Reading the book, again, after the movie

[vanjast]

Das Boot buch is more interesting now..

A few editing differences, but the director seems to follow the line fairly accurately.... only on Tuesday 46th Day at Sea.

I think the movie just didn't get the boredom right... The book is quiet funny in this regard.
:up:

[Sailor Steve]

Are you talking about the theatrical version, the Director's Cut, or the 5-hour Uncut version? I thought the last one got the feel just right.

[BigWalleye]

Are you talking about the theatrical version, the Director's Cut, or the 5-hour Uncut version? I thought the last one got the feel just right.

If either the movie or the book actually got anything right - as in historically accurate - it is purely coincidental. The book was an avowed piece of anti-war propaganda by a committed activist, and the movie was true to its source. Buchheim was always quite candid about the book's purpose. Historical reality was secondary to "psychological reality" - in other words, emotional impact on the reader. Herbert Werner, in his memoir, comes through as not exactly a nice guy, and he tells some fibs, too. (Someone please show me the 300 m deep within half a day's steaming west of Kiel!). But IMO, he does a far better and certainly a more honest job of capturing the way the men in the boats saw and thought about themselves (and the way they behaved under stress).

[Sailor Steve]

I meant the Uncut version of the movie got the feel of the book just right. No comment on the accuracy of either one.

[BigWalleye]

I meant the Uncut version of the movie got the feel of the book just right. No comment on the accuracy of either one.

Understood.

I had a rant left over from last month and wanted to use it before it expired.

[Joefour]

The only version I have been able to see is the Director's Cut. Is the 5 hour version the mini series in Germany I've read about? Any idea where one could get access to it?

I meant the Uncut version of the movie got the feel of the book just right. No comment on the accuracy of either one.

[Pappy55]

The only version I have been able to see is the Director's Cut. Is the 5 hour version the mini series in Germany I've read about? Any idea where one could get access to it?

Yes it is you can get it on amazon.

[Joefour]

I'll have to check it out. THANKS!

Yes it is you can get it on amazon.

[Pappy55]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Das-Boot-Series-Uncut-Version/dp/B0001NIYUO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1407859712&sr=8-3&keywords=das+boot

This is the version I have

[vanjast]

Are you talking about the theatrical version, the Director's Cut, or the 5-hour Uncut version? I thought the last one got the feel just right.
I have the 5 hour uncut, AFAIK, although the cover is different.

Maybe I worded the first post incorrectly - There's not that much difference between book and film... just a few 'minor' things I noticed.

It could just be that the director just didn't do these parts.
:)

[Sailor Steve]

Understood.

I had a rant left over from last month and wanted to use it before it expired.
:rotfl2: :rock:

The only version I have been able to see is the Director's Cut. Is the 5 hour version the mini series in Germany I've read about? Any idea where one could get access to it?
Yes, it's the mini-series with all the credits removed from the middle episodes to make on very long movie. I wish they would release a version with the episodes intact. As it is I usually try to watch it in 48-minute lumps.

I have the 5 hour uncut, AFAIK, although the cover is different.
That's the best version, in my opinion.

Maybe I worded the first post incorrectly - There's not that much difference between book and film... just a few 'minor' things I noticed.
I have several complaints about the movie, but the interior of the boat is so good to look at I mostly ignore them.

As for the "anti-war" aspect, my feeling is that it's German - you know, opera and all that - so of course it's going to end the way it does. On the other hand the ending in the book is no ending at all. There were two sequels, after all. Books, of course, though I've never read them, since they've never been translated into English.

[Otto Fuhrmann]

I can't say much to how actually accurate the movie is, but what I do know is it is the closest thing I will ever get to knowing what it was like.
However, I have talked with a few U-boat veterans and they did say the book was very close, allbeit, a tad overly dramatic, but hey, they all agree, it was a novel and a movie, it was made that way for entertainment. So they never thought much into it.

If you are going to watch or rewatch it, I have to agree with the others above that the 5-hour version is the must see. If you don't watch it you are missing so much of what makes it great.

[UKönig]

I would very much recommend the novel as a companion to the movie.

Yes, it is a novel, but not a work of fiction. More of an amalgamation of several U-boat missions woven into one story. Herbert Werner of Iron Coffins describes several instances in his own book which are similar to ones told in Das Boot. I cannot praise those books enough. Your own simulated u-boat experience will be all the richer for it, in my opinion.

[BigWalleye]

Michael Hadley has written an excellent book of historiography, Count Not the Dead: The Popular Image of the German Submarine. It’s hard to find and very spendy. But the whole of Chapter 5, Revising the Past: The Buchheim Wave, 1973-1988, can be read online at Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=jBFW0jFsHxwC&pg=PA141&lpg=PA141&dq=buchheim+antiwar&source=bl&ots=wr6Il2H9YT&sig=q0jWqhVGkN3JkQUBYxBFkQ6uIms&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JwfsU5vGGon9yQS0sYC4CQ&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=buchheim%20antiwar&f=false. It is recommended reading for anyone who has read Das Boot or seen the movie.

