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Home Movies: Trouble on the high seas -- 'Das Boot' and 'Titanic'
By Scott Hettrick
June 13, 1997
Web posted at: 8:21 p.m. EDT (0021 GMT)DAS BOOT -- THE DIRECTOR'S CUT (Columbia TriStar, $24.95, rated R) 1997. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen; starring Jurgen Prochnow, Herbert Gronemeyer, Klaus Wennemann and Hubertus Bengsch.
More than one hour of the total six hours of footage shot for this incredible German claustrophobic epic has been added to the original 2 1/2-hour version released theatrically in 1982, and on video in 1983, under the English title "The Boat."
(5.3M/29 sec. Das Boot - Movie Trailer
QuickTime movie)
There is little dispute that this was the definitive World War II submarine movie. Revisiting the film only reinforces and strengthens that belief. In no other movie does one get such a vivid picture of the hellish life of the inhabitants of those motorized metal tubes, a world in which explosive torpedoes have better accommodations than the crew and where one can never see the enemy dropping bone-rattling depth charges.
In this case, the perspective is that of the crew of a German U-boat during the final desperate days of the war in the Atlantic. The ship is guided by a mission-weary captain (Jurgen Prochnow), overseeing an inexperienced crew of young men who have been forced too early into combat duty.
It will be difficult for most patrons who saw this subtitled film once or twice 15 years ago to recall what has been added, but it is easy to say what could have been easily cut from this elongated version.
The viewer gets the idea of the stress on both the sub (with bolts bursting from its sides) and the crew's emotions from one or two sequences in which the sub tries to Run Silent, Run Deep in order to avoid the depth charges of its enemy on the surface. But several more such interminable situations are shown that do nothing to advance the plot.
Character development of the secondary crew members seems stronger in this longer version, with the bond between the sympathetic, yet strong-willed captain and his crew more defined. But now, at 3 1/2 hours, the tragic ending is an even more abrupt finale, which may leave viewers with an even stronger feeling of being set up.
Perhaps the most noticeable improvement is the soundtrack, which has been remixed so that every creak, every sonar ping, every water-drop plunk, is heard with frightening clarity.
TITANIC (Hallmark, priced for rental, rated PG-13) 1996. Directed by Rob Lieberman; starring George C. Scott, Eva Marie Saint, Tim Curry, Peter Gallagher and Marilu Henner.
You won't be able to see the $200 million theatrical "Titanic" from James Cameron next month as originally planned, (delays in the special effects have pushed the release of that movie back to December), but you can still get your sinking-ship fix with this CBS miniseries.
In fact, this miniseries from last November runs about as long as the nearly three hours the new theatrical release is expected to last.
Like an episode of the "The Love Boat," "Titanic" follows the stories of several characters running parallel in time on the ocean vessel. After all, the tragedy wouldn't seem so significant if we didn't get to know these folks first.
So we get to know a small-time pickpocket (Mike Doyle) who falls in with a truly evil character (Tim Curry) before he finds true love and a new path down the straight and narrow.
Then we are introduced to a married woman (Catherine Zeta Jones) who bumps into her old flame (Peter Gallagher) and promptly wires her husband that she is leaving him. Things work out conveniently when her new old flame drowns and her waiting husband says he never got her wired message.
Marilu Henner plays the brash, unsinkable Molly Brown as if she is doing an impression of Mae West.
Eva Marie Saint plays a generic snob, and George C. Scott has the role of the tragic Capt. Smith on his planned last voyage before retirement, who is shown losing a battle of wills with the ship-line director (Roger Rees), who orders the ship travel at a reckless speed.
As for the sinking itself, the special effects are minimal, but adequate. The same can be said for the script and the acting.
LASER TIP: "The Arrival" is a fine science-fiction action-thriller that was largely overlooked and overshadowed by the release of "Independence Day" in theaters. But the movie's quality did not escape the producers at Pioneer, who chose "The Arrival" as one of the few films from LIVE Home Video (widescreen, $69.98) to get the special laserdisc edition treatment.
Although the original 30-minute documentary that follows the movie about an unlikely radio astronomer who discovers hostile aliens living incognito on the planet is not one of the best efforts by Pioneer, it is modestly entertaining. Better yet is the audio commentary by writer/director David Twohy that runs simultaneous with the movie, in which he offers interesting anecdotal and technical tidbits. For instance, Twohy says that he wanted audiences to feel that the astronomer's efforts to warn society were recognized and heeded, which is why he chose that ending, instead of one in which the astronomer's satellite transmission of an alien confession was misinterpreted as an errant HBO movie signal and ignored. That ending is included after the documentary.
DVD TIP: LIVE also has released a widescreen version of "The Arrival" (with much less supplemental material) on DVD for $24.98, along with two other science-fiction action-thrillers, "Stargate" and "Total Recall," and the movies "Cutthroat Island," "Reservoir Dogs" and "The Substitute."
Also new on DVD this week from Columbia TriStar Home Video (priced at $24.95 each) are "Jerry Maguire," "Desperado" and "Sleepless in Seattle."
VID TIP: With Madonna's "Evita" on its way to videocassette in the widescreen format next month, A&E Home Video is releasing "Biography's Evita: The Woman Behind the Myth ($19.95, not rated).
Even without the music, hers is a fascinating story -- of a little-known radio and would-be film actress who not too discreetly slept her way up the career ladder that led to her fortuitous liaison with the man who would become the Argentine president, and her husband. In time, Juan Peron essentially became First Man to the enormously popular Evita, who used her position to force taxpayers to fund her pet projects, such as doling out money for those she determined were in need.
Even her burial became wrought with controversy following her death of cancer in 1952.
It's all told far less dramatically, but intriguingly, and in about one-third the time (50 minutes) of the theatrical release.
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