The submarine continued to dive deeper into the seabed, from 100 meters to more than 200 meters, under the action of pressure, the shell creaked, and the crew in the cabin was short of breath and sweating. This feeling of life and death can also be experienced through the screen, and for the officers and men of the U boat, this is a life and death moment that needs to be experienced from time to time.
This is a clip from the movie "Attack from the Bottom of the Sea".
The film, made in 1983, is nearly 40 years away, but it's still one of the best submarine movies, Germany's best military films, and one of the best military movies in the world.
Some people commented that Standing in front of this film, Spielberg is just telling fairy tales.
On Douban, it scored 9.0, with 61% of reviewers giving it a 5-star rating.
In a word, this is a true war classic.
Standing nearly 40 years later watching "Attack from the Bottom of the Sea", the real lens reflects the cruelty of war and the reflection on war.
On the modern screen, countless large-scale war movies are not enough plots, special effects to make up, video special effects under the indiscriminate bombardment, the plot seems pale and weak. Not to mention the special effects blockbuster "Pearl Harbor" that has become a romance film, even the well-received "Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" and the popular anti-Japanese dramas on the domestic screen are also everywhere seen the indiscriminate pursuit of personal heroism and the lack of cruelty to war.
Attack from the Bottom of the Sea will tell you about a different kind of war.
The film is adapted from real people and real events, and the military reporters who followed the U boat to the sea compiled the sailing notes into a book after World War II, and the film version and novel version of "Attacking from the Bottom of the Sea" are based on books.
The film was completed in 1983. In the 1980s, people didn't know what special effects were, and all the shots were real shots at a glance. Even scenes such as the submarine being attacked by a depth charge are achieved using hydraulic machinery, so authenticity is the biggest feature of this film.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > how real is it, from the perspective of props, it is real to terrible. </h1>
The rigorous Germans built two full-size VIIC submarines for filming according to the drawings of world war II U-boats preserved in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, USA.
Why two? One takes the exterior, one takes the interior. The one on location was even powered and could sail.
The crew almost truly restored everything inside and outside the boat, and even the nuts swept in the shots required the use of the same model as the real U boat.
Interior layout of the VIIC boat
The investment of the film is 15 million US dollars, unlike today's investment, most of which is used for film star remuneration, special effects and publicity, etc., the budget at that time was really practical in props, shooting, etc., so the realism is simply unprecedented.
In order to ensure the authenticity of the submarine life under the camera, the crew invited the prototype of the captain of the U96 boat in the movie - the first captain of the U96 boat in reality, William Bullock, as an adviser to the crew. At that time, the U96 boat bridge shell had a smiling cartoon sawfish logo, which was William Bullock's personal logo, and it was also faithfully restored in the film.
U96 boat command platform
With the captain as a consultant, a large number of life scenes in the film that are difficult to restore for those who are not witnesses are therefore real. Endless sweating, food mold, infectious diseases, etc. in the small space of the boat are often mentioned or even ignored in other war movies, but they are the main components of the war.
The officers and men of the submarines who set sail lived in the boat all year round, and the sunlight was the most luxurious thing for them, so they all became pale and different from other soldiers.
During the filming process, all the actors were asked not to go out, and they did not bask in the sun for almost 1 year, so their faces were almost the same as those of the crew, and they realistically reproduced the haggard appearance of the crew after a long voyage.
The shooting order is also to shoot in the order of story development as much as possible. There is a small detail in the film, when the submarine first went to sea, the reporter Werner took pictures of the officers and men on the bridge, and the crew members were all clean and radiant. Captain Heinrich Lyman said to him: "You'd better wait until you return home to shoot, when their beards will grow."
Later, in the film, as the story progresses, the beard of a personal character grows naturally, and the clean face when sailing is finally covered with hair, and the careful audience can notice the growth rate of the beard.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > try to restore the truth as much as possible, reflecting the director's skill. </h1>
Director Wolgan Peterson emphasized in the commentary track that the film's production philosophy was to "make everything in the film meaningful."
The details in the film perfectly illustrate his philosophy, to cite a few examples.
The captain represents the older generation of soldiers, who are experienced and love the boat like home, and have a clearer understanding of war. Most of the time, the captain was calm and composed, and he was responsible for the lives of all the officers and men of the boat, and could not be reckless.
Thus, the shirt he wore most of the time under his military coat was in a calm blue color, in contrast to another officer, the enthusiastic and impulsive captain of the engine, whose uniform was predominantly red.
But on the film' only impulse, when the captain tries to attack the destroyer in a storm, he wears a scarf emblazoned with a distinct red pattern. The scarf has only appeared once since, when the captain was furious because of the overlap with the other U submarine routes.
The difference in the color of the captain's costume shows a change in temperament, which, along with other details in the film, is the director's visual language — everything in the film has meaning.
The first mate in the film is a member of the "Youth League", who came from Mexico to serve the motherland, and he was at first incompatible with the people on the boat, because his grand ambitions and noble ideals were vague and out of touch with reality for the people on the boat.
