Day 99: Das Boot (1981)

Movie #63 – Das Boot: The director’s cut (1981) - 209 min, cert 12.

The movie follows a German U-boat and its crew on a tour of duty in the North Atlantic during World War II.

The version I watched was also dubbed into English rather than subtitled. It was also the director’s cut, which is 60 minutes longer than the version that was originally released in the cinema. This takes it up to an epic 3 hours 29 minutes which I had to watch in two sittings. It still kept my attention though. I watched the first hour in one sitting, but didn’t expect to finish it on the next one, so it’s a testament to the movie that I didn’t want to stop it again until the finish.

It’s an indication of a well-made film that you really find yourself rooting for the crew of this particular u-boat, even though they were the enemy at the time, and shooting torpedoes at British ships. But the director cleverly keeps politics absent from the goings on within the boat, so you become more interested in the individual characters on board than you do with the nation that they represent.

Although it is clearly a very claustrophobic setting to have so many men squashed into such a confined space for so long, this isn’t the overwhelming impression. The submariners all seem quite comfortable with this, with the possible exception of the journalist who is on his first u-boat tour to write an account for propaganda purposes. No, when they’re not in combat it’s their frustration at being sidelined, and when they are it’s the unbearable tension of having a stand around in total silence, waiting for the inevitable depth charges that will try and shake the boat apart.

The terribly ironic ending leaves you unsure whether to cheer or cry.

Score: 8/10. Very well made, but this version was too long, and I’m not sure whether the original version would have been too incomplete.

Next up is currently Black Swan, although because it’s a brand new film, still doing the rounds at the cinemas, it’s tending to move around the list quite a lot. It looks OK from the trailers I’ve seen on TV, but again it’s not a film I would generally have chosen to go and see.

(later) Oh no, hang on, Black Swan has just dropped another place, like I said, it’s still moving around quite a lot. So it’s Reservoir Dogs next instead. This is a really good film that I used to have on VHS, but have never got round to replacing on DVD.