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.
#Venks vs dasboot 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. 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.
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