Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
Does the Theatrical Release version still have the one scene not in any of the others - "Here it comes...'the speech'"?
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Still haven't watched either version of the movie on the Blu-ray. Will get to that this weekend when I have more time to watch it through in one go.
I have watched all the extras though. Not bad, the 1981 "making of" documentary - finally redone for English-speaking audiences - was interesting altho a lot of the stuff discussed is by now common knowledge among diehard fans. Still very cool to see the behind the scenes footage and as noted above, the part where you get to "sit in" on one of the daily cast meetings was the high point for me. The best of the rest IMO is the "Back to the Boat" thing with Petersen. As Subnuts has already noted, the "Captain's Tour" is no great shakes, altho I'm happy with anything that involves Prochnow hanging around inside a u-boat (or a reasonably accurate depiction thereof, as it was obviously shot on the preserved interior set at the studio).
The "Battle of the Atlantic" will also not have very much that is new info for most of us, but was done within a couple of years after the movie was completed which means there are interviews with some people who probably aren't around any more - several merchant seamen, a couple of RN dudes who commanded escorts or merchants, and a couple of surviving German sailors. Also notable is an interview with Otto Kretschmer that I had never seen before... AND one whole chapter is a profile of Lehmann-Willenbrock, including some interview footage altho it is somewhat spoiled IMO by the fact that the narrator (who apparently also conducted the German interviews) TALKS OVER A WHOLE BUNCH OF WHAT HLW IS SAYING and there are no subtitles for HLW in those bits so a lot of the "interview" with him is wasted unless you understand German and can make out what he's saying with the narrator talking over top of it. Also the narrator seems to be really put out that his interview with HLW in particular didn't result in some kind of emotional "mea culpa mea culpa" breakdown from the former commander re his part in the war... altho he admits that the man's overall character makes that less of a "disappointment" than it might otherwise have been. Whatever, dude, he was just doing his job like everybody else.
Still - I have never seen ANY interviews with HLW, and he seems to have kept a pretty low profile after the war in comparison with some of the other top surviving aces - even with all the hoopla over the book and movie - at least in terms of what I've been able to find up til now, so I'm counting that bit of the extras as a real plus.
