2024-07-22 10:21:07
The story begins in September 1941, when the Germans were beginning to lose the war, at a party in the port of La Rochelle, France. The sailors lined up and urinated on the Benz carrying Captain Lehmann and Lieutenant Werner, but the captain accepted it with a relaxed smile. The day after the sailors’ noisy party, Lieutenant Werner boarded Captain Lehmann’s U-96 and began his dry routine with the mostly new sailors. In the early days of the war, the U-boat fleet indiscriminately sank merchant ships passing through the Atlantic Ocean, putting Britain in danger, but with the advent of anti-submarine radar and the United States joining the war, forming a large fleet and protecting it with destroyers, the power of the U-boats gradually faded. One day, they fought a fierce battle with a British warship escorting an enemy supply ship, barely winning, but all the crew members, including Werner, began to feel the horrors of war. Meanwhile, in Africa, German General Rommel was fighting against the British, but the British took control of the airline, cutting off Germany’s supply. Hitler decided to send U-boats to the island of Malta, where the British air force was gathering. However, the Strait of Gibraltar, which was the passage to the Mediterranean Sea, was like a mousetrap for U-boats…
◆ subject:
A film adaptation of Lothar Günther Burheim’s autobiographical novel. It is a story about Lieutenant Werner, a war correspondent, who boarded Captain Lehmann’s U-96 and experienced U-boat patrol activities right next to him. The work was published in 16 countries and became a bestseller. The original work was produced as a 6-hour TV mini-series and aired, and this work was re-edited and released as a movie. It was a masterpiece that spent 3 years preparing, 1 year shooting, and over 20 million marks (7.2 billion won at the time) on production costs, and 1 million characters of film were spared. At the time, U-boat crews tried to extend the operation time by loading even one more torpedo and one more drop of fuel, and for this reason, they had to store food in the torpedo storage, beds, and even toilets. As a result, the already cramped U-boats became even more cramped, and the crews’ cabins, which they could not even wash properly, were inevitably covered in sweat and mold. The U-boats were a terrifying wolf to the Allied forces, but in reality, the crews were always trembling in fear that they might die in the abyss. The movie reveals the horrors of war and the message of anti-war just by realistically depicting the crews’ daily lives like a documentary.
◆ Points to note:
This film, produced in 1981, is a film that recreates the war situation in Germany during World War II, when the tide of the war was turning, from the perspective of the German side. Most World War II films before this film were centered on the victorious countries, but this film, produced in Germany, a defeated country, depicts the tenacious fighting spirit of the U-boat crew from the first half to the second half, as if to highlight the pride of the German people while depicting historical facts as they are. The story and filming techniques of this film set an example for later submarine films, and the effect is maximized by expressing the cramped interior of the submarine with handheld camera work. The interior of the U-boat had no consideration for the crew’s living conditions except for the minimum facilities necessary for combat, and in fact, even the minimum living space was filled with fuel and food according to the crew’s arbitrary judgment. This situation was also the case in the torpedo launch room, which was the most dangerous area on board. Therefore, lines like “Let’s fire the torpedoes quickly and live in a spacious room!” are clues to how elaborately the reality of this film was depicted. For reference, just before World War II, Germany had only 56 U-boats, but during the war they built 1,099, captured 10, took part in operations, and 753 of them were sunk. The remaining 215 were scuttled or blown up by their crews as the Allied forces invaded Europe, and 153 of them were handed over to the Allied forces, excluding 38 that were deemed beyond repair during the war and 11 that were interned in neutral ports or transferred to foreign navies. The damage to the Allied fleet and ships with this level of loss by the U-boat force was truly enormous, sinking 148 warships, including 3 aircraft carriers, and damaging 45 warships. And they sank a total of 2,759 ships, weighing a total of 11,119,413 tons. During this period, 28,000 U-boat crews died and 5,000 were taken prisoner. During the same period, most of the 70,000 British naval casualties were killed in battles with U-boats, so you can imagine the scale of the damage caused by U-boats.
◆ Director: Wolfgang Petersen (1941-2022)
Born in Germany on March 14, 1941. He began directing TV dramas and began to stand out as he moved to film. He won the German National Film Award for Best New Director for his feature film debut. <특전 유보트 (Das Boot, 1981)>He gained international fame by presenting his work. He then moved to Hollywood. <네버엔딩 스토리 (The Neverending Story, 1984)>It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Screenplay and was a huge box office success. <가면의 정사 (the Shattered, 1991)>, <사선에서 (In the Line of Fire, 1993)>, <아웃 브레이크 (Outbreak, 1995)>, <에어포스 원 (Air Force One, 1997)>, <퍼펙트 스톰(The Perfect Storm, 2000)>, <트로이 (Troy, 2004)>, <포세이돈 (Poseidon, 2006)> He established himself as a box office director by releasing a series of successful films, including:
The EBS1 program ‘World’s Masterpieces’, which showcases carefully selected masterpieces, airs every Saturday at 10:35 p.m.
Reporter Kim Kyung-eun Photo = EBS World Masterpieces
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2024-07-22 10:21:07