Erich Maria Remarque was the author of All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel set in the trenches of World War I. It is one of the great works of European literature. But far as I know, it is not on the reading list for any course in Military History.

[Sailor Steve]

That is a fantastic read! Thanks for the link.

However,
But the whole of Chapter 5, Revising the Past: The Buchheim Wave, 1973-1988, can be read online at Google Books...
There are actually ten pages missing from various parts of that chapter. Still, it's an enlightening description of what went on between admirers and critics of the book, movie and TV series.

[BigWalleye]

6That is a fantastic read! Thanks for the link.

However,

There are actually ten pages missing from various parts of that chapter. Still, it's an enlightening description of what went on between admirers and critics of the book, movie and TV series.

Yeah! Skimmed the chapter and thought it was all there. Mea culpa. :oops: Didn't intend to mislead. IIRC, there is nothing in the omitted parts that changes the narrative.

Another interesting book is Timothy Mulligan's "Neither Sharks nor Wolves: The Men of Nazi Germany's U-boat Army". Mulligan has mined every surviving archive to assemble a profile of the men who actually manned the U-boats. Where they came from, what their backgrounds were, ages, length of service, favorite kind of wurst. (Well maybe not the last one!) This is a composite picture of the real U-boat sailors. Truth in reading: It gets a little dry toward the end, and you know how it's gonna end. But it gives you an idea of who those cartoon figures in the 3D screens really were. It is available, and for a normal price.

[LGN1]

Hi,

there is also a book by Buchheim himself about the making of the movie. It contains both historical photographs and pictures from behind the scenes. It also contains some pages about the reactions to his book (e.g., letters from readers) and the movie. It's quite informative.

There are quite some scenes in the movie that he didn't like at all. For instance, he writes that no crew reacted as hysterically to a depth-charge attack as in the movie. He also complains about the 'banana dance' scene and the attack with the oil cloth. He says that such instances could have never happened in real-life. And he didn't like the war correspondent at all. He says that the movie doesn't need him because there is the camera.

And finally he complains that the crucial incident with the Spanish liner 'Reina Victoria' is omitted in the movie. He considers this incident as one of the most important parts of the book.

Regards, LGN1

[Sailor Steve]

Interesting observation from the author. Of course there's also the controversy from u-boatmen who didn't like the book either. I agree about the lack of professionalism from the crew. On the the other hand I like the narrative in the 'Uncut' version. Also I can see why they left the Reina Victoria scene out. As much as I liked it I can see where some of the captain's dialogue might be a little provocative in a movie. They also made major changes to the 'tanker' scene, apparently to include a similar sentiment but with a less antagonistic tone.

[vanjast]

Finished the book..


And he didn't like the war correspondent at all. He says that the movie doesn't need him because there is the camera.
I think the director wanted to give the audience a 3rd person view, which works fairly well, IMO. The camera alone, would have made it a 1st person view, which would have reduced it to a mere film, instead of a 'recorded documentary' of a non-submariner/observer (the author).


And finally he complains that the crucial incident with the Spanish liner 'Reina Victoria' is omitted in the movie. He considers this incident as one of the most important parts of the book.
I agree with him here, as this shows how mistakes are made in the height of battle where even the Captain is at his 'wits end'. And all because the 1st Lieutenant didn't look up in the ships catalogue.

Interestingly in the book, I don't see the names of the Captain or the 1st Lieutenant ?

[Sailor Steve]

Interestingly in the book, I don't see the names of the Captain or the 1st Lieutenant ?
He intentionally did not give names to any of the four senior officers. This was copied in the movie.

[vanjast]

Any known reason why ? - Family, Military..etc :06:

[Sailor Steve]

Any known reason why ? - Family, Military..etc :06:
I think it's because some of the things in the book are fictional, or are based on events that happened to other men than the prototypes for the book, so much so that he even gives the boat a fictional name, 'U-A'. The boat he rode on was indeed U-96, but the real captain, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, certainly did not die during the war, since he served as a technical advisor on the movie in 1982. The real U-96 was sunk in an American high-altitude bombing raid on Wilhelmshaven in March 1945.

The book is best taken as a glimpse of what life was like on a u-boat. For a more literal account read Buchheim's U-Boat War. I feel the same way about the movie. It's fiction, strongly based on fact. The detail of the interior of the boat, the descriptions of the boredom, the way it sucks you into being a part of that life, those are the accurate parts. The story itself is still fiction.