Das Boot on Blu-Ray June 7

[Subnuts]

Man, I'd forgotten how choppy the theatrical cut of Das Boot was compared to the longer versions, which is a strange thing to say about a 149 minute movie. The first half of the movie is so jumpy it feels like an assembly of one scene after another, often without any transition from one to another. For example, right after the captain expresses his bewilderment that the British destroyer spotted their periscope, the movie instantly cuts to a shot of the conning tower in the storm, with Werner whooping with joy. One gets the impression they did everything in their power to cut to movie to fit a 2:30 timeslot.

Oddly enough, the theatrical and director's cuts are basically the same after the sinking of the tanker. There's a few shots added or trimmed here and there (the biggest missing one being the scene in the officer's mess after the sinking of the tanker), but there's little difference in the two. However, the first half is a bit of a mess, and the theatrical cut fails at capturing the essence of life at sea and submarine warfare the way the longer versions do. I know the slowness of the director's cut, and the sheer length of the miniseries, seems to turn many people off, but I'd rather watch them instead of this commercially-palatable version. No wonder Wolfgang Petersen and Lothar-Gunther Buchheim were never really happy the way it came out (okay, the latter despised it!).