Quote:
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.
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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.
Quote:
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.
