DASBOOT RUNNING TIME HOW TO

The claustrophobia is crushing at times, and cramped spaces mean indignities as a matter of course. When they come down the ladder into the sub, water pours in. The boat lifts and plunges, every wave looking likely to wash them overboard. With the boat powering along the surface of the sea, the captain and his officers stand invigorated in their black raincoats and huge hats as the waves crash over them on the bridge. Much of their voyage takes place during a horrendous storm. Tiny details resonate the boat’s creaks and groans keep time with a young sailor’s arm as he lifts weight in his bunk.

Despite the length of the film, it rises and falls like the boat ploughing the lonely surface of the sea. Sinking down through the waves, crippled by an Allied air attack, the captain stands in front of his crew as the depth indicator goes beyond crush point and eventually past the end of the gauge itself.ĭirector Wolfgang Peterson’s pacing is exemplary. Holding their breath, knowing it may be their last.

Though the action is riveting, the most heart-stopping moments are when we wait and listen with them for some explosion or event. It’s not a slow-moving film, and despite long periods of waiting it’s never boring. (Apparently most of the original cast did their dubbing, as they were bilingual.) This version is also dubbed into German-accented English, though within a minute or two I didn’t notice it. This director’s cut came out in 1997, and is three and a half hours long. Where the dive alarm sounds, they suddenly drop everything and run, careering along the sub, throwing themselves through hatches, delighted to be physically moving. Doing nothing is emasculating and the crew take great delight in slathering the huge torpedoes in Vaseline before they’re fired. The days grind on, and everyone wants to see some action. The boat is a cosy, warm haven and a soaking, claustrophobic prison. Their voyage seems almost haphazard, randomly coming across British destroyers and often doomed, as the captain has to obey orders that send them into the Straits of Gibraltar, seven miles wide and teeming with the British Navy.

DASBOOT RUNNING TIME HOW TO

Even the First Watch Officer (Hubertus Bengsch), the most uptight and haughty officer, and a Nazi, gradually has to loosen up – after days spent in full uniform, writing his papers on how to be a leader. The realities of war and life underwater don’t take long to change him. War correspondent Lt Werner (Herbert Grönemeyer) on board to document the U-boat’s voyage, is much in demand snapping pictures of the young men, who are delighted that they might end up in a magazine. “the British have stopped making mistakes” says the captain gloomily, as he and his officers and crew sail out of La Rochelle only to spend days searching and waiting rather than fighting. It’s 1941 and in the North Atlantic the tide is, metaphorically, turning. This is a war film that leaves ideology at the door in favour of grimly realistic life-and-death tension, terror, ennui, excitement and, at times, joy. It isn’t just Nazis which enrage them, but also the futility of the battles they’re leading their men into. Fellow U-boat captain Thomsen arrives drunk before giving a speech which mocks both the Fuhrer and Churchill.

At the start of Das Boot he and some of his officers visit a raucous French nightclub in La Rochelle, their base. Several of his officers share his disillusionment, as do other captains. There’s a gulf between old-guard seamen like him, and most of the young crew (“all wind and smoke” he calls them, likening their voyage to being on “a children’s crusade”). For the captain (a brilliantly jaded yet stoic Jürgen Prochnow) the boat is his partner and he takes pride in her ability to withstand the worst that the Allies, bad luck and the weather can throw at her. World-weary and war-weary, battle has aged him – he’s meant to be 30, the oldest man on the boat, but he comes across as much older with the weight of both experience and expectation heavy on him. He’s not a lover of war and he hates the Nazis. “They are drinking at the bar, celebrating our sinking! Not yet my friends, not yet!” shouts U-96’s captain with delight, as they practically bounce up onto the surface of the narrow Straits of Gibraltar, which they’ve been marooned at the bottom of for 15 hours. *** Check out my submarine movies section ***

Dasboot running time