Horst_In_Translation Review of U47 - Kapitänleutnant Prien

U47 - Kapitänleutnant Prien (1958)

Only defining for the genre as there aren't really that many submarine films about World War II, not because of the quality

[4/10 · 24 November 2016]

"U47 - Kapitänleutnant Prien" or "U-47 Lt. Commander Prien" is a West German movie from 1958, so this one will soon have its 60th anniversary. As it was made back in the last 1950s, more than a decade had already passed since the end of World War II and at that point the way Germans dealt with the events of the last 2.5 decades was very effective already, which also refers to the many films on the subject from West Germany back in the 1950s. The title already gives away that this one here focuses on the military career of one of Germany's biggest war commanders, but this time at sea and not like Rommel at land. The movie runs for slightly under 1.5 hours and is in black-and-white, which should not surprise anybody really looking at when the film came out. Today, however, Prien has been mostly forgotten if we are not talking about people with a huge interest in the subject of World War II and even I as somebody who has seen so many films and documentaries on the subject has not really been familiar with Prien before watching these almost 90 minutes here. And Dieter Eppler, who plays the main character here is also not really known to many anymore today. But there are more known cast members too. Blacky Fuchsberger and Harald Juhnke were still at or slightly under the age of 30 and relatively early in their careers when they appeared in this film. Vera Tschechowa and Dieter Borsche were more experienced already, so this film sure comes up with a couple familiar names for people with an interest in (slightly older) German movies. There may be more names that I myself am just not familiar with. Talking about the story of Prien, I cannot say I was too impressed at all. Then again, this may also be at least partially due to my personal bias with submarine films (also not a fan at all of "Das Boot") or my bias with films about the Nazi era that have very little (or almost nothing) to do with politics really, but focus on the military, which was never, also in much more modern movies, an area that I had a lot of interest in. As a consequence, the film dragged to me on quite a few occasions and I also never developed as much of an interest in the characters as I had hoped. If these fields interest you more than they interest me, I cannot rule out that this film ends up a much more serving watch for you than it was for me. Judging from my personal perception, I still give it a thumbs-down though and for me it confirms that with the large quantity of war-themed films from back then, the result are also many forgettable films.