Buchheim about Petersen's movie

[Kaleun Cook]

Maybe the german speaking guys are interested in what Buchheim said about Petersen's movie. I just found this: http://www.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~jung...ot/inhalt.html (down, under "Kommentar")
The title of this text is "Die Wahrheit blieb auf Tauchstation" which can be translated as "The truth staid submerged". Maybe I find the time to translate it completely sometime.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Kaleun Cook

Maybe I find the time to translate it completely sometime.

I should certainly hope so! I'm going to be crazy if I have to wait very long!

[Camaero]

I would like to see that translated too.

[Kaleun Cook]

I'll do my very best but just don't have the time right now. And I'm not sure if I violate any copyright rules by doing so though.

Well in general he's angry about the added scenes (the oil throwing situation in the torpedo room and the banana dance scene), about the not used scene in which the Boot almost sank that spanish merchant (if he wrote the script that would have been the katharsis he says), about the behaviour of the actors - especially his Alter Ego. But he is impressed by the realistic interior the staff built.

What I found impressive was that he already knew - the text is dated 1981 - that from then on this movie was going to be the one example for the uboat war all over the world and almost noone would care what's written in books about it anymore. That's why he wanted it to be authentic and he does consider it authentic regarding the rebuilts and all the technology stuff - but the crew behaviour is all made up. And he thinks about if it's possible at all to transport the reality in such a movie.

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by Kaleun Cook

And he thinks about if it's possible at all to transport the reality in such a movie.

I wonder if the movie would be a little too boring maybe. They say that it was just weeks of monotony and dull dull mindnumbing nothingness.

[Kaleun Cook]

Yeah, he mentions that as a major problem, too. The movie has to transport six weeks in sea in maybe two hours of film:

"Was hier inszeniert wird, ist streckenweise nicht Realismus als Kunstform, sondern Imitation einer Wochenschau-Reportage Das alte Problem: genau sein und doch keinen Abklatsch machen. Quasi die "zweite Realität", die wichtigere, die hinter den Dingen, erfassen, das Überflüssige eliminieren und dafür das Sinnbildliche betonen. Sinnbilder machen: Bilder, die Sinn haben."

"What's orchestrated here is in parts not reality as an art form but an imitation of a Wochenschau report. The old problem: be exactly but don't create a poor imitation. To capture the "second reality" quasi, the more important, the one behind the things, eliminate the redundant and underline the allegoric. Create allegories: pictures that make sense."

[Kaleun Cook]

Okay, I decided to translate it paragraph for paragraph every once a while I have the time to do it. here's the first one.

Edit: I kindly ask all the native speakers to correct any spelling mistakes, wrong chosen words or wrong tenses.


A translation of the german text "Die Wahrheit blieb auf Tauchstation", printed in GEO Nr. 10/1981, shown on the website linked in the starting post


The truth remained submerged (Wikipedia translates the title: The truth remained hidden under the sea)

A report by Lothar-Günther Buchheim


How I felt regarding the huge technically expense for this movie I have been asked when I visited the sites of the film in Geiselgasteig or in La Pallice, the commercial port of La Rochelle and former german uboat base at the french Atlantic coast. How I felt regarding the production costs of 25 million Mark for Germany's most expensive movie, which I quasi would have caused. How I felt? I walked around deeply depressed because what I saw did not allign with my idea of this movie at all. It slipped away. It is not "my" movie anymore, although that is claimed everywhere.

On the other hand noone asked me if I like what has been made from my book. On the contrary, I have been treated how an author usually is by a film producer: as an disfranchised story deliverer. In this case that has a worse impact than usually because is not any movie. This movie is going to be, whether it is wanted or not, the documentary evidence for the operations of all uboats in the Second World War. The whole world will get its idea of the uboat war upon this movie. There can be published as many books as the authos may write: they will not change that this movie is going to be considered the only "true" evidence. That is due to the cogency of pictures that is stronger that that of words.

If the Americans had made this movie how it was planned originally my situation would be haunting as well but it would be easier: for the Americans there would have been a sloppiness bonus. About such a movie one could have shrugged one's shoulders: typically american, just like a regisseur from over there would orchestrate such movies with the common calls on all prejudices against the Germans. That the movie "Das Boot" now is a "national" movie makes things more difficult: the Germans have no bonus. In this movie everything would have to be correct - but it is not.

