All At Sea Season: Das Boot (Dir Wolfgang Petersen, 3h28m, 1981)

Das Boot is a film about the brutality, mundanity and futility of war-few films in the past 42 years have, or will ever come close-to its ambition, its scale, and its unflinching reportage in that regard. Based on the fictionalised account of Lothar-Günther Buchheim's time aboard a U-Boat during the Second World War, published in 1973, the film charts life aboard during patrols in the North Atlantic, through the eyes of Lieutenant Werner (Herbert Grönemeyer), as the U-Boat and its crew battle boredom, the mechanical limitations of the submarine, and the slowly turning tide of the war

Das Boot's publication in 1973, whilst fictionalised, drew on Buchheim's experiences of the war; it also marked the undeniable era in which German authors and film directors, after the Stunde Null (Zero Hour) explored the vacuum left in the wake of the fall of the Nazis, so the late 1950 to early 1970s began to critically consider, especially into the 1970s, German society, a microcosm of which we see on the U-Boat itself, from its vehemently National Socialist first watch officer (Hubertus Bengsch), indicative of the fervour of the Party, to the bitter and cynical, and decidedly anti-Nazi Kapitänleutnant . Moreover, with its mixture of strong anti-War message (otherwise seen in Volker Schlöndorff's staggering magical realist masterpiece, The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel, 1979), and high-stakes nautical thriller, it seemed the perfect novel to adapt into a film.

What followed, between 1976 and 1979, when the film finally went into production, with Wolfgang Petersen both writing the screenplay and directing, was a revolving door of American actors and directors, with both Robert Redford and Paul Newman attached to play the Kapitänleutnant, only to be undone by monetary concerns, and the logistical complexities of shooting two submarines at sea. Petersen, meanwhile was undeterred, building a capable crew behind and in front of the camera, shooting the film in chronological order so that his actors-forbidden to spend too much time in the sun to capture the pallor of lives beneath the waves-would grow hair and beards naturally. In a film in which not much happens, and things feel almost purgatorial, this only adds to the veracity, the increasingly pale and bearded men

Largely focusing upon events from Werner's perspective, we follow the reporter throughout the last mission of U-92. Travelling from France, in his introduction to the Kapitänleutnant (the great Jurgen Prochnow, who dominates the film), and his senior officers in a Bordello, complete with anti-Hitler rant to indicate just how far removed from the fervency of the Party the majority of our heroes are, to setting sail from La Rochelle, so the crew arrive in the North Atlantic, the film spending the greater part of introducing us, and Werner, to the crew and their quarters. Soon encountering a destroyer in a genuinely tense setpiece in which Petersen ramps up the tension of the setpiece, masterfully placing the moment of sudden, shocking realisation after minutes of build-up, of intercutting between their one point of contact with the outside world, and the intricate instrumentation of the ship. When the release comes, it is in the hands of Prochnow and the score by Klaus Doldinger, as the boat looms into shot, and for the first time in the battle we cut to outside as the destroyer rolls over the camera.

The wire of tension is cut, our crew survey the damage, and, as the Kapitänleutnant cannot help but commend their opponent for spotting their periscope, so the film goes into one of its quieter passages; here, the Director's Cut, permitting the film greater time to focus upon these scenes, upon the monotony of life at sea that only occasionally is punctuated by the battle and threat that could well doom the crew and the submarine. Here, we essentially descend into a series of character studies aboard ship, from the tough, but ultimately gentle and sympathetic Kapitänleutnant and the circle of officers including the Chief Engineer (Klaus Wennemann, Prochnow's real life friend) to Bengsch's by-the-book fascist who not only represents the spectre of the Party, but whose bookishness and obsession with leadership. That much of the crew becomes immediately recognisable, even in the tableaux-ish shots that dominate the action scene, teeming with faces focusing on threat or target, is all part of the film's masterful balancing act between drama and action.

From here, the U-Boat finds itself trapped in a nigh endless gale, the claustrophobic conditions seemingly hemming in on the entrapped crew, before an encounter with another U-Boat heartens the beleagued sailors whilst starkly depicting how outnumbered the Germans are by the Allies-in perhaps the most notable element of historical revisionism for the sake of narrative that the film engages in. Armed with secret orders, and with a nearby U-Boat signalling for their assistance, so U-92 begins hunting down a convoy, but, no sooner have they sunken two of the merchant ships, than they become the hunted, as a destroyer forces them to dive further than is safe, causing the ship's main machinist, a man fanatically dedicated to the upkeep of the sub to panic, the film holding on the mask-like expression of horror and fear, an echo of the war raging around them. 

 

More is to come, for, surfacing, the boat badly damaged but still operational, our protagonists arrive in a world lit only by fire, the burning hulk of one of the ships they torpedoed still afloat, and, in a scene that perfectly paces its gathering horror, is revealled to still have dozens of men aboard who leap into the water in futile attempt to be rescued, the Kapitänleutnant dismayed by the inaction of the British even as their submarine pulls away. This starkly lit inferno gives way to the almost alien comfort of German merchantmen off Spain, who toast the bemused sailors as heroes of the Reich, before equipping them for the danger of slipping through Gibraltar, an encounter that will test the men and the U-Boat to their limits.

It is in this final third that the film's claustrophobia, its veracity come to the fore, as the men aboard have to rely on their wits as they become trapped deep under the sea. This attention to detail, in what would eventually become the then-most expensive film in German cinema would extend to the boat itself. All scenes below water were shot inside a one-to-one scale replica, down to every bolt and fixture, and-of a U-Boat interior that, together with the custom Arriflex, built and designed by cinematographer Jost Vacano, lends itself perfectly to the film's claustrophobic tautness, not to mention, via its extensive hydraulics, capable of pitching and yawing during shooting of battle scenes . Outside the boat, a quartet of models, ranging from the conning towner, to the half-sized replica used for underwater shots, to the full-sized hull briefly borrowed by Steven Spielberg for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), rounded out the ship's appearances.

For, whilst the U-Boat marks the setting of the film-almost its entire runtime is set upon the boat, but for the bookending sections in Northern France, and a brief respite off the coast of Spain with coddled German merchants, the boat feels like another character, the film's sound design giving it a visceral presence in the tenser scenes, as it groans and creaks under the pressure of the increasingly risky and dangerously deep dives that U-92 is forced to undergo to escape depth charges, whilst its physical presence, its bulk and size, dominates the frame, or crashes through ocean waves as the crew go about their mission. Whilst some of the special effects work has dated, it remains nevertheless effective, especially in the second half of the film, as an abortive attempt to sneak in past Gibraltar leaves the ship heavily outnumbered and hopelessly outmanoeuvred, a sitting duck on the ocean as rockets shoot past.

The boat, though, is more than just a vessel, and a colossal prop, and several models, It is a microcosm of Germany, of its status as an nation, packed with men from every part of the country, and from every part of the political spectrum. Yet, in Petersen's dispassionate depiction of the boat, of Germany, he depicts a Germany that is falling apart at the seams, held together not by a ranting maniac, but by the men who inhabit the U-Boat, even as their enemies close in among them and their numbers dwindle.

Over forty years since its release, Das Boot has lost none of its power, a film that in its unflinching depiction of war and life aboard the claustrophobic submarine, remains one of the best war films ever made

Rating: Must See

Next week, we're back on the submarines, but at the fall of the USSR, with Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October.

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