#Best world war 2 submarine movies series#
#Best world war 2 submarine movies tv#

Make sure to go for the original uncut version / director’s cut and avoid the shortened theatrical version of Das Boot, a Hollywood version where the concentration on special effect scenes reverse the anti-war message of the original. At one point, the German submarine has sunk into the depths of the North Atlantic, the lights have gone out, and the pursuers are floating somewhere above and are dropping their bombs into the water. The action and plot is not what’s important about Das Boot, important is that the men of the U96 are scared to death and in a state of sheer terror. It is only these beeps that announce the presence of the enemy and danger, with the sounds working as an electric taser which is driving the viewer whose eyes are glued to the moving needle on the submarine’s pressure gauge.

The viewer does not see the enemy threat in Das Boot, but he plunges into an acoustic horror scenario with the submarine crew, an unbearable soundscape of beeps, roaring, and deafening creaks, sounds that are also reflected in Klaus Doldinger’s congenial theme. One cannot help but wonder how many such would-be talents perish in every war. The actors in the film almost all became big names in German film or music, names who are established in the country’s cultural scene to this day- Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer (Grönland label), Uwe Ochsenknecht, Claude Oliver Rudolph and many others. Here, the film also works also on a meta-level. The men suffer from filth, poor hygiene, rashes and other untreated diseases, and they lose their sanity in the merciless claustrophobia of the submarine, all under the eyes of a captain who has Weltschmerz in his gaze. This scene at Bar Royal doesn’t leave you throughout the film in the course of which these young men’s hope, joy, and memories give way to boredom and then fear, to a complete psychological and physical decline.

In classic sailor manner, they are carelessly drinking, dancing and singing in a brothel one last time before entering the U96 and descending into claustrophobic hell.

The long beginning scene of Das Boot shows the recruits celebrating their last night before they set sail. The film is modelled after true events in the fall of 1941 during WW2: in the “Battle of the Atlantic”, 40000 men were sent out in German U-boats to destroy British shipping and severe the supply lines of the enemy.

#Best world war 2 submarine movies series#

Basically every German who was old enough at that time watched the series and was confronted with the true nature and horrors of war on a highly uncomfortable and physical level.ĭas Boot is different than other war films since it does not show the usual combat battles on land or technological cockpit firefights in the air, but literally takes place in the invisible and unglorifiable underground: below the sea-level.

#Best world war 2 submarine movies tv#

Germans had a historical collective TV experience when Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot (1981) was aired as an extended 6-episode (360min) TV-series in 1985 and turned German living rooms into claustrophobic WWII U-boats.