Das Boot DVD

Was digging around in ours, and found "Midway", have to go back and grab it I guess.

WHEEEEEE! Went to Walmart tonight and dug around the $5 DVD bin for Das Boot and found it! Oh, I found another DVD called So Proudly We Hail! (1943). It's a TCM movie about nurses caught behind enemy lines during World War II fight to survive.

Been on board the USS Nautilus in Groton, CT some years back. Never got the chance to go back this past summer when we took a family vacation in Mystic CT. Found out they were closed on the day we were to depart for home. A fun walk thru though...

I was 14 or 15 then and a lot smaller than now and she was tight. Going sideways in places, and some of that was due to blockoffs and such for the walkways to get people through her from one end to the other, and one way traffic. Granted, crew then were probably in between my size then and now.  Probably about 5-7 and 130 then and 6-1, 200 now.

Yep, our fleet boats were bigger, but had about a third more crew, so in reality were not that much more roomy for crews with having more fuel and stores to have to make room for.

I last saw Das Boot in 1993 in college and it was the American version and felt it was dry.

I watched the Directors Cut version in German for the first time over Christmas and loved every minute of it.  Its on Netflix if anyone was interested.  My wife speaks German and I have two exchange students living with me and they heard me watching it downstairs in my workshop.  They came down and were so intrigued with the emotion the actors gave that we moved upstairs to the rec room and made it a movie night.  My wife had fun explaining some of the words, especially the slang that was being used, to me.  She also picked up on the dialects and felt it was another message the movie portrayed on how diversified the crews were from regions of the Reich and their political views and upbringing.

This was one of those rare films that tells a story and leaves a message without beating you over the head with it.  

Love to. I've been through the Balao class USS Pampanito. That was small enough for me.

And of course neither of those have big diesels running hard!

If anyone gets the chance take the walk through of the U-boat in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry.  You would not believe the cramped conditions until you see it in person.  Went through that one in around '68 or so when visiting some of Mom's siblings back there.  Well worth the time to see and take pics.

Great movie. Bet the version you saw had both on the disk.

"Sehr Gut, Johan".

It is definitely worth buying for your collection.

modelcrazy

I found "The Beast" a couple of years ago at a truck stop (when I was trucking) for $5.00. I snagged it right up.

Saw it at the Biograph theater in Chicago when released in the USA. 

I still remember hearing the audience gasp when the introductory text stated the losses suffered by the U-Boat crews.

Now I need to dig up the music sound track for the movie and give it another play.

I found "The Beast" a couple of years ago at a truck stop (when I was trucking) for $5.00. I snagged it right up.

The mock up that they made for the movie was also used in " Raiders of the Lost Ark", for the exterior U-boat scene.  Never seen Das Boot, would grab it in a second if I saw the DVD for sale.  Same goes for "The Beast"

Love the one version in German with the sub titles. One of my favorites  along with The Enemy Below, The Bridges at Toko Ri and The Final Countdown.

Great movie, highly recommended. A little slow at times but the story is important during those times.

I've got the 209 minute wide screen director's cut. I remember buying it on clearance at the tiny Fort McCoy PX in January 1999. Snowed in for most of the trip there, took a shuttle bus to the PX and bought it to run in my laptop. Very good movie, well worth the time to watch. Mine has an announcement on it about 60 extra minutes as part of the director's cut.

I probably paid more than $5 for it.

The Das Boot version I found is the 4 hour version. Looks like I'm on the hunt for this one now. LOL!

Great movie,very realistic.

In my opinion it's one of the best ship movies, and one of the best war movies, ever made. Highly recommended.

As I understand it, it was originally a West German TV miniseries. I saw a two-hour version of it in a theater (in Norfolk, Virginia) when it was new. It was promoted as an anti-war movie, but it puts its message across by being realistic. (The actors were told to stay indoors throughout the shooting, so they'd have realistically pale complexions.) Some of those model shots are pretty hokey, but lots of folks, including me, overlook them in the context of a great movie. The interior shots of the U-boat are stunning.

Several versions of it were released on DVD. I like the "director's cut," which has quite a bit of additional footage and some extra features - including one on the making of the movie. I haven't seen the Blue-Ray version, but I may seek it out. We just bought a Blue-Ray player.

Quite a long time ago I read an article about the movie in the Naval Institute Proceedings. The author of the article was a former naval officer who'd served as a consultant for the movie. He said that he and the producer had agreed on one deliberate concession. The men in the crew sort of wear their emotions on their sleeves. In reality, that officer said, they would have worked hard to conceal whatever fear, tension, and desperation they might have been feeling. I don't think of that as a criticism of the movie, though.

Another point that I personally can't attest to: a German professor at the joint where I work said that the original German-language version is like an encyclopedia of German dialects and accents. The DVDs give you a choice of the original German or a dubbed English one - and the dubbing isn't bad. (Jurgen Prochnow, who plays the captain, speaks very good English and did his own dubbing. I imagine some of the other actors did the same. The version I saw in the theater was in German, with English subtitles.)

Anybody with any interest in the naval side of WWII really needs to see that movie.

I do recall seeing some footage of how it was made. One stage was the outside of the conning tower set on big hydraulic rams which moved it and there was a huge water shoot to create the waves washing over it.

tanker, there might be some of it on your DVD, I think the Blue ray has a behind the scenes section, but I have not looked at that.

Yeah I got that DVD as well. It really is a fantastic movie, especially the long version Bish mentioned.

Tankerbuilder: They filmed it on a movie set. The inside is a 1/1 recreation of the inside of an U-Boot I had a chance to walk around inside that thing at a German museum. All the exterior shots were filmed with models in various sizes.

YES !

  I own two copies , One to loan and one for me .

      I do believe it is one of the best movies showing the senselessness of war .That said , it is a gritty real life look at what those poor misguided souls went through , For what ? To die when they returned to base ?

    The best look at the inside of a BOOT and how they lived . I wonder to this day where it was filmed . I cannot think of any surviving U-Bootes that are in Germany . Darned good story though.

    If it was done on sound stages it was near perfect !   Tanker-Builder     P.S - Both are the original Long version .

O yes, got both the DVD and Blue Ray. I like to watch it in German with subtitles. IMHO, by far the best WW2 movie ever made.

There is a short version and a long one. The long one was originally shown on TV in several parts, but as a movie is about 200 mins. The short version is I think about 90mins, maybe 2 hours.

I also have the book that the movie is based on.