![]() Wolfgang Petersen's direction is an exercise in pure craftsmanship. The German filmmakers regard their subject dispassionately it is a record of the way things were. One cannot easily imagine a Hollywood film in which American submariners are shown allowing drowning men to die. That scene supplies another example of why it is effective that "Das Boot'' is a German sub. Somehow it is easier when the targets are seen through periscope sights, and the cries of victims cannot be heard. But in war, it is certainly not practical for a submarine to take prisoners. It is against the instinct of every sailor to let another sailor drown in the sea. Only one sentence in the ship's log ("assumed no men were on board'') gives a hint. What does he think of having let the victims drown? He does not say. The captain orders his boat to reverse at half speed, to keep it away from them. They swim toward the U-boat, their pitiful cries for help carrying clearly across the water. "Why haven't they been rescued?'' Drowning sailors can clearly be seen in the flames from the tanker. As the ship explodes, the captain is startled to see men leaping from its deck: "What are they doing still on board?'' he shouts. Having finally outlasted the destroyers, the sub surfaces to administer a coup de grace-a final torpedo to a burning tanker. Then comes the episode that was endlessly discussed when the film came out in 1981. The chase is conducted by sound, the crew whispering beneath the deadly hunters above. And then they endure a long and thorough counterattack, during which destroyers criss-cross the area, dropping depth charges. We share the experience of the hunt they drift below the surface, waiting for the explosions that signal hits. The centerpiece of the film is an attack on an Allied convoy the U-boat torpedoes three ships. The addition of this character is useful, because it gives the captain a reason to explain things that might otherwise go unsaid. ![]() Played by Herbert Groenemeyer, he probably represents Lothar-Gunther Buchheim, whose novel was based on these wartime events. He is not a Nazi, and the movie makes that clear in an early scene where he ridicules Goering and other leaders for their "brilliant strategy.'' For this mission (an assignment to torpedo Allied shipping in the North Atlantic), a journalist has been assigned to join the crew. Experienced, steady, he's capable of shouting "I demand proper reports!'' even as the boat seems to be breaking up. The boat's captain ( Jurgen Prochnow) is the rock the others depend on. There are long sequences here-especially when the boat is sinking out of control-when we feel trapped in the same time and space as the desperate crew. There is a brief opening sequence in which the boat puts out to sea from a French base, and a refueling sequence near the end, but all the other scenes are shot inside the cramped sub, or on the bridge.Īnd it's not shot in tidy setups, either the cinematographer, Jost Vacano, hurtles his camera through the boat from one end to the other, plunging through cramped openings, hurdling obstacles on the deck, ducking under hammocks and swinging light fixtures. Although we become familiar with several of the characters, it is not their story, really, but the story of a single U-boat mission, from beginning to end. The film is like a documentary in its impact. This 1997 release of Wolfgang Petersen's director's cut, is not a minor readjustment but a substantially longer film, running 210 minutes. ![]() When "Das Boot'' was first released in the United States, it ran 145 minutes and won huge audiences and no less than six Oscar nominations-unheard of for a foreign film. ![]()
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