The Keep (1983)

Gabriel Byrne: Kaempffer

Photos 

Quotes 

• Major Kaempffer : [frightened]  What are you? Where do you come from?

  Molasar : Where am I from? I am... from YOU!

• Captain Klaus Woermann : At Poznan, a year and a half ago, SS Einsatzkommando executed men, women and children. Children for God's sake! Ruthlessness? Courage?

  [whispers] 

  Captain Klaus Woermann : How many times in this Keep have you wet your bed?

  Major Kaempffer : Don't you talk to me about courage! Were you with the German anti-fascists fighting us in Spain? No! Did you stop the Einsatzkommando at Poznan? No! You have the debilitating German disease Woermann - Sentimental talk! It allows you to feel sensitive, superior, and yet stay safe because you take no action. Your sentimental suffering makes me sick!

  Captain Klaus Woermann : For once your right, Kaempffer. I'm only half a man. All that we are is coming out! Here in this Keep!

  [laughs] 

  Major Kaempffer : The man sees the truth.

  Captain Klaus Woermann : And what truth do you see? What are you discovering about yourself Kaempffer, uuh? "I murder all these people. Therefore, I must be powerful." And you smash them down only because that raises you up. It's a psychotic fantasy to escape the weakness and disease you sense in the core of your souls! You have scooped the most diseased psyches out of the German gutter! You have released the foulness that dwells in all men's minds! You have infected millions with your twisted fantasies! And from the millions of diseased mentalities that worship your twisted cross... What monstrosity has been released in this keep? Who are you meeting, Kaempffer, in the granite corridors of this keep?

  [pokes Kaempffer with his finger, whispers] 

  Captain Klaus Woermann : Yourself.

• Captain Klaus Woermann : What's all the shooting in the village, huh?

  Major Kaempffer : A civilian to be interrogated. He resisted, and was shot!

  Captain Klaus Woermann : Another civilian! The courageous Einsatzkommondo again is victorious!

• Major Kaempffer : In this village... partisans have been operating against the Greater German Reich!

• Major Kaempffer : [whispers]  I will tell you something if you allow me. The people that go to these "assessment camps"... There are only two doors. One in and one out... The one out is a chimney.

  Dr. Cuza : [Dr. Cuza gets upset and screams] 

  Major Kaempffer : You better find a way to be of use to me in three days. Three days. Or back to the camps go you... and your daughter.

• Captain Klaus Woermann : [screams]  You murdered our Romanian citizens! We are an ally state!

  Major Kaempffer : Let's have an immediate understanding, Woermann. Because I give a damn about the death of a few communists.