The Shoes of the Fisherman (I) (1968)

Laurence Olivier: Premier Piotr Ilyich Kamenev

Quotes 

• Kiril Lakota : [the Soviet representative has just informed Kiril of the conditions of his release, namely that he keep silent about conditions in the USSR]  I cannot accept these conditions.

  Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : They have been accepted for you.

• Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : I took you to pieces like a watch. And put you together again. It was a very intimate experience. I have never been able to forget it. May I ask you a question?

  Kiril Lakota : You never hesitated before.

  Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : [laughs]  That is true.

  [Holds up a file] 

  Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : This is you. Political prisoner 103592R, Kiril Pavlovich Lakota. All of you is here, from the day you were born until now. Except for the answer to one question. What have you learned in twenty years of confinement?

  Kiril Lakota : That is a big question, Piotr Ilyich.

  Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : The answer is important to me, you know.

  Kiril Lakota : What I have learned? I have learned that without some kind of loving a man withers like a grape on a dying vine.

  Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : Is that all?

  Kiril Lakota : [Chuckles]  I am trying to learn more.

  Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : Have you learned enough to face freedom?

  Kiril Lakota : [Long Pause]  I have been free for a long time. Not entirely, perhaps. But you have not answered my question. Why have you brought me here?

  Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : I want to show you a world gone mad.

• Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : Every day we ask ourselves what can we do about it before the nightmare turns itself into a mushroom cloud blotting out the sun.

• Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : It's a mad world in which we starve a great country into an atomic war.

• Kiril Lakota : You must not hope to use me.

  Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : I don't.

• Piotr Ilyich Kamenev : Here is your man. Kiril Pavlovich Lakota, former archbishop of Lviv.