Baal (1970 TV Movie)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Baal
Photos
Quotes
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : I can't help it if I'm pickled from your wine.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : Must I swallow your twaddle just so I can fill my belly?
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[English subtitled version]
Johannes : My sweetheart is the most innocent woman alive, but once, in a dream, I saw her ravished by a juniper tree. Her pale body was stretched out on the juniper, its gnarled branches embracing her. I haven't been able to sleep since.
Baal : Have you ever seen her pale body?
Johannes : No, she's innocent. Even her knees. There are degrees of innocence, don't you think? Still, when I hold her for a moment at night, she trembles like a leaf. I don't dare. She's only seventeen.
Baal : Did she enjoy love in your dream?
Johannes : Yes.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : Love is like biting into an orange so the juice squirts through your teeth. It's like letting your bare arm float in a pond with weeds between your fingers.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : When you lie sprawled in the grass at night, you feel in your bones that the Earth is round and we're flying.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : Damn but you're soft today, like a plum.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : At least drink, if you can't do anything else. Drink!
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : Orge said to me the dearest place for him on Earth is not the grass by his parents' graves. It's not a confessional box, nor a whore's bed, nor a woman's lap, all soft, white, warm, and fat. Ogre said to me the dearest place on Earth for him was always the latrine. A place where one is content with stars above and dung below. A place of humility where you realize that you're just a man who can't hold on to anything. There you realize what you are indeed.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : Loving is better than mere pleasure.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : You have too much religion or too much gin in you.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : I'm a lover without a beloved.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : Gin is my rod and my staff; but now my hands are shaking - as if the bodies were still inside them.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : My heart is pure, and I am small, and now I must amuse you all.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : The air in here is like milk. The river willows are wet and disheveled from rain. You must have pale thighs.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : The rain has stopped. The grass must still be wet. But their leaves around us didn't let the water through. The roots are still dry. Why can't a man sleep with a plant?
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : You only notice things when they're over.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : I want to live even without skin. I'll withdraw into my toes. I'll swallow death and know nothing.
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : She's turning into a bitch. She washes her dirty laundry in your tears. Can't you see how she runs naked between us?
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[English subtitled version]
Baal : My soul is the moaning of cornfields bending in the wind and the gleam in the eyes of two insects about to devour each other.