Das Boot on Blu-Ray June 7

[Subnuts]

Man, I'd forgotten how choppy the theatrical cut of Das Boot was compared to the longer versions, which is a strange thing to say about a 149 minute movie. The first half of the movie is so jumpy it feels like an assembly of one scene after another, often without any transition from one to another. For example, right after the captain expresses his bewilderment that the British destroyer spotted their periscope, the movie instantly cuts to a shot of the conning tower in the storm, with Werner whooping with joy. One gets the impression they did everything in their power to cut to movie to fit a 2:30 timeslot.

Oddly enough, the theatrical and director's cuts are basically the same after the sinking of the tanker. There's a few shots added or trimmed here and there (the biggest missing one being the scene in the officer's mess after the sinking of the tanker), but there's little difference in the two. However, the first half is a bit of a mess, and the theatrical cut fails at capturing the essence of life at sea and submarine warfare the way the longer versions do. I know the slowness of the director's cut, and the sheer length of the miniseries, seems to turn many people off, but I'd rather watch them instead of this commercially-palatable version. No wonder Wolfgang Petersen and Lothar-Gunther Buchheim were never really happy the way it came out (okay, the latter despised it!).

[FIREWALL]

Originally Posted by Subnuts

So, spent a couple hours today trying to snag a day-early copy of the new blu-ray. Tried all the major local stores, but finally found a copy at a little store at the mall. Paid way too much ($24.99, but still slightly cheaper than buying it from Amazon), but didn't feel too bad since Best Buy wanted $22.99 for a copy of Birdemic.

Anyway, watched some of the new extras, and while they're tastefully done and fairly low-key, there's not a whole lot said in them that wasn't already said on the commentary on the 1997 DVD. There's some behind-the-scenes stuff I hadn't previously seen, like footage of the film crew scouring the French coast for pieces of the boat. There's some funny stuff from Wolfgang Petersen's wife, who was an (uncredited) Assistant Director on the movie, but the extras seem a little superficial in all. I was hoping the Captain's Tour would be more substantial, but it's basically just 8 minutes of Jurgen Prochnow walking around the set at the Bavaria Filmstadt, looking really uncomfortable while reciting some basic facts ("this is the bow torpedo room, here you see the four torpedo tubes, and the bunks on the side. Four more torpedoes were stored in this room, and when they were fired, more room was made for the crew. Moving on the captain's quarters...").

I got about five minutes into the 1981 "making of," which is the same one that's been available on YouTube the last couple years. However, it looks a lot clearer in this version, and the German narration has been redone in English, though all of the set-dialog is in German (duh!) with English subtitles. I'll finish watching that tomorrow, watch the 1983 Battle of the Atlantic documentary, and get back to you guys then. Maybe I'll watch the theatrical cut tomorrow, too. I only saw it once, in 1998, and I remember severely disliking it the first time around. So this is now the forth version (Director's Cut VHS, Director's Cut DVD, Uncut DVD, DC/Theatrical Blu-Ray) I've bought in 11 years of a movie I hated the first time I saw it!

Don't forget SUPERBIT.

[Herr-Berbunch]

UK release of Das Boot on Blu Ray is set for 5 Sept, can only find it for pre-order on Play (£14.99) at the moment but will come to Amazon soon so Neal can get his cut.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Subnuts

Oddly enough, the theatrical and director's cuts are basically the same after the sinking of the tanker. There's a few shots added or trimmed here and there (the biggest missing one being the scene in the officer's mess after the sinking of the tanker), but there's little difference in the two. However, the first half is a bit of a mess, and the theatrical cut fails at capturing the essence of life at sea and submarine warfare the way the longer versions do.

This is mentioned specifically in one of the extra features where they discuss the making of the director's cut: that for the most part what they were able to put back in was the long buildup of the early part of the patrol. That's where you get the sense of endless waiting and tedium and frustration and its effects on the crew (plus a lot of the character development). All of that was sacrificed in the original cut for the sake of runtime and to satisfy what some people perceived as the need for more action sooner in the story.

Originally Posted by FIREWALL

Don't forget SUPERBIT.

Lol, that's one of the versions I have.

Got my Blu-ray copy yesterday. No time last night to watch either version of the film, but I checked out some of the extras. Pretty good stuff so far, I watched Wolfgang Peterson: Back to the Boat (I think that was the title) which was pretty cool (some of the interview includes Prochnow and was filmed inside the big set they used for the interiors). And obviously the feature about the making of the director's cut. Also, Das Boot: Die Feindfahrt von U96 - fun fact, Prochnow does the English narration.

BTW I had a hard time finding that on the disc, until I clicked on "Historical Materials" on the menu and found it had a submenu which included the 1981 documentary. I was thinking "Historical" meant it would be stuff about the real history behind the story and the u-boat war, etc. so I didn't even think to look there for features pertaining only to the film itself.

The best part for me was finally getting to see (with subtitles) some film of one of the morning "cast meetings" that Petersen would have every day before filming, to go over exactly where they were in the story and what was coming up that day. IIRC his wife had mentioned elsewhere how valuable that was to much of the cast since many of the younger men had little or no previous acting experience and it was such a long shoot. She said something about how Peterson would "hypnotize" cast and crew in those meetings every morning and that was one reason why everyone - particularly the younger, inexperienced actors - did such fantastic work. Watching the clip of one of those meetings was pretty mesmerizing, I must admit! If nothing else you can see the level of understanding and care that went into each day's work and obviously it paid off in amazing ways.

