Movies and Films
This is the forum for Movie and Film discussions. Again, our topic is naval warfare in WWII for the most part.
Re: The Enemy Below
Posted by:
Edward
()
Date: February 14, 2004 02:42AM
<HTML>Thanks Raptor and Dan Girard.
This movie keeps on captivating me, perhaps largely because it suggests that U-Boat Kapitans and crews , though completely patriotic to Germany, were literally so separated from the country that they could afford independent thought. There were so many of them who came up from the atmosphere of earlier Imperial Navy thinking. This is of course a short explanation which is vulnerable to much argument, yet the incredible Jurgens soliloquy in his cabin with Schwaffer may be more than merely for cinematic/screenplay effect: watch Jurgens carefully as he delivers that long dialogue, unusual in his career. There is no other place in his career where he shines so greatly, delivering one of the greatest but least acknowledged scenes in history, and delivers the lines as one so convicted of what he is saying that you are outside the frame without your even knowing it has occurred. Jurgens is so lost in a reality associated with the delivery that he has become disabled as an actor from telling anything but the truth, as if his subtext was intimate knowledge of the true feelings of those who know that truth.
Of course my proposal can be chewed both ways. However, before doing so, study that scene.
many thanks for your kindnesses in filling in some gaps for me about this movie, i.e., the translations of certain songs etc in my original posting. I look forward to the remainder. Edward</HTML>
This movie keeps on captivating me, perhaps largely because it suggests that U-Boat Kapitans and crews , though completely patriotic to Germany, were literally so separated from the country that they could afford independent thought. There were so many of them who came up from the atmosphere of earlier Imperial Navy thinking. This is of course a short explanation which is vulnerable to much argument, yet the incredible Jurgens soliloquy in his cabin with Schwaffer may be more than merely for cinematic/screenplay effect: watch Jurgens carefully as he delivers that long dialogue, unusual in his career. There is no other place in his career where he shines so greatly, delivering one of the greatest but least acknowledged scenes in history, and delivers the lines as one so convicted of what he is saying that you are outside the frame without your even knowing it has occurred. Jurgens is so lost in a reality associated with the delivery that he has become disabled as an actor from telling anything but the truth, as if his subtext was intimate knowledge of the true feelings of those who know that truth.
Of course my proposal can be chewed both ways. However, before doing so, study that scene.
many thanks for your kindnesses in filling in some gaps for me about this movie, i.e., the translations of certain songs etc in my original posting. I look forward to the remainder. Edward</HTML>