It is going to be like this: not the military adviser will be hold liable for the mistakes, not the regisseur, neither the producer. For every obscenity, for each mistake I will be denigrated. I already know today that there will be no means to defend myself. No advice that I am not the adviser, nor the regisseur, nor the producer but only the author of the book "Das Boot" will be of use.

When the book became a worldwide success masses of film producers got in touch. Eventually Bavaria bought the story. Through the help of tendercompanies they wanted to finance the for german conditions enormous project and also planned to rely on the help of an american company: Hollywood should have come to Geiselgasteig. The Americans came. Robert Redford was supposed to play "the old one", the commander of the uboat, John Sturges should have been the regisseur. Everything seemed to be at best.

But then the Americans presented a script that I considered as a poor piece of worksmanship falsifying my novel. The clash was there. There was a compromise. "The other side was as adamant that one scene - the murder of american officers in a rescue boat by men from the Boot - would be in the movie as we required that it would not be", said the chief dramaturg of Bavaria, Helmut Krapp. In the american script even the SS appeared. Uboat men were shown as war criminals, I was shown as their desolately instigator. I threatened to forbid the use of the title and to cancel the use of the name of the author. I wanted a movie to be created that shows the operations of the german uboats using the example of a very cruel patrol of U96 - but not a caricature according to american taste. Back in those days, 1978, I wrote my own script, 600 pages long - better: I wrote my movie - and that more away from the novel than according to it - a text that will be published with the title "U96, Scenes of the naval war" as a book in this autumn.

There were new american partners, but they where only looking for a sensational war story as well. They brought their own script writer - when he was done everything bounced. Don Siegel, the new regisseur, flew back home. The money giving tendercompany gave up. Six million Mark were gone and not one meter of the movie was recorded. The money was used to built quite a few uboat models, two of them in original size. Temporary the Bavaria area looked like a junkyard at the Atlantik coast, temporary like a real dockyard with "Helligen" (sry, can't translate that) and all that goes with it. The Bavaria hired a new regisseur: Wolfgang Petersen. The new one wanted to write the sript himself. Mine would be too long was said in those days - at all events usefull for a six hours film.

[Kaleun Cook]

Allright, so far - and that has not been half of the whole text. Hope you find it as interesting as I did. I'll post the rest as soon as I find the time.

[P_Funk]

There was a compromise. "The other side was as adamant that one scene - the murder of american officers in a rescue boat by men from the Boot - would be in the movie as we required that it would not be"

Thats insane. I think that there was only one recorded case of that happening. I`m not even sure if that one is true.

Bloody Americans.

[Kaleun Cook]

Okay, so here we go a bit further.

What then happened could be called "irony of fate": the television replaced the american part of the capital. WDR and SDR (announcement by the poster: two german tv channels; Westdeutscher and Süddeutscher Rundfunk) ordered a six episodes version for the year 1985. But at that time Pertersen who had his assignment was already workin on it. All I could do was to backtrack and grudge. In those days the gossip about the most expensive film ever made in Germany already had begun.

And there were sensational reports about the film making process: once in a test drive on the Starnberger See the eleven meter boat ran backwards due to a "wrong" radio signal and rammed a yacht, some other time it even sank in the Chiemsee. Later the deck replication - after all 67 meters long - broke over night when it hit its buoy in a bay of the Ile de Ré. The forecastle sank, the rest was washed ashore. A heavy setback. The boat then was cobbled together in a dockyard in La Pallice. Two million ruined: the insurancy was only effected for a total loss.

Finally the crew was casted: 18 actors, 23 extra - no stars. The star in this movie is the boat. when I got back into this boat - into this replication of the hull of a uboat type VIIC - in Geiselgasteig for the first time after 35 years it hit me like a shock. I thought they would built everything for the movie from styrofoam, from papier-mâché and plywood. But when I recognized that one could touch every handwheel, every valve as well as the knobs for the depth control, that I was encircled by the same manometers like I had been back in those days, I was torn: on such a uboat I had taken part in a hellish ride, in such a central, the heart of the uboat. That was in Straits of Gibraltar, namely after our boat had been hit by a british aircraft bomb. Such a central is not a funny interieur. There is nothing but valves, manometers, handwheels, pipings, glasses showing the waterlevel - everything closely built into the steel casing of the hull of the type VIIC, which beared the brunt during the battle of the Atlantik in the Second World War. On this ship there is no partition of rooms for charge, engines and living. The whole ship is one perfect tool for warfare. There was barely place for nature's call. Everything that was not made of steel seemed to be out of place. In the density of this diving tube 50 men had to be on duty. And not only that: provision, reserve ammunition, clothes - everything had to be dammed into the tube.

