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Post by Popeye Doyle on Jun 17, 2021 21:25:08 GMT
*These comments relate to the 208 minute Director's Cut*
First, the negative out of the way - It certainly feels its length. When the action does pick up, it's intense and unrelenting. For obvious reasons, I've never been in a German U-Boat but its depiction of life in a submerged metal tube never seems to ring hollow; this goes for the characters as well. The sense of claustrophobia, courtesy of cinematographer Jost Vacano (RoboCop), is also essential.
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Post by moviemouth on Jun 17, 2021 21:36:16 GMT
I've only seen the theatrical version. Very good movie.
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Post by Mulder and Scully on Jun 17, 2021 21:56:08 GMT
I've only seen the 5 hour version once but it's such a great experience. It's length is one of the reasons why I like it so much.
One of the greatest movies ever made. I think it's nicely paced and it just feels tense throughout. Brilliantly filmed.
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Post by wmcclain on Jun 17, 2021 22:27:24 GMT
Das Boot (1981), directed by Wolfgang Petersen. A tremendous epic of life on a WW2 German U-boat. Cramped quarters, months of boredom, then sudden fighting, terror and an exhausting struggle to survive and get back into the war. The mission: sink cargo ships then hide from the inevitable destroyer pounding. That was the Battle of the Atlantic, an attempt to starve Britain out of the war. The war correspondent stands in for us here: initially excited, then dismayed at life in that tiny sub (48 men, 1 toilet), terrified during battle, but still unwilling to give it up. The sequence of his fear scenes is great: initially he is hazed by the other officers when they take the sub "too deep" for a test; later this happens for real more than once and now those who were kidding him are terrified as well. You seldom see survival scenes that go on so long in such a bad situation: resting on the sea floor well below the limit of their depth gauge, running out of air, rivets popping, seams failing, battery acid leaking. They hold it together with lumber and their bare hands, and still come back. The film-makers visited the U-505 in Chicago and took meticulous notes. It is the last remaining U-boat of its class. I toured it many years ago and thought it was the last place in the world I would want to be. The open water scenes showing the sub surfacing or submerging was done with a 1/6 scale model. I always thought it looked rather good. Available on Blu-ray with a commentary track by the director, Jurgen Prochnow, and others. I've lost track of the different cuts I've seen; this is the 3h28m version. Several of the German actors did their own dubbing on the English track. They say the German critics disliked the film for it's sympathetic portrayal of the seamen. At that time German soldiers in German films had to be villains as part of the national expiation of war guilt. They brought the film to America and everyone loved it. 
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Post by phantomparticle on Jun 18, 2021 0:08:34 GMT
Without doubt, one of the greatest war movies ever made about the mostly sluggish life of U-Boat crews intermittently interrupted by the sheer terror of sudden, excruciating death.
Scenes that have become cliches (trapped at the bottom of the ocean) are infused with a vibrant tension more potent than all previous submarine epics.
It's an exhausting film at 208m, but an essential of the genre.
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Post by bravomailer on Jun 18, 2021 0:28:52 GMT
Not sure which version I saw but it didn't grab me. Well-crafted but not much else and efforts to differentiate the crew from the Reich were contrived and wearisome. 6/10.
I have been on a U-Boat. There's one in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.
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Post by drystyx on Jun 18, 2021 2:26:58 GMT
That's about how I felt. I honestly snoozed through much of the middle of it when I saw it, and that was the year it came out. I woke up at the end.
It's really tough to make a "submarine movie" interesting. Submarine movies are born to be dull. DAS BOOT was not nearly as terribly dull as ICE STATION ZEBRA, CRIMSON TIDE, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, and others that were total snooze fests. It isn't the fault of anyone, really. Submarine movies can't help but be dull.
In fact, the only "interesting" submarine movies and TV shows are the ones that jump sharks, so to speak, like VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. The TV series with Basehart and Hedison was even more engaging than the STAR TREK series that basically tried to copy it.
DAS BOOT was about as interesting as you could make a serious movie about submarines.
7/10
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Post by Popeye Doyle on Jun 18, 2021 2:29:09 GMT
That's about how I felt. I honestly snoozed through much of the middle of it when I saw it, and that was the year it came out. I woke up at the end. It's really tough to make a "submarine movie" interesting. Submarine movies are born to be dull. DAS BOOT was not nearly as terribly dull as ICE STATION ZEBRA, CRIMSON TIDE, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, and others that were total snooze fests. It isn't the fault of anyone, really. Submarine movies can't help but be dull. In fact, the only "interesting" submarine movies and TV shows are the ones that jump sharks, so to speak, like VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. The TV series with Basehart and Hedison was even more engaging than the STAR TREK series that basically tried to copy it. DAS BOOT was about as interesting as you could make a serious movie about submarines. 7/10 Run Silent, Run Deep? |
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Post by kolchak92 on Jun 18, 2021 2:51:15 GMT
Haven't seen it, but I hear it's quite good. Maybe I'll give it a shot soon.
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Post by janntosh on Jun 18, 2021 2:52:47 GMT
Need to see it. Seems like there’s multiple cuts including one that was turned into a miniseries?
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 18, 2021 2:58:27 GMT
I heard the re-used some of the u-boat stuff for Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I am not sure if it was the model of the U-boat or the interior.
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Post by drystyx on Jun 18, 2021 3:01:34 GMT
I heard the re-used some of the u-boat stuff for Raiders of the Lost Ark. I am not sure if it was the model of the U-boat or the interior. I am quite sure it's the final scene, because when I saw "Raiders", I thought the scene just after Indy hitchhiked a ride on a sub (talk about "shark jumping", this has to be definitive of shark jumping) where he is in that "tunnel" full of soldiers, it looked exactly like the scene where the Germans had a base in DAS BOOT, I believe at the beginning and the end.
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Post by rudeboy on Jun 18, 2021 3:51:03 GMT
It falls short of greatness for me but there are some masterful suspense sequences. I agree wholeheartedly about the sense of claustrophobia and dread that hangs over the film.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Jun 18, 2021 4:18:22 GMT
It falls short of greatness for me but there are some masterful suspense sequences. I agree wholeheartedly about the sense of claustrophobia and dread that hangs over the film. You can't really imagine how cramped a WWII submarine in until you have been in one. The Buffalo Naval Park has one USS Croaker. I've taken the tour and I can't imagine being stuffed into one for weeks on end. It's bad enough walking through in a hour or so. With about 20-25 people in it, as opposed to the 60 on a Gato class sub. And a Gato class (that's what the Croaker was) was bigger than a VIIC U-Boat, which is what U-96 was. And a modern nuclear powered sub, like in Hunt For Red October or Crimson Tide, was a luxury liner. And, oh yeah, no one was depth charging us in the harbor. It must have taken a special person not the crack up in a WWII submarine, be the American, German, British, Japanese, Russian
For comparison
Gato Class submarine Length - 311 feet Beam - 27'3" Compliment - 60 men
Type VII-C U-Boat Length - 220"2" Beam - 15'5" Compliment - 44 to 60 men
Ohio Class Nuclear submarine (USS Alabama in Crimson Tide) Length - 560 feet Beam - 42 feet Compliment - 155 men
15 feet, 5 inches in width! Think about that.
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