OSCARS '82: Das Boot
ALARM!!!
CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of war, underwater, explosions, Nazis, death, drowning.
A new year brings a new series, and we’re kicking off a new Oscars year, this time films of 1982. It’s a fairly diverse group of candidates with a bit of a common theme, but because of release order, our first movie happens to be one that isn’t from America. But it might as well have been, because this submarine film made a gigantic splash when it sailed over from Germany. By all rights, this movie seems like a rough prospect - we’re supposed to root for German sailors on a U-boat fighting for the Nazis? But director and writer Wolfgang Petersen rides an incredibly fine line by engrossing you in the lives of these men who were all but written off to die in their mission, only to continue to cling to survival until the bitter, bitter end. This movie is more than just a war film, more than just a submarine film, and more than a technical marvel. It’s also an amazingly compelling drama with a lot of explosions and gallows humor thrown in. We’re kicking off Oscars ‘82 this week with Das Boot on Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!
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Intro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.
Excerpt taken from the telecast of the 55th Academy Awards Ceremony, broadcast by ABC on April 11, 1983. Music arranged and conducted by Bill Conti.
Excerpt taken from “Das Boot” from the album Das Boot (Die Original Filmmusik), written and composed by Klaus Doldinger. Copyright 1982 WEA International Inc., 1981 Bavaria Atelier GmbH.
Excerpt taken from “A Teenager in Love,” written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman and performed by Dion and the Belmonts, included in the original motion picture soundtrack to the film Diner. Phonographic copyright 1982 Elektra/Asylum Records.
