The Boys from Brazil (1978)

Bruno Ganz: Professor Bruckner

Quotes 

• Professor Bruckner : He was nothing but a sadist, really.

  Ezra Lieberman : A sadist with an M.D. and a Ph.D.

  Professor Bruckner : Well, some people would say the perfect definition of a scientist.

• Professor Bruckner : Cloning. What if I were to tell you that I could take a scraping of skin from your finger and create another Ezra Lieberman?

  Ezra Lieberman : I would tell you not to waste your time on my finger.

• [Bruckner begins listing the boys' common features on a chalkboard] 

  Professor Bruckner : Now, Mengele would certainly know that every social and environmental detail would have to be reproduced. Plus, if the parents were divorced when the boy was ten, this would have to be arranged...

  Ezra Lieberman : [in horrified realization]  Dr. Bruckner... the one who is cloned, the donor, he has to be alive, doesn't he?

  Professor Bruckner : Not necessarily. Individual cells, taken from a donor, can be preserved indefinitely. With a sample of Mozart's blood, and the women, someone with the skill and equipment could breed a few hundred baby Mozarts. My God... if it's really been done, what I'd give to see one of those boys.

  [turns around and sees the room is empty] 

  Professor Bruckner : Herr Lieberman?

• Professor Bruckner : [explaining cloning to Lieberman]  It was first done with plants. A cutting taken from a plant and transplanted grew to be an exact duplicate of the donor plant. Now we are doing the same thing with laboratory animals.

  Ezra Lieberman : You mean, you can produce an animal from itself?

  Professor Bruckner : We take the unfertilized egg of an ovulating female, and destroy all of its genes and chromosomes. We then implant a nucleus of a donor's cell, which could be taken from a blood sample, or even a skin scraping. That cell, with its genetic material intact, eventually becomes an embryo and is born as a living creature.

  Ezra Lieberman : Without parents?

  Professor Bruckner : Well, it has no father because the egg was never fertilized, no mother because its genetic code comes from another being. Can you follow that?

  Ezra Lieberman : And this creature... is an exact duplicate of itself? Oh, Doctor, how can that be?

  Professor Bruckner : Come along. Our experiments began with the simplest of animals: shrimps, frogs, animals in which the female's eggs are fertilized externally. Then we moved on to mammals. We tried several laboratory animals, and found the rabbit most convenient. I had to develop instruments which could accomplish the operation, and a whole micro-injection system. I'll show you how it's done...

• Ezra Lieberman : [on cloning]  And this can be done with humans?

  Professor Bruckner : If the surgical technique were precise enough.

  Ezra Lieberman : It's monstrous, Doctor!

  Professor Bruckner : Why? Wouldn't you want to live in a world full of Mozarts and Picassos?

• Professor Bruckner : No, it's impossible.

  Ezra Lieberman : What? Dr. Bruckner, what is impossible?

  Professor Bruckner : Mononuclear reproduction.

  Ezra Lieberman : Oh, Doctor...

  Professor Bruckner : Cloning.

• Professor Bruckner : Is Mengele... trying to reproduce himself?

  Ezra Lieberman : No! No, he has brown eyes, and he comes from a very wealthy family.