The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

Hardy Krüger: Heinrich Dorfmann

Photos 

Quotes 

• Heinrich Dorfmann : Mr. Towns, you behave as if stupidity were a virtue. Why is that?

• Lew Moran : It may not be the best possible advertisement. but Frank Towns is probably one of the few really great pilots left in this push-button world of yours.

  Heinrich Dorfmann : Oh, really?

  Lew Moran : [angrily]  Yes, 'Oh, really!' He was flying by the seat of his pants in planes that were nothing more than bits and pieces before you even went to school!

  Heinrich Dorfmann : That's precisely what is wrong - he has remembered everything and learned nothing!

• Heinrich Dorfmann : I told you there would be no difficulty in building this aeroplane. I also told you it would require an outstanding pilot to fly it. The only thing outstanding about you, Mr. Towns, is your stupidity.

• Heinrich Dorfmann : Gentlemen, I have been examining this aeroplane.

  Frank Towns : Yeah?

  Heinrich Dorfmann : Yes. We've everything we need here to build a new one and fly it out. Now, if you'd like to have a look at my calculations, I don't know whether you can read my handwriting.

  Frank Towns : Are you trying to be funny?

  Heinrich Dorfmann : What did you say?

  Frank Towns : I said, are you trying to be funny?

  Heinrich Dorfmann : That is precisely the reaction I would have expected from a man of your obvious limitations.

• 'Ratbags' Crow : Sometimes I wonder how you chaps never won the war.

  Heinrich Dorfmann : War?

  'Ratbags' Crow : [making sputtering sounds like an airplane and gesturung to suggest a plane flying in a mocking fashion] 

  Heinrich Dorfmann : [trying not to respond in kind]  I wasn't involved.

  'Ratbags' Crow : [makes a sound like a machine gun, falls down on the sand, and rolls over]  That's it then! That's why they never won!

  'Ratbags' Crow : [in a mocking tone]  They didn't have old Heinrich!

• Heinrich Dorfmann : I must say, without a radio, you would have expected them to turn for their alternate airport by now. Wouldn't you?

  Trucker Cobb : I don't know, you grew up boy? Are you from the oil fields?

  Heinrich Dorfmann : My brother's there Dorfmann. I went to visit him on a holiday.

  Trucker Cobb : You went to visit your brother a general?

  Heinrich Dorfmann : Yes he's chief under the geophysicist for the Iraqi oil company. That pilot, I would have thought he was a little elderly to be flying without a copilot. Wouldn't you?

  Trucker Cobb : That sand's a bastard you know that, a real bastard.

• Heinrich Dorfmann : A model plane has to fly itself. There's no pilot to correct the trim. Therefore if anything, a model plane has to be designed for greater stability that what you are pleased to call the real thing.