Uboats are called "iron coffins". What they used to call "Blutzoll" back in those days, in other words the casualty rate, was higher among the uboat men than in any other branch. From the 40000 uboat men 30000 staid in the Atlantik. Many of them were not even men - in fact they were half kids: the whole uboat orlog was a giant crusade of kids. We had 16 years olds on board, at the end of the war there were 19 years old Leitende Ingenieure and 20 years old Commanders, made ready for the front in some kind of quickly breeding process, only to pass from life to death in one of the most cruel ways. I always refused that in the casualty reports about uboat men it has been said they were fallen. They drowned, were drowned like surplus cats in a sack.

One has to indulge the veterans that like to meet to glorify their memories in the smell of the box of the mutual closeness: Noone has come through that hell without damage. In fact we are all war-damaged, even if we still have arms and legs on our bodies. We will never get rid of the traumata we suffered. When it was possible I did not visit the film sites because everything I saw attacked me too heavily: my past was resurrected there. Also, I was haunted by the divergence between the visions of my memory and the attitudes of the actors in the re-enacted scenes. My alter ego, the war reporter lieutenant, which I didn not want to be in the film, was made up by regisseur Peterson to an important character. It has become fatal. I could not look into the mirror if I had behaved on board like this batch is required to. This man acts the most absurd in a scene fabricated by the regisseur - if for god sake he would not fabricate scenes -: there is this jack-in-thebox-war-reporter taking pictures in the engines room and gets an oil-soaked rag thrown in the face by someone. Mister war reporter fakes inner convulsion and rushes out of the room. There is no consequence for the person that has thrown the rag. To get a rag in the face - that should have happened to me! I asked Petersen, why he was interested in my story. "For the first time I had the feeling that here is told what war is like", he said, "I have always been curious for that because I did not experience war myself." That's it: Petersen has not experienced war. Can one repeat the uboat war in pictures if one has never experienced the uboat war?

[Kataki]

Thanks for the translation! I was just reading about this on wikipedia yesterday (have no idea why lol). I'm pretty curious what Buchheim will have to say about the movies end.. where he dies in the movie :P. That scene was un-needed and unrealistic, allied fighter-bombers wouldn't have been in range of La-Rochelle in early 42.

I hate to sound stupid here, but the movie portrays the uboat crew as almost anti-nazi; Was this a decision by Wolfgang to try and make the movie more politcally correct for German theatres?

[Kaleun Cook]

Okay, that was the second part, more to come sometime.

edit: I didn't see your reply. He doesn't say anything about the ending of the film - but it's quite the same as in his book.

2nd edit: the anti-nazi crew. that's pretty much adapted from the book as well.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by P_Funk

Bloody Americans.

Please-blame Hollywood all you like. I personally would never take those liberties. If Bucheim and Lehmenbrock hadn't been there themselves, I wonder if Peterson would have been so faithful to the book?

As for him blaming the movie for anything, even some u-boat veterans complained that the book was over-dramatized as well.

[Kaleun Cook]

As for him blaming the movie for anything, even some u-boat veterans complained that the book was over-dramatized as well.

Maybe you can find something written about that that we could put under this critical view on the movie? Because I agree with Buchheims opinion that the movie and also the book are being taken as evidence for whole uboat war. I'd like to read some more critical stuff about both. His text by the way goes on a lot further, still more to come.

Kataki: The Atlantik bases were in range of allied bombers. There was the so called Atlantik-Directive saying that dockyards and bases should be bombed I think already in 1940. Have a look at the map the next time you play sh3. Allied bombers reached cities far away in Germany. Why should they have not been able to reach those bases like right in front of England?

[Kataki]

Fighter bombers though? Just thought that was a bit silly, anyway Im just nit picking.. and as far as the map goes:

Silenthunter 3 map, Judging from the game (but hey how accurate is it ?):

http://www.deathsheadunit.com/SeeViper/SH3_MAP.jpg

Map with La Rochelle on it:
http://www.softmaptech.com/images/map_France_detail.gif

According those La Rochelle is just out of range.

Anyway I guess it wasn't the range issue that made me dislike the scene, but rather that it felt like the producers/director felt there werent enough explosions or that the movie wasnt already depressing enough. If it is in his book (havent read the book tbh) then I suppose I'll change my mind.

Either way I love the movie.