Reviews

The movie is one of the numerous German propagandist movies of that era. Featuring lots of high-class stars, but the plot is rather dull. Shipmen having a short holiday, falling in love with some dames, then called back to their ship for fighting in the Atlantic.

But: It is very obvious that this movie was the template for Wolfgang Petersen, making his world-famous "Das Boot" in 1981. The protagonists, even their physical appearance, several plot-lines, but especially the photographing of the movie seem to be at many points a black&white version of "Das Boot"! So this movie can be considered as a kind of "missing link" concerning "Das Boot", which makes it interesting for me.

The Munich school at which the movie was made is simply fantastic! It shows the the state of the art concerning architecture in the late 50s in Germany. The film itself? Well, it would have been useful for the director to decide between light comedy and deep drama. To start with comedy and then turning into drama is no problem, but to force the situation to death and despair, and then turning from one minute to the other to really dull slapstick, without explanation, without resolving the drama, that's simply bad! So you have lots of unexplained story lines and a plot which slightly remembers of "Tea and Sympathy" with Deborah Kerr (perhaps the perfect "twin" of Ruth Leuwerik in look and attitude), with also ended quite annoying, but at least was a powerful drama. Enjoy the architecture!