They do indeed Lee. "Stalingrad" or "Downfall" are two other good films about WW2 and made in Germany. Might I add, Napola - Elite für den Führer and Sophie Scholl.
I think it's really good. Bruno Ganz (the fella playing Hitler) does an amazing job. [FONT="]I agree. Hitler must be an immensely challenging role to play - the evil dictator of children’s stories. Ganz really brings him to life as a human being I feel. It is a very good film. [/FONT]
Bruno Ganz is amazing its proberley the best acting I have ever seen even down to the shakes and the flicking of the hair that is portraid in the news reals......more the point its how I imagined hitler to act.......brilliant My wife could'nt watch it as the guy playing Josef Goebols gave her the creeps again how I imagined the evil little shi* to be
I thought Downfall was really good, but I must admit I only bought it after I saw the microsoft/Wii spoofs on youtube
The film is quite short but the original TV episodes built the suspense up unbelievably. The period when they sat on the bottom with the rivets popping confirmed all my worst prejudices about going down in one of those things. I just thought that the ending was a bit rushed and improbable. It wasn't based on fact, was it ? The series, I thought, was better than the film. One built up an affinity for the characters. You could almost say sympathetic. Visited a u-boat (series 9)when it was in Birkenhead, this only added to the atmosphere when I had chance to watch the series again. The ending came across as rushed. They build up the suspense and then - the bombing of the pens - end. Saying that trapped in the pens and the likes of Tall Boy/ Grand Slam coming down wouldn't leave much scope for padding/ dragging it out! Lothar Bucheim died earlier this year.
hxxxttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a3/Das_boot_ver1.jpg/215px-Das_boot_ver1.jpg Das Boot (German pronunciation: [das ˈboːt], German: Das Boot meaning "The Boat") is a 1981 German epic war film written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, produced by Günter Rohrbach, and starring Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, and Klaus Wennemann. It has been exhibited both as a theatrical release and as a TV miniseries, and in several different home video versions of various running times. Das Boot is an adaption of the 1973 German novel of the same name by Lothar-Günther Buchheim. Set during World War II, the film tells the fictional story of U-96 and its crew. It depicts both the excitement of battle and the tedium of the fruitless hunt, and shows the men serving aboard U-boats as ordinary individuals with a desire to do their best for their comrades and their country. The screenplay used an amalgamation of exploits from the real U-96, a Type VIIC-class U-boat commanded by Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, one of Germany's top U-boat "tonnage aces" during the war. Development for Das Boot began in 1979. Several American directors were considered three years earlier before the film was shelved. During the film's production, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the captain of the real U-96, and Hans-Joachim Krug, former first officer on U-219, served as consultants. One of Petersen's goals was to guide the audience through "a journey to the edge of the mind" (the film's German tagline Eine Reise ans Ende des Verstandes), showing "what war is all about". Produced with a budget of 32 million DM (about $18.5 million), the film was released on September 17, 1981 and was later released in 1997 in a director's cut version supervised by Petersen. It grossed over $80 million ($190.2 million in 2009 prices) worldwide between its theatrical releases and received critical acclaim. Its high production cost ranks it among the most expensive films in the history of German cinema. It was the second most expensive up until that time, after Metropolis. The story is told from the viewpoint of Lt. Werner (Herbert Grönemeyer), who has been assigned as a war correspondent on the German submarine U-96 in October 1941. He meets its captain (Jürgen Prochnow), chief engineer (Klaus Wennemann), and the crew in a French nightclub. Thomsen (Otto Sander), another captain, gives a crude drunken speech to celebrate his Ritterkreuz award, in which he openly mocks Winston Churchill and implicitly Adolf Hitler. Sets and models Several different sets were used. Two full-size mock-ups of a Type VIIC boat were built, one representing the portion above water for use in outdoor scenes, and the other a cylindrical tube on a motion mount for the interior scenes. The mock-ups were built according to U-boat plans from Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. The outdoor mock-up was basically a shell propelled with a small engine, and stationed in La Rochelle, France and has a history of its own. One morning the production crew walked out to where they kept it afloat and found it missing. Someone had forgotten to inform the crew that an American filmmaker had rented the mock-up for his own film shooting in the area. This filmmaker was Steven Spielberg and the film he was shooting was Raiders of the Lost Ark. A few weeks later, during production, the mock-up cracked in a storm and sank, was recovered and patched to stand in for the final scenes. The full-sized mock-up was used during the Gibraltar surface scenes; the bomber plane (a Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber) and rockets were real while the British ships were models. A mock-up of a conning tower was placed in a water tank at the Bavaria Studios in Munich for outdoor scenes not requiring a full view of the boat's exterior. When filming on the outdoor mockup or the conning tower, jets of cold water were hosed over the actors to simulate the breaking ocean waves. During the filming there was a scene where actor Jan Fedder (Pilgrim) fell off the bridge while the U-boat was surfaced. Fedder broke several ribs. This scene was not scripted and during the take one of the actors exclaims "Mann über Bord!" in order to draw attention to Fedder. Petersen, who at first did not realise this was an accident said "Good idea, Jan. We'll do that one more time!" However, since Fedder was genuinely injured and had to be hospitalised, this was the only take available and eventually Petersen kept this scene in the film. In this scene, the pained expression on Fedder's face is authentic and not acted. Petersen also had to rewrite Fedder's character for a portion of the film so that the character was portrayed as bedridden. For his scenes later in the film Fedder had to be brought to and from set from the hospital since he suffered a concussion while filming his accident scene. Fedder eventually recovered enough and Pilgrim is seen on his feet from the scene when the U-96 abandons the British sailors. A half-sized full hull operating model was used for underwater shots and some surface running shots, in particular the meeting in stormy seas with another U-boat. The tank was also used for the shots of British sailors jumping from their ship; a small portion of the tanker hull was constructed for these shots. hxxxxttp://www.sharkhunters.com/U-995q.jpg U995, Germany U-Boat hxxxxttp://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_hVOW2U7K4-M/TXQqgGaedfI/AAAAAAABdBc/bOoIifVUKwo/edtrhethdethdth.jpg The film drew highest critical acclaim and is seen as one of the greatest of all German films, along with Nosferatu by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Metropolis and M by Fritz Lang, The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich, Downfall by Oliver Hirschbiegel and The Lives of Others by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. For its (so far) unsurpassed authenticity in tension and realism, it is regarded internationally as pre-eminent among all submarine films. The film was ranked #25 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010. In late 2007, there was an exhibition about the film Das Boot, as well as about the real U-Boat U-96, at the Haus der Geschichte (House of German History) in Bonn. Over 100,000 people visited the exhibition during its four-month run. Promotion The film was unusual in its North American promotion, since it was referred to both in German as Das Boot, and in English as The Boat. The lack of drama in the translated title eventually led to its being marginalized, with Das Boot becoming the normal title for the film. For a time, it was called Das Boot (The Boat). Historical accuracy In the film, there is only one ardent Nazi in the crew of 40, namely the First Watch Officer (referred to comically in one scene as Unser Hitlerjugendführer or "Our Hitler Youth Leader"), with the rest of the officers either indifferent or, in the Captain's case, openly cynical. The enlisted sailors and NCO are portrayed as apolitical. In his book Iron Coffins, former U-boat commander Herbert A. Werner states that the selection of naval personnel based on their loyalty to the party only occurred later in the war (from 1943 onward), when the U-boats were suffering high casualties. At that stage in the war, morale was surely declining and this degree of skepticism may have occurred. In support of Das Boot on this subject, U-Boat historian Michael Gannon maintains that the U-boat navy was one of the least pro-Nazi branches of the German armed forces. Even though the beginning and the end of the film occur in the port of La Rochelle, it does not correspond historically. The submarine base in La Rochelle was not functional before November 1941, and at the time of the film the port was dried up. Moreover, none of the British fighter-bombers of late 1941 to early 1942 had the range to bomb La Rochelle from bases in the U.K.; however, it is possible the fighters were carrier-based and not land based. While Saint-Nazaire was the base used in the novel, the film was changed to La Rochelle because its appearance had not changed to such a large degree in the years since World War II. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen Produced by Günter Rohrbach Screenplay by Wolfgang Petersen Based on the novel Das Boot by Lothar-Günther Buchheim Narrated by Herbert Grönemeyer (Uncut version) Starring: Jürgen Prochnow Herbert Grönemeyer Klaus Wennemann Music by Klaus Doldinger Cinematography Jost Vacano Editing by Hannes Nikel Studio: Bavaria Film PSO International Distributed by Columbia Pictures Release date: 17 September 1981 Running time: 149 minutes 209 minutes (Director's cut) 293 minutes (Uncut) Country:West Germany Language: German, English, French Budget: 32 million DM ($14 million) (€24.3 million, 2009) Box office $84,970,337
This is one of my fav war movies - i was lent it by a RAF Medic doing training at my college and its one i keep meaning to buy. Really enjoyed the movie and the acting.
