Mon 26 Apr 2021
Dan Stumpf Reviews Two U-Boat Movies: ACTION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC (1943) // DAS BOOT (1981).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , War Films[6] Comments
â— ACTION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC. Warner Brothers, 1943. Humphrey Bogart, Raymond Massey, Alan Hale, Julie Bishop, Ruth Gordon, Sam Levene, Dane Clark, Glenn Strange, and Ludwig Stossel. Written by John Howard Lawson, Guy Gilpatric, A.I. Bezzerides, and W.R. Burnett. Directed by Lloyd Bacon (and uncredited Raoul Walsh & Byron Haskin.)
â— DAS BOOT (THE BOAT). German, 1981. Jurgen Prochnow, Herbert Gronemeyer, Klaus Wennemann, and Martin May. Written & directed by Wolfgang Petersen, based on the novel by Lothar Buccheim,
A contemporary view and a weary look back from the other side.
Action in the North Atlantic enlists Warners stock company into the Merchant Marine and pits them against ruthless Nazi U-Boat commanders as they ply the war-torn Atlantic (where else?) with much-needed supplies for the good guys.
When it’s not bogged down by patriotic speeches and propaganda scenes, this is a dandy action flick with outstanding special effects: Massive convoys, ships blowing apart, U-Boats cruising the depths, and a freighter pulled to shore by hordes of cheering Russians, all done on studio sets, and done to mesh visually with the film as a whole — never quite convincing to my jaded eyes, but never jarringly unconvincing either.
Unfortunately, when things aren’t blowing up there’s that script to get through. Bezzerides and Burnett, two authors I highly regard, are credited with “additional dialogue†and I sincerely hope they didn’t spew this hokum. Every time the action flags, someone has to raise an idiot question about the purpose of all this, and get patly put down by right-thinking Americans. Even when Bogey slugs some guy in a bar, it’s not just because he’s bothering the pretty chanteuse; the lout’s also blabbing about outgoing cargo boats in front of a “Loose Lips†sign.
Almost forty years later, the Germans took a jaundiced but no less heroic look back at the same year in the same theater of operations. Das Boot opens with a celebratory orgy attended by outgoing naval officers drunk to walking-comatose state, the veterans trying to keep a straight face among the fiery youths shipping out for adventure and the glory of the Reich. Quite a contrast to Warners’ Action, but oddly moving in its own way.
Once we get into the U-Boat, director Petersen and cinematographer Jost Vocano integrate smoothly into the cramped confines, with long tracking shots jostling through crowded passageways, tight close-ups and a camera that never seems more than elbow-length away from anything. Where Action in the North Atlantic goes for spectacle, Das Boot builds tension, with long stretches of fruitless patrolling, men getting on each other’s nerves, and a short burst of action that leads into even more tension as depth charges echo around the sub, and men bounce around like marbles in a tin can.
The special effects here are on a smaller scale, but quite as effective as the showier stuff in Action. And in terms of character, the relatively unknown (to me) cast of Boot seemed more real than the actors I know and love from the earlier film. But this is not a put-down. Taken together, the two films make a fascinating and fun-to watch contrast as history seen then and seen now.
April 26th, 2021 at 3:47 pm
By the early ’80s, the WWII Germans might still show up as bad guys, partly as a result of film geeks-turned-filmmakers ripping off the old movies they saw as kids (Spielberg and RAIDERS), but as many more portrayed German enlisted men sympathetically (DAS BOOT, CROSS OF IRON, THE EAGLE HAS LANDED). Of course, those films hedged their bets by presenting the foot soldiers (and some officers) as “hey, we’re German but we don’t like our Nazis any more than you do, but cut us some slack — we’re soldiers sworn to do our job, dammit.” When doctrinaire Nazis showed up as senior officers, they were usually at odds with the “good Germans” in the ranks. Glancing at the IMDB cast list for DAS BOOT, the only name I recognize is Jurgen Prochnow, who later played Duke Leto Atreides in DUNE and (in a made-for-TV docudrama) Arnold Schwarzenegger!
April 26th, 2021 at 7:25 pm
Throw in ENEMY BELOW and Tom Hanks recent GREYSTONE based on C. S. Forester’s novel and you have a perfect quartet of WW II drama and adventure in the North Atlantic.
April 26th, 2021 at 8:23 pm
What an interesting review and also, the follow-up comments.
Submarine movies are a refined taste among film-buffs and war buffs alike. Discriminating passion, this is. Fine-grained.
I’m sure we all have our favorites. In my experience, anyone I’ve ever chatted with on the topic usually leaps to exult over the grimy pleasures of ‘Das Boot’, perhaps the most evocative example of the subject ever depicted. I don’t think I know a single man who isn’t familiar with it. Taken from a bestselling German novel, it reeks of authentic submarine-warfare, and is in a way noble, in showing the world that ‘the Hun’ were men just like any nation’s men. Not demons, not monsters. It is sobering, sensitive, uplifting. Some sequences make you want to jump out of your seat and run screaming from the room. You’ve never seen such waves, as the Atlantic waves which crash into the tower of that dang sub. Gritty, horrible, epic …hour-to-hour life undersea which could probably never be expressed in a Hollywood studio film. It’s simply riveting. Some of the best cinematography of the entire decade.
Who better than the kick-ass talent of the 1970s West German film industry, to bring such a thing to life? German theater, in one word? Intense. One can only wonder, one can only marvel, at some of the productions they brought to the screen. Personally, I dislike Fassbinder, but I obviously respect such a talent.
I digress. The above dual-review is interesting to me because –not for the least of which reason –it pairs possibly the #1 sub film ever made, with (in my opinion) one of the least remarkable. It’s been too long since my last encounter with it to recall the well-done action sequences. I believe the reviewer when he cites it’s merits. But overall, the film left me flat, as did ‘Passage to Marseilles’ another snoozer (in my private estimation).
At the end of the day there’s just a myriad of ways in which a North Atlantic naval film can fail to impress, and Warner Bros seemed to routinely offer them up. I love Warner Bros, I love Bogey, I love everything that goes into a WB production. They coughed out some gems in this genre. But they don’t always keep me on white-knuckled the way ‘Das Boot’ does. My god.
Thanks for listening to me muse aloud on this topic. A rare opportunity these days, when most people (as I’ve recently and unhappily discovered) don’t even know what date America entered WWII. On.
April 26th, 2021 at 9:11 pm
If you want a quintet of “WW II drama and adventure in the North Atlantic”, David Vineyard, add THE CRUEL SEA.
Even in WWII there was sympathy and admiration for submariners, even enemy submariners. In 1944 George Orwell wrote ” Every time a German submarine goes to the bottom about fifty young men of fine physique and good nerves are suffocated.” in a comparison with area bombing.
In the U-boat crews, 40,000 out of 50,000 died. Lothar Buccheim knew what he was writing about; as one of the survivors.
April 26th, 2021 at 9:51 pm
Orwell’s numerous reviews and essays from the 1940s are astute and perspicacious indeed. Some of his career-best work. He was fearless, a lion.
April 28th, 2021 at 6:40 pm
Absolutely THE CRUEL SEA. In fact all those mentioned aside from NORTH ATLANTIC are based on fine novels.