Also how cute are Wolfgang and Maria Petersen together? And still married to each other (apparently very happily) after all these years in Hollywood.

[frau kaleun]

Found this poking around some online today -

SOC 2011 Historical Shot: Das Boot by Jost Vacano
The Society of Camera Operators honored Jost Vacano in their Historical Shot category for his landmark shot in “Das Boot” (The Boat). Vacano talks about running through the submarine and how he captured it in this interview from Munich.

Video here: http://vimeo.com/19688881

First time I can recall seeing/hearing Vacano himself talk at this length about making the movie.

[Sailor Steve]

Does the Theatrical Release version still have the one scene not in any of the others - "Here it comes...'the speech'"? I still have my VHS version, which for some reason I've never figured out also has very blue water, rather than the green in every other version I've seen.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Does the Theatrical Release version still have the one scene not in any of the others - "Here it comes...'the speech'"?

Still haven't watched either version of the movie on the Blu-ray. Will get to that this weekend when I have more time to watch it through in one go.

I have watched all the extras though. Not bad, the 1981 "making of" documentary - finally redone for English-speaking audiences - was interesting altho a lot of the stuff discussed is by now common knowledge among diehard fans. Still very cool to see the behind the scenes footage and as noted above, the part where you get to "sit in" on one of the daily cast meetings was the high point for me. The best of the rest IMO is the "Back to the Boat" thing with Petersen. As Subnuts has already noted, the "Captain's Tour" is no great shakes, altho I'm happy with anything that involves Prochnow hanging around inside a u-boat (or a reasonably accurate depiction thereof, as it was obviously shot on the preserved interior set at the studio).

The "Battle of the Atlantic" will also not have very much that is new info for most of us, but was done within a couple of years after the movie was completed which means there are interviews with some people who probably aren't around any more - several merchant seamen, a couple of RN dudes who commanded escorts or merchants, and a couple of surviving German sailors. Also notable is an interview with Otto Kretschmer that I had never seen before... AND one whole chapter is a profile of Lehmann-Willenbrock, including some interview footage altho it is somewhat spoiled IMO by the fact that the narrator (who apparently also conducted the German interviews) TALKS OVER A WHOLE BUNCH OF WHAT HLW IS SAYING and there are no subtitles for HLW in those bits so a lot of the "interview" with him is wasted unless you understand German and can make out what he's saying with the narrator talking over top of it. Also the narrator seems to be really put out that his interview with HLW in particular didn't result in some kind of emotional "mea culpa mea culpa" breakdown from the former commander re his part in the war... altho he admits that the man's overall character makes that less of a "disappointment" than it might otherwise have been. Whatever, dude, he was just doing his job like everybody else.

Still - I have never seen ANY interviews with HLW, and he seems to have kept a pretty low profile after the war in comparison with some of the other top surviving aces - even with all the hoopla over the book and movie - at least in terms of what I've been able to find up til now, so I'm counting that bit of the extras as a real plus.

[klh]

I've had July 5 on my calendar for a while awaiting the BluRay release, thinking I would head to WalMart or Best Buy to pick up my copy. I couldn't believe that neither store carries it (except online). The only brick and morter store with a copy where I live is Barnes and Noble, and they are charging $27!

I don't believe that a movie as good as this can't compete with the junk they have on the shelves.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by klh

I've had July 5 on my calendar for a while awaiting the BluRay release, thinking I would head to WalMart or Best Buy to pick up my copy. I couldn't believe that neither store carries it (except online). The only brick and morter store with a copy where I live is Barnes and Noble, and they are charging $27!

I don't believe that a movie as good as this can't compete with the junk they have on the shelves.

It was $17.99 at Amazon the day it was released. Best price I've seen, even with shipping you'd probably come out ahead.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Does the Theatrical Release version still have the one scene not in any of the others - "Here it comes...'the speech'"? I still have my VHS version, which for some reason I've never figured out also has very blue water, rather than the green in every other version I've seen.

The "here it comes..." and "nice speech, eh?" are in the theatrical cut on the Blu-ray. FWIW I can see why they took both those bits out of the DC and did not put them back in the uncut version, because their effect hinges on the fact that in the original shorter cut, there IS no speech. In both longer versions, of course, der Alte does the whole spiel about having a guest on board who wants to see proper upstanding German heroes, etc. None of that is in the original cut. The scene goes like this (in English):

Der Alte: At ease!
LI: Now he'll give a speech.
Der Alte: Now men... everything okay?
Crew: Aye aye, cap'n!
Der Alte: To your stations!
LI: Some speech, huh?

It really only works as a funny little thing about setting up Werner to expect a big rousing pre-combat speech, and then there's... nothing, basically.

Also, the water under the surface was the expected "Das Boot green," at least that's how my hardware played it back.

Interesting too was that there are at least a couple of brief bits in the original version that are in the uncut version, but were not included in the director's cut. For instance the scene where the commander is on the bridge, presumably while still crossing the Bay of Biscay, talking about how that area is not safe and the Tommies have plenty of spies, etc. The whole scene as shown in the uncut version is not there - they don't show him telling the 2WO to give a false crash dive alarm - but a short bit of it is. None of it is in the DC.