Das Boot

The remastered, original and uncut TV series. DVD. 4 hours & 42 mins. Directed by Wolfgang Peterson.
I watched this yesterday, sometimes with lil Pipski (took all afternoon, but she was quiet for most of the time) and it was just as good as I remember. Ever so slightly dated now by its exterior and model shots, this was, when it was made, the most expensive German TV production ever, and it shows. The attention to detail and the acting are superb and in my opinion this is the finest 'war movie' ever made. Odd that we still call them 'movies'.

What sets 'Das Boot' apart from near all other war films is both its lack of any glamour or maudling self pity and its portrayal of humanity. There are no heroics or histrionics in this film, just a long repetitious series of events portraying the last mission of the U96. If ever there was a film about war I'd recommend to some one uninterested in war films, but interested in cinema, then this would be it.

Although this film is based around a true event (the accompaniment of a war journalist on a U boat misssion) it is not a factual recreation of that journey. Though it does take its reference from the book by the journalist in question, Lieutenant Werner, the story is an amalgamation of different missions, cobbled together to tell the story of a German U boat (U96) in 1941. All the actors play well and this is certainly the best performance I've ever seen from Jürgen Prochnow who plays the unamed U boat captain. The reason I assume he is unamed in the film is because he is portraying the real life U boat ace (and former captain of U96) Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, but since Lehmann-Willenbrock survived the war and Prochnow's character doesn't then I assume some artistic license has been taken in order to create an artistic symmetry.