what does Bachau say after the poker game, makes room laugh?

Very interesting question. I might never have paid attention to it if you hadn't asked, and the result is another delightful little bit in this, one of my favorite movies of all time. What Zach says is

Also, Herr Mueller. Ewige Weiblichkeit zieht uns hinan.

No, my German isn't good enough that I got it right the first time, but a few stabs, some help from my friends at Google Translate, and some further searching pinned it down.

It's a slight variation on "Das Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan", which is the final line of Goethe's Faust. It's translated variously as "the eternal feminine pulls us upward", or "eternal womanhood draws us on high", or "the eternal feminine draws us". My German isn't good enough to know whether adding the suffix -keit makes any difference, but I'm pretty sure that it's a small nuance if any.

And so it's not a rude comment at all, just a classy way of saying "I gotta get back to my wife". Or "I gotta meet my mistress". Actually both. I first wrote "wife" but on re-watching I'm realizing that Eve had told him "come back around two", so that's where he's headed.

Also, I hear only Zach laughing, not "everyone".

Of course, having a character quote a well-known line from Faust is quite intriguing in this movie, which has so many tiny, detailed references. Kind of like saying "It is a far, far better thing that I do".

And to make it still more interesting to me, I discover that I have sung those words -- Goethe's version that is. Gustav Mahler used the text from the final scene of Faust for the second part of his Eighth Symphony. And some 30+ years ago, I sang in the chorus for three performances of that work, under Robert Shaw, in Atlanta. I certainly don't remember the words -- there are a lot of them - see for example http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=49341. But it makes an interesting circle for me, that I sang those words just perhaps five years before I first saw this movie.

Sad that I'm responding to the most recent post on this board, and it was over six months ago. This movie deserves a lot more attention.

Edward

He either quotes the last line of Goethe's "Faust: Part 2," which is:

"Das Ewig-weibliche zieht uns hinan," usually translated as "The eternal feminine leads us onward," or transposes it as "Die ewigliche Weib zieht uns hinan," i.e. "The eternal wife leads us on [or away]." I haven't seen the movie for years so I can't recall if he quotes the line "straight"--in which case the laughter, and Keith Carradine's anger, would make no sense--or turns it into a snide crack about Carradine having to obey his girlfriend's orders. But it's definitely one or the other, and "Faust" is the source.