This foreign made film took the world by storm with it’s vivid portrayal of life upon a WWII German u-boat. The novel Das Boot on which the 2.5 hour film was based, was written by a war correspondent, who documented his personal experiences aboard one of these military submarines, the U-96, in the heart of the war. The film was originally considered for US production with either Robert Redford or Paul Newman to star. But the Germans eventually took on the 2 year undertaking. German and Austrian actors were used to represent the realistic accents and dialects of the Nazi military. And the actors dubbed their own voices for the English version of the film, which surprisingly was out-performed in the box-office by Das Boot in it’s original German format.

Das Boot was nominated for 6 Academy Awards. The captain of the actual U-96 on which Das Boot was written, was a consultant for the film, which wanted to give audiences a glimpse at the realities of war and naval duties on a submarine deployed in the middle of the last great war. Most of the filming was dragged out over the course of a year, and shot sequentially to realistically capture the effects of time and stress on the actors bodies, through their beard growth and decreasing pallor from their confinement. These actors were literally spent months in a cramped unhealthy atmosphere. The interior of the actual u-96 was recreated to shoot realistic scenes. And several mock ups were made for the exterior. One such mock-up was rented by Steven Spielberg for a Nazi scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The original novel was intended as an anti-war story.

The film just tries, critics say successfully, to capture the realities of war. Interestingly, the German naval forces aboard the submarines lacked much of the Nazi sympathies of their land-lubing ground pounders and ace pilots. So watching this naval crew under-fire we see less an evil enemy getting their just rewards and more a group of friends / comrades doing their military duty through the tedious monotony and life or death situations. To that effect the film not only shows the realities of naval service during a time of war, but keeps a humanistic face on all the characters.

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