Selma: In a musical, nothing dreadful ever happens.
Lines on screen: They say it's the last song. They don't know us, you see. It's only the last song if we let it be.
Selma: I listen to my heart.
Selma: You like the movies, don't you?

Bill Houston: I love the movies. I just love the musicals.

Selma: But isn't it annoying when they do the last song in the films?

Bill Houston: Why?

Selma: Because you just know when it goes really big... and the camera goes like out of the roof... and you just know it's going to end. I hate that. I would leave just after the next to last song... and the film would just go on forever.
Jeff: [referring to Gene] Why did you have him? You knew he would have the same disease as you.

Selma: I just wanted to hold a little baby.
Selma: There's no more to see...
Selma: [singing] This isn't the last song, there's no violin, the choir is quiet, and no one takes a spin, this is the next to last song, and that's all...
Jeff: You can't see, can you?

Selma: What is there to see?
Selma: Clatter, crash, clack, racket, bang, thump, rattle, clang, crack, thud, whack, bam! It's music, now dance!
Jeff: I don't understand. In musicals, why do they start to sing and dance all of a sudden? I mean, I don't suddenly start... to sing and dance.
Selma: You keep readin'.

Gene Jezkova: So long, farewell auf wiedersehen, adieu, adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu.

Selma: To yieu and yieu. What - what does that mean? Yieu?

Gene Jezkova: It's your dumb musical.

Selma: Yieu?

Gene Jezkova: It's German.

Selma: Do you think?
Gene Jezkova: Why? Why should you - always ask me so - so stupid questions?
Selma: Cvalda.

Kathy: Why do you call me that?

Selma: It's like, someone whose...

Kathy: What?

Selma: I don't know, just big and happy.

Kathy: I am not that big. And happy, I don't know.

Selma: You just need someone to pull it out.
Selma: I'm just not that kind of mother.

Gene Jezkova: Can't you be that kind of a mother?
Bill Houston: Thank you for telling me your secret.

Selma: Thanks for telling me yours.

Bill Houston: Mums the word, right?

Selma: Mum?

Bill Houston: We don't tell anybody.

Selma: Oh, yes, I won't tell anyone.
Selma: [singing] Forgive me. I am so sorry. I just did what I had to do, I just did what I had to do, I just did what I had to do, I just did what I had to do.
Norman: You Commie's make a big deal out of sharing everything.

Selma: Yeah. It's - it's a good thing.

Norman: What are you doing here - if - eh, Czechoslovakia's so much better than the U. S. of A.?
Norman: She said Communism was - better for human beings.

District Attorney: She had nothing but contempt for our great country and it's principals.

Norman: Apart from it's musicals! She said the American one - the American ones were better.

District Attorney: So, the defendant preferred Hollywood to Vladivostok.
District Attorney: If this relationship was made up by the defendant, then, can you think of any way she might have come to know your name?

Oldrich Novy: I was once well known in Czechoslovakia, because of my profession.

District Attorney: Yes, Mr. Oldrich Novy, what is your profession? Maybe that can give us a clue to why, why this somewhat romantic, certainly Communistic, woman who worships Fred Astaire, but not his country, why she might have lied and misused your name - make everybody think that all the money was spent on a poor father and not on her own vanity. What is it that you do?

Oldrich Novy: I was an actor. I made films - they were musicals.
Oldrich Novy: [singing] I didn't mind it at all. That you were having a ball - at my musicals. And I was always there to catch you.

Selma: You were always there to catch me. You were always there to catch me. You were always there to catch me. When I fall.
Brenda: You'll be transferred to the other cellblock, at some point tomorrow.

Selma: That's the cellblock where they hang people?

Brenda: Yeah. That's were they spend the last day.

Selma: And then they do the 107 steps - it's from that room to the gallows, isn't it?

Brenda: That's what they say, Selma. But, look it, you're gonna get your stay. Why don't you try to think of something nice. All right?

Selma: It's just so quiet here.
Prison Guard - Serving Selma Jezkova's last meal: Your meal, Jezková,
Kathy: You were right, Selma - listen to your heart!
Kathy: But he needs his mother, you know, alive, no matter where!

Selma: You don't understand! He needs his eyes!

Kathy: He needs his mother!

Selma: No!

Kathy: Yes! Alive!

Selma: NO!

Kathy: Listen to reason for once, Selma! Selma...

Selma: I listen to my heart...

Dancer in the Dark Quotes

Extended Reading

Dancer in the Dark short comments

Lynn 2022-03-24 09:01:55

Too many people think it's good, but I think there are only two words: contrived. The film is full of sensational atmosphere, as if you are not reconciled if you don't cry, the more I feel uncomfortable and moved, In my eyes, this so-called great mother is nothing but a weak woman who cannot be submissive in life.
Alberto 2022-03-24 09:01:55

To recognize this film, we must understand how profound and heavy Von Trier's understanding of "evil" is, in order to understand why he created this kind and almost deformed character, just like Pierre, "War and Peace" in "War and Peace". Duke Myshkin in Idiot", they are all kind and even a bit devious images, but the writer actually thinks about the marginal issue of "the ultimate good" in ethics through them, so although this film is not lacking in deliberate and provocative However, in today's society where people are prevalent with "selfish" inferences, Selma, a character with a high degree of "goodness" in a sense, should exist, just like Von Trier's anachronism as always.