“At the end of the film they all rose and gave a standing ovation. “When Das Boot first screened in Los Angeles and the title card came up: ‘Of 40,000 German submariners, 30,000 died,’ there was huge applause from the audience,” he recalled. It was a big ask to expect an international audience to “identify with Nazis in a submarine,” as Petersen told THR in 2016. The film was groundbreaking both technically - Jost Vacano’s claustrophobic cinematography and Klaus Doldinger’s haunting score were unlike anything done before in a war movie - as well as thematically. Starring Jürgen Prochnow as the captain of a doomed crew of German submariners who are plunged into a series of suicidal missions in the waning days of World War II, Das Boot was nominated for six Oscars, with Petersen claiming two for directing and for adapting Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s best-selling 1973 autobiographical novel. “I also like the element of water, because I think water is the most beautiful, almost mesmerizing element - and it’s most dangerous.” “You can really go into the characters and see how they react when there is no way to open the door,” he said in a 2000 interview. Several submarines of different sizes, including one that mimicked the claustrophobic innards of a real U-96, were constructed, and filming took a year, taking a toll on cast and crew. ![]() Petersen spent $18.5 million - then the biggest movie budget in German history - to make the antiwar classic Das Boot (1981). Petersen is survived by his wife, Maria Antoinette, son Daniel and two grandchildren, according to his spokesperson.The Dustin Hoffman-starring Outbreak, his 1995 thriller about a pandemic, saw renewed relevance amid the real-world coronavirus outbreak. My memory is of a man full of joie de vivre who was doing what he most loved to do.” He would point to us in turn and say, ‘Acting…acting…NO acting…NO acting…ACTING… aaaacting!’” she recalled. ![]() “You knew the camera would pause on you by his hilarious direction while setting up the shot. Petersen, she said, would set up a remote-controlled camera that could rotate in place, enabling him to film all the actors and Petersen wiould provide them cues when they were being filmed. ![]() “Even though the script was thrilling and incredibly intense, I remember a lot of laughs, especially in the scenes around the huge table in the War Room.” “Being directed by Wolfgang on ‘Air Force One’ remains a special memory,” actress Glenn Close said in a statement provided to CNN. In the aughts, he continued the trend, helming “The Perfect Storm” with George Clooney and “Troy” with Brad Pitt and “Poseidon.” Petersen, a German filmmaker, earned the most awards acclaim in his career for his 1981 World War II epic “Das Boot,” but his career is populated by a number of films that hold special places in the hearts of cult action film lovers.Īfter writing and directing 1984’s children’s fantasy film “The NeverEnding Story,” he went on to make a string of action films with some of the biggest stars of their eras, like “In the Line of Fire” (starring Clint Eastwood and Rene Russo), “Outbreak” (with Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman and Russo) and “Air Force One” (with Harrison Ford and Glenn Close). Wolfgang Petersen, the Oscar-nominated director of films like “Das Boot” and “Air Force One,” died on August 12, his spokesperson, Michelle Bega from Rogers & Cowan/PMK, told CNN.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |