If you want your actors to have that authentic look of men confined under the surface of the ocean in a wartime German U-boat, one way to go about it is to shoot the film entirely in sequence over the course of a year. This is precisely what Wolfgang Petersen did when filming the expensive German classic Das Boot, a film in which the harrowed, distraught expressions of the increasingly beleaguered crew straddle the line between acting and reality. Petersen set out with Das Boot to show the audience "what war is all about," taking them on "a journey to the edge of the mind". Weighing in at over 290 minutes in its uncut form, it's a film which is almost as gruelling for the viewer as it is for the crew of the U-boat, who find themselves bouncing between long stretches of boredom to intense and violent confrontations at the drop of a hat. It would be interesting to have seen the end product had the American financiers had their own way - rather than featuring a German-speaking cast with a German at the helm directing, American producers at one point had hoped to film it in English with Robert Redford in the central role (as it is, Jurgen Prochnow delivers a fine performance as the Captain). The fact that they tried to force in an entirely fictional scene in which American sailors were murdered in cold blood points to another potential film to add to the long list of Hollywood fares which pervert historical realities. Thankfully that particular revisionist torpedo was successfully dodged.
