Submarine Movies (Written 4/21/00)

If any subgenre of movies might be considered bullet proof, I believe that it is submarine movies.With the arrival of U-571 at the local cinema, now might be a good time for a brief look at the best submarine movies of the past, a sort of shot over the bow of old U-571 before it sinks forever.

The submarine arrived at the time when the movies approached maturity just before the beginning of World War I. In fact, two of the largest productions of the immediate period following the success of Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which established the long film as being commercially successful were Thomas Ince’s Civiliaztion and Stuart Paton’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, both of which appeared in 1916. Ince’s film, an anti-war protest which moved against the currents of the time has a scenewhich shows a submarine torpedoing a ship only to have one of the officers attempt unsuccessfully to stop the carnage while managing only to flood the submarine and to drown everyone on board. The film, which was greatly praised at the time, was only fitfully successful, but the submarine sequence is so well shot and edited that it seems to belong to some other movie. If only the rest of the movie had reached that standard.

20,000 Leagues is, of course, the first of several later versions of Jules Verne’s novel of the nefarious Captain Nemo. The film itself is hardly a dramatic masterpiece, but the numerous underwater scenes were strictly state of the art for the period. Director Paton used a revolutionary new apparatus for underwater filming which gave an astonishing realism to the scenes of shark hunting on the ocean floor and to the fight with the giant octopus. Disney hardly did better with the special effects ofhis Kirk Douglas version of many years later.

Frank Capra’s Submarine (1928) I have not seen and cannot comment on, if indeed it still exists.

The beginning of the sound period saw two submarine movies directed by John Ford.When the first of these, Men Without Women appeared in 1930, it was customary for movies to be released in both a sound version and a silent version for showing in those movie houses which were not prepared to show sound films. Men Without Women has apparently survived only in the silent version shown recently on American Movie Classics.Those familiar only with Ford’s later films will find the precode sexual references in Men Without Women surprisingly coarse, but the film’s theme, the sacrifice of the individual so that the group can survive, was to reemerge in classic form some fifteen years later in They Were Expendable.

For some reason, but probably because of Hollywood’s copycat mentality, submarine movies often cluster together in pairs. Dick Powell’s The Enemy Below appeared in 1957 and Run Silent, Run Deep followed a year later. Run Silent has Clark Gable as a an aging submarine captain in conflict with young, surly Burt Lancaster. The film is entertaining, but hardly more than that. The Eneny Below stars Robert Mitchum, in a wonderful performance, and Curt Jurgens as the German submarine captain engaged in a deadly cat and mouse game on the high seas. The concluding scene, in which the two captains, respectfully acknowledge the other’s professionalism, is a classic, and probably the best single scene in any submarine movie. 

The King Kong of submarine movies is of course Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot (1982), beautifully restored in 1997. I have seen three versions of the film, the 150 minute version released in the United States when the film came out, the nearly six hour version shown on German televison, and the restored version which runs 210 minutes and may be considered definitive.
Better than any other film, Das Boot gives a vivid portrayal of life in a closed environment where there is absolutely no privacy, where men are forced to breathe each other’s foul odors, where bunk space is so scarce that men are forced to sleep in shifts, and where death can arrive with absolutely no hope of reprieve. Germany has lost the war, but the men fight on in a hopeless struggle with little hope of survival, and without the consolation of any glimpse of the natural world.And the battle scenes are the best of any submarine movie, not because they are better filmed, but because we have come to care about the men boat so deeply.
Later submarine movies are not up to the standard of Das Boot. John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October (1990), based on a Tom Clancy novel, has a notable performance by Sean Connery, even if he is having a bad hair day.Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide (1995) is standard stuff; the only scene I really liked is the confrontation between Gene Hackman and Denzell Washington in which they discuss, of all things, the Lippizaner stallions. The scene was reportedly written by Quintan Tarantino and is so much better than the rest of the film thatthe report is credible.

For one reason or another, I have deliberately omitted discussion of the Beatles’sanimated film, Yellow Submarine (1968), Up Periscope (1959), actually more a frogman story than a submarine one,and the alleged comedy, Down Periscope (1996).

As I write, U-571 is the most popular film in America. The plot is overly busy and the historical background concerning the attempt to break the Enigma cipher has been attacked by historians, but surely no one could think that the film makes any attempt to be historically accurate.The supporting cast is an interesting mixture of not-quite box office actors, including Harvey Keitel, Bill Paxton, Jon Bon Jovi and David Keith. Matthew McConaughey stars as the submarine captain, and when we look at his chiseled good looks, we know that he will pull through whatever hell the Germans have in store.

U-571 is a guilty pleasure, and it is good to have all of the submarine cliches together in one movie and the hear the urgent voice of the captain as he yells, “Dive! Dive! Dive!”