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: Das Boot Subtitles
Posted by:
Meg Rosenfeld
()
Date: April 29, 2003 01:56PM
<HTML>Barry,
I, too, was so convinced that the story was 100% historically true that I'd actually written an essay about it (treating it as pure autobiography) for a readers' group, focussing on the tragic ending. However, my reaction upon listening to the director's commentary was somewhat different from yours, in that when Prochnow (I think it was he at that point) casually mentioned how nice it was to get to meet the "real" Captain, I leapt out of my chair yelling "He didn't die! He didn't die!" startling my husband, who had gone out of the room. A quick venture through "google.com" assured us that Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock had indeed lived until 1986, and the gruesome ending of the book was fiction.
Still, if you look at the book and the film as carefully-crafted works of fiction--which, strictly speaking, they are (despite Buchheim's foreword)--that ending is necessary. There is so much hell-imagery at the beginning of the second chapter that you really see the voyage as a journey to the underworld, led by a wise and reliable guide who gets the narrator through OK but can't save himself or his doomed crew. Like Ishmael in Moby Dick, the young propoganda correspondent is an outsider, and isn't tied into their fate.
Quite a piece of work--well, TWO pieces of work, the book and the film--that people are still talking about them with such interest and passion 20-odd years later; and very odd years they've been, too.
Regards,
Meg</HTML>
I, too, was so convinced that the story was 100% historically true that I'd actually written an essay about it (treating it as pure autobiography) for a readers' group, focussing on the tragic ending. However, my reaction upon listening to the director's commentary was somewhat different from yours, in that when Prochnow (I think it was he at that point) casually mentioned how nice it was to get to meet the "real" Captain, I leapt out of my chair yelling "He didn't die! He didn't die!" startling my husband, who had gone out of the room. A quick venture through "google.com" assured us that Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock had indeed lived until 1986, and the gruesome ending of the book was fiction.
Still, if you look at the book and the film as carefully-crafted works of fiction--which, strictly speaking, they are (despite Buchheim's foreword)--that ending is necessary. There is so much hell-imagery at the beginning of the second chapter that you really see the voyage as a journey to the underworld, led by a wise and reliable guide who gets the narrator through OK but can't save himself or his doomed crew. Like Ishmael in Moby Dick, the young propoganda correspondent is an outsider, and isn't tied into their fate.
Quite a piece of work--well, TWO pieces of work, the book and the film--that people are still talking about them with such interest and passion 20-odd years later; and very odd years they've been, too.
Regards,
Meg</HTML>