As an officer, the first officer was entitled to eat at the same table as the captain, the second lieutenant, the chief engineer, etc., and the whole film gave him a meal with other officers, but he hardly ate anything. Either he offered to go to the first observation post, or was picked up by the captain to play a British military song, or was tricked by the captain into going to the doctor.
Although the existence of the first mate is an image of a Nazi who gives people unpleasantness and always despises others, when others are in distress, the first mate once again tries to participate in all efforts without pulling, and the three rescue plots in the film have shots of the first mate trying to save people.
In the film, the director borrows the captain's mouth to say what he says about the first mate: self-righteous people, young marchers, and the worldview is shaped.
The existence of the first mate itself is also a transformation of the process of reflection and redemption, the original well-dressed, meticulous, pay attention to grooming and appearance of the first mate in the voyage more than halfway, after receiving instructions to cross Gibraltar, began to return to the image of the officers and men on the boat, he no longer shaved, black circles appeared, and no longer paid attention to the appearance, indicating the return and reshaping of his image.
Another figure, Lieutenant Werner, is a reporter accompanying the army. His duty was supposed to be to glorify the unjust war, but the director cleverly used the eyes of a reporter to truly record everything in the boat and take us to understand what the real war was.
The film's understanding of war about Wo's experience before the war is not laid out, giving him a different responsibility and no obvious political tendency. As a result, Werner, like the audience, was more easily brought into the atmosphere he was created, and when he tested the alarm, he was so nervous that he could not help himself, and he was full of sympathy when he heard the story of the fiancée's fate as the trainee officer Ullmann told. Werner's perspective is like the audience's perspective, so the film is more intimate.
Lieutenant Warner's journey from curiosity at first to fear and resignation later speaks volumes about the true cruelty of war.
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > reflection on war</h1>
It is true that World War II may be divided into "good" and "evil" camps in large places, but in small places, every individual is also a life on the battlefield. From the port to the end of the submarine at the bottom of the sea, there is no excitement and grandeur brought by the war, only the humility of life and the struggle of people in the face of survival.
Germany and Britain were enemies of each other, and after the German submarine sank the British merchant ship, it was unable to rescue the British sailors who were struggling in the water for help, and the people on the island did not have a trace of victory, but some people bowed their heads and sobbed.
Whether it was the British sailors or the German sailors, at least they all had tears in their eyes, and they would dream of beautiful hometowns and young lovers while they slept.
"Attack from the Bottom of the Sea" is not a war movie in a simple sense, it presents us with war that is neither great nor glorious, only cruel and survival, more like a mental journey of human beings themselves, watching the original radiant military reporter Werner gradually transform into a weak individual with long beard and concave eyes, and the cruelty of war is exposed.
Life in the context of war loses its meaning, is reduced to lifeless numbers, cruel and numb.
The narrow and closed submarine space sails in the deep sea at night, fighting with loneliness and nature and danger, killing a bloody road, but after escaping from the natural struggle, he is buried under the bombing of fighters, which means far-reaching and swings back to the intestines.
Behind it is the reality that 40,000 submarine officers and men who went out of Germany during World War II were buried on the cold seabed, and the bones were difficult to find.
Whether it is a 136-minute theatrical version, a 216-minute director's cut version, or a 293-minute unedited version, there is no sense of length after watching, it unveils the mystery of the German submarine wolves in World War II, restores the real humanity behind the war, and makes "Attack from the Bottom of the Sea" the most real submarine movie in history, which is beyond the reach of later submarine blockbusters such as "U571", and also makes this film shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Director and Screenwriter.
It is only in this context that we realize the preciousness of peace.
We have not experienced war for generations, only watching modern war blockbusters, young people are prone to boiling blood, thinking that war is just what is shown in the film. When a war film becomes a stage for individual heroic performance, it deviates from its original appearance. As everyone knows, the cruelty of war makes us unimaginable in peacetime, and even if all war films add up, they cannot show one-tenth of the battlefield.
I have asked several elders, they have not been directly on the battlefield, only experienced the war years, but whenever they talk about war, they all say the same thing: Don't fight.
The film industry has developed to this day, driven by commercial interests, war-themed films have gradually deviated from the most basic narrative duties, become eye-catching cloaks, and have gone farther and farther away from real wars.
Just by looking at the big screen now, we will not understand what kind of fear the bullet will experience when it whistles by the ear; we do not know what kind of tremor we can produce when we are in the place where the shrapnel is flying on the battlefield; and we have no way of knowing what it is like to dive into the seabed, wait for the opportunity to move, and survive in the cracks.
Watching "Attack from the Bottom of the Sea" nearly forty years later, we should be more grateful to this film, to the director Wolfgang Peterson, to the film for traveling through time and space, for recording history, and for the many thoughts derived from the relationship between war and human nature.
Now toutiao has a very powerful search function, friends who are interested in "Attack from the Bottom of the Sea", directly in the headline search, you can get accurate and effective information, may wish to try.