David Childs talks with Wolfgang Petersen and Jürgen Prochnow about the film "The Boat" (Das Boot) made in 1982. This interview was recorded at Imperial College London on 24 March 1982 - click here.
In late 1941, war correspondent Lothar-Günther Buchheim joined U-96 for her 7th patrol, during the Battle of the Atlantic. His orders were to photograph and describe the U-boat in action.
In 1973, Buchheim published a novel based on his wartime experiences, "Das Boot" (The Boat), a fictionalised autobiographical account narrated by a "Leutnant Werner". It became the best-selling German fiction work on the war and is often compared to "All Quiet on the Western Front".
The film follows U-96 and its crew, as they set out on a hazardous patrol. It depicts both the excitement of battle and the tedium of the fruitless hunt, and shows the men serving aboard U-boats as ordinary individuals with a desire to do their best for their comrades and their country. It is totally authentic and massively compelling.
Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the captain of the real U-96 during Buchheim's 1941 patrol and one of Germany's top U-boat "tonnage aces" during the war, and Hans-Joachim Krug, former first officer on U-219, served as consultants. One of the film's goals was to guide the audience through "a journey to the edge of the mind" (the film's German tagline "Eine Reise ans Ende des Verstandes"), showing "what war is all about".
Surprisingly, I've yet to read the book but I've watched the 150-minute-long film a couple of times already. Someone has put it up on Youtube - click here - but with the all-important Part 1 and the last one missing. Pity! You may just have to stump up the few dollars to buy it on ebay.
Just don't get it mixed up with Sky Atlantic's miniseries, "Das Boot", which picks up the story from the original film and book, and also draws on Buchheim's 1995 work, "Die Festung" (The Fortress), a 1,500-page epic that follows German soldiers in France towards the end of the war.
("Die Festung" is, after "Das Boot", the second book in a trilogy, which ends in "Der Abschied", which describes the journey Buchheim and Lehmann-Willenbrock make on the nuclear research vessel "Otto Hahn" from Rotterdam to Cape Town. It is the last journey for the ship - which will be scrapped - as well as for the captain, "der Alte", who will retire after this mission. The book is interesting for "Das Boot" or "Die Festung" readers, because it wraps up the story of the friendship between Leutnant Werner (Buchheim) and "der Alte" (Lehmann-Willenbrock). The description of their chats in the evenings gives a nice insight into the life of Lehmann-Willenbrock during the last stages of the war and the time after that. This book is a must for every "Das Boot" fan, although it is not as exciting as "Das Boot" or "Die Festung".)
Sky Atlantic's miniseries is pitched as a sequel to the original, rather than a remake. It begins nine months later in France in 1942 with a new craft and inexperienced crew, as the Battle of the Atlantic begins to turn against Germany, now that the Allies have cracked the Enigma code. The plot ventures ashore too, with a second narrative strand centred on a morphine-smuggling translator with ties to the Resistance. It, too, can be found on YouTube.
