Das Boot--The Director's Cut

Restored for theatrical release in 1997, the director's cut of Wolfgang Petersen's DAS BOOT adds an extra hour of footage to the version released in 1981 without dulling its dramatic achievement in the least. Petersen re-creates the claustrophobic, little-known world inside a German submarine and celebrates the courage and resiliency of its crew without glorifying the Nazi war machine. In fact, one can only come away with a sense of the brutal absurdity of war. Technically the sound design and the cinematography are particularly effective: Jost Vacano's fluid, kinetic, handheld camera work is unsurpassed, and--more impressive still--was done in the days before the ...