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 appeal of Das Boot
Posted by:
cate
()
Date: September 02, 2002 12:45PM
<HTML>That episode wasn't in the original book. I had always assumed that Petersen included it as a way of intensifying the drama and urgency of their situation (as if it needed it!) and bringing the first hand reality of battle wounds in war closer to home. I thought it worked pretty well, due to some very fine acting from Bernd Tauber and the rest.
However I have recently discovered something which if I'm guessing here correctly may throw a different light on it.
There is a very good account on this site of a tour of the Bavarian Film studios, in which the writer reports that the tour guide told them one of the actors was injured when he was accidentally washed out of the conning tower by the pressure hoses during the filming, and Petersen decided to keep the sequence in as the 'Mann Uberbord' episode. According to the guide, the actor in question was Jan Fedder, who played Pilgrim, and he had to spend subsequent filming in a bunk 'wounded' as he was too badly injured in real life to do otherwise.
Except, in the film at least Pilgrim doesn't do that, unless that was a sequence in the TV version that didn't get into the film. I haven't seen that for so long I can't remember. Tauber, the Obersteuermann, who rescues him, does however spend the last part of the film wounded in a bunk. I'm wondering if there might have been some confusion of the two actors here, and maybe that sequence was Petersen making a very creative best out of a bad break.
The 'Mann Uberbord' incident is in the book BTW, but told at second hand by the Obersteuermann, as happening on another boat.
If anyone can throw any more light on these scenes I'd be fascinated to know.
Cate</HTML>
However I have recently discovered something which if I'm guessing here correctly may throw a different light on it.
There is a very good account on this site of a tour of the Bavarian Film studios, in which the writer reports that the tour guide told them one of the actors was injured when he was accidentally washed out of the conning tower by the pressure hoses during the filming, and Petersen decided to keep the sequence in as the 'Mann Uberbord' episode. According to the guide, the actor in question was Jan Fedder, who played Pilgrim, and he had to spend subsequent filming in a bunk 'wounded' as he was too badly injured in real life to do otherwise.
Except, in the film at least Pilgrim doesn't do that, unless that was a sequence in the TV version that didn't get into the film. I haven't seen that for so long I can't remember. Tauber, the Obersteuermann, who rescues him, does however spend the last part of the film wounded in a bunk. I'm wondering if there might have been some confusion of the two actors here, and maybe that sequence was Petersen making a very creative best out of a bad break.
The 'Mann Uberbord' incident is in the book BTW, but told at second hand by the Obersteuermann, as happening on another boat.
If anyone can throw any more light on these scenes I'd be fascinated to know.
Cate</HTML>
