DAS BOOT (THE BOAT)

When the German film--dubbed into English--was released in the States in 1981, it was a sensation. Never had the particulars of this lost cause--the U-Boats of WWII--been so realistically presented. Of the forty thousand men in the undersea service, thirty thousand died. Now at last we have a recording of the exquisitely detailed novel on which the movie was based. Gordon Dulieu’s performance is superb, but oddly, he tells this uniquely German story in the accents of the English upper class. Shocking at first, the flip may ultimately deepen the experience. Motor oil smells the same in one country as it does in another; the sea is vast and tastes of death. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 03]