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.

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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?

Originally Posted by 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.

[Pappy55]

Originally Posted by 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?

Yes it is you can get it on amazon.

[Joefour]

I'll have to check it out. THANKS!

Originally Posted by Pappy55

Yes it is you can get it on amazon.

[Pappy55]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Das-Boot-Ser...words=das+boot

This is the version I have

[vanjast]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by BigWalleye

Understood.

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

Originally Posted by 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?

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.

Originally Posted by vanjast

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=jBF...ntiwar&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,

Originally Posted by BigWalleye

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.