not *that* old.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: How old are you?
- La Condesa: Forty-two.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Take off your robe.
- La Condesa: You're sure you're the ship's doctor?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Oh, I am the ship's doctor.
- [La Condesa removes her robe]
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Lean forward please. What is it?
- La Condesa: Your hands are cold.
- La Condesa: What about your childhood? Did nothing gay ever happen to you, at all?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: No. I was the perfect dupe. I believed anything anybody told me. I was full of the highest hopes and the most unbelievable innocents. However, it's true, at the age of 12, I did have an experience with the housekeeper. It left an indelible impression on me, shocked my mother to no end, and cost the poor girl her job.
- La Condesa: Well, There is hope for you, after all.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Our biggest mission in life is to avoid being fools.
- [takes a sip of brandy]
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: And we wind up being the biggest fools of all.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: When I think of the things I have seen on this ship. The stupid cruelties. The vanities! We talk about values? There's no values. They're done with.
- Capt. Thiele: What would you have liked to have been, Willy?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: A good doctor.
- Capt. Thiele: Don't you think you are?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Fair to middlin'.
- Capt. Thiele: What should I tell them this time?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Tell them anything you like. Tell them I had to fix the toilets.