Film comedy puts the boot into 'Das Boot'

A film comedy which parodies the legendary, but deadly earnest 1981 submarine epic Das Boot has been released in Germany in the industry’s latest attempt to show that the Second World War is no longer off-limits as a subject for laughter.

U-900, by the German director Sven Unterwald, faithfully reproduces the menacing eeriness of Wolfgang Petersen’s original award-winning U-boat movie, down to the spooky film music and anguished submariners who bellow orders at each other while being depth-charged. But this time the U-boat is captained by a stand-up comedian who appears to be Germany’s answer to Ken Dodd. When he steps aboard U-900 he asks his grimfaced crew: "What are we supposed to do if we hit a whale, keep it as a pet or eat it?" The first mate wails: "Everything he says is complete drivel."

The film stars Atze Schröder, a former newsagent turned comedian, who sports a shock of permed hair and goofy teeth. He is best known in Germany for his television series in which he is cast as a raunchy corner-shop owner with a penchant for soft porn. In U-900, Schröder is cast as a German masquerading as a submarine commander forced to hijack U-900 and flee with two accomplices after being caught in bed with a Nazi general’s daughter. Although he knows nothing about the sea, he takes the U-boat through the Strait of Gibraltar to America where he is mistakenly greeted as a Nazi peacemaker.

"Making fun of the Nazis is an honourable thing for a comedian to do today," Schröder said during filming. "We are not trying to give a history lesson, just make a comedy about somebody who manages to get stuck in every sort of jam you could imagine." Unterwald says Schröder is ideal to play the comical captain. "As a popular comedian, he contrasts sharply with the Nazis, authority and obedience and has nothing to do with any of it," he adds. " Pitting him against the Third Reich made it all the better."

Thefilm is not the first German production to make fun of the Nazis. Last year, the Jewish director Danny Levy’s film My Führer became the first postwar German production to portray Hitler as a comic figure, a drug-addicted bed-wetter. But although it performed well at the box office, it was panned by the critics who said that it simplywas not funny enough.

Until only recently, German cinema and television confined its coverage of the Second World War to documentaries. Petersen’s hugely successful Das Boot,which was based on the wartime experiences of the author, Lothar Buchheim, was a rare exception.

But, many critics argue that Germancinema achieved a breakthrough in 2004 with Bernd Eichinger’s awardwinning film Downfall, about Hitler’s last days in his besieged Berlin bunker. Some German critics, noting the apoplectic outbursts by the Nazi leader, portrayed by the Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, dismissed the film as "pure comedy".

Reich reels: two German films

Downfall: Bernd Eichinger’s 2004 hit about Hitler’s final days. The production was the first attempt by German film makers to portray him as a human being. It was acclaimed abroad but subjected to withering criticism in Germany.

My Führer: Jewish director Danny Levy’s comedy was the first German production to lampoon the Nazi leader. Hitler was depicted as a drug-addicted, bedwetter. But the jokes and plot were weak and the film was panned by the critics.