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00:05Ah, the sea. For centuries, it has washed up great stories. Of Jason and the Argonauts,
00:12of Horatio Hornblower, of Moby Dick. But in more recent times, it has given up a different
00:18kind of story. One that until the last century or so, remained hidden beneath the waves.
00:23But because of countless films, we instantly recognise it in all its nerve-shredding glory.
00:31Alarm!
00:33John Sonor, incoming torpedo!
00:40Yes, the pressure cooker that is the submarine movie has been with us since the dawn of film.
00:45But why has it gripped us so? To find out, let's bring on the subs.
01:01I've loved submarine films since I was a boy. The fact that I didn't learn to swim until I was
01:05nearly 40 never really put me off the sub-aquatic life. The submarine, for me, is still one of the
01:10most incredible pieces of kit I've ever encountered.
01:13But for the filmmaker, the humble submersible is an excuse to take us to places we'd probably never get to
01:20go in our lives. And in so doing, delivers all the elements that great drama requires.
01:26But bless my white ribbed seaman's polo neck, the submarine movie has created its very own cinematic language and no
01:33great sub-movie would be the same without her.
01:37Excessive periscope action.
01:38Down periscope.
01:40I hear you!
01:41Testosterone-fuelled power struggles.
01:44The ping of the sonar.
01:47One ping only, please.
01:50Booming depth charges.
01:53Courageous John Mills.
01:54Dive, dive, dive. Dive, dive, dive, dive, sir.
01:57Plummeting pressure dials.
02:01Whoosh of torpedoes.
02:04Sweaty but meaningful looks.
02:08Valiant John Mills.
02:09Looks as if we've got it on a plate.
02:11The Russians.
02:12The Germans.
02:14The Japanese.
02:16Gung-ho Americans.
02:17Ready on that body, chief!
02:19Plucky Brits.
02:21Blimey.
02:22We're through.
02:23And the fearless John Mills.
02:25Stand by and hold on tight.
02:27People in a locked, trapped environment.
02:32It is claustrophobia, fear.
02:36It's about fortitude.
02:38It's like being buried alive.
02:41The stakes are immense.
02:44You're in a very free world, in an unfree environment.
02:47That's unique to the submarine genre.
03:01It is my mission to dive deeper,
03:04to discover not just why submarine movies hold us in thrall,
03:07but also to recall some of the real events that inspired these films,
03:12and to bring to the surface the undercurrents that these films reflect.
03:20This is the River Medway, about 30 miles south-east of London,
03:24and I'm looking for an intriguing relic of the Cold War that's hereabouts.
03:35And here's what I've been looking for.
03:40U-475, Black Widow, Russian hunter-killer class.
03:46Built in 1967, saw active service in the Russian Baltic Fleet.
03:51She was once armed with 22 torpedoes.
03:54And here's the bit that makes people nervous.
03:56Two nuclear warheads.
04:01Brought to the UK as a tourist attraction, and now fallen on hard times,
04:06this Black Widow still offers a rare chance to see, first-hand, a once-feared predator.
04:12Submarines were never more impressive than during the Cold War era.
04:16Hollywood knew this better than anyone, and built submarine movies to match.
04:28The film that best captured the conventions of this period is The Hunt for Red October,
04:34which was based on Tom Clancy's best-selling techno-thriller.
04:39Once more, we play our dangerous game.
04:43A game of chess against our old adversary, the American Navy.
04:50Sean Connery plays a Soviet submarine captain who, along with his crew,
04:55is apparently about to defect to the United States.
04:58His boat, the Red October, is equipped with a revolutionary new silent propulsion system,
05:04making it virtually undetectable to the Americans.
05:12Sonar is working, Captain. The Russian disappeared.
05:17The Hunt for Red October has various things. It's a Cold War thriller.
05:22It's a big-budget submarine movie.
05:25It's a vehicle for Sean Connery, doing one of his maverick, noble authority figures.
05:31And here's this sonar inaudible device. That's really scary.
05:36It reminds me of the heady days of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin,
05:41when the world trembled at the sound of our rockets,
05:44and they will tremble again at the sound of our silence.
05:48The order is, engage the silent drive.
05:51Aye, sir. Balance control. Open other doors.
05:55Yes. Open other doors.
05:56Diving Command. Engage Caterpillar and secure men engines.
06:01If film producers wanted to capture the majesty of these multi-million dollar machines at sea,
06:08they had only one option.
06:10They had to do a deal with the U.S. Navy.
06:17Passing those twins, sir.
06:22Bob Anderson is the director of the U.S. Navy's Office of Information in Los Angeles.
06:28If a major studio wants to use one of their submarines for filming,
06:31he's the man they have to convince.
06:36Our charter from the Department of Defense is that the script must be accurate,
06:40must reflect accurately what the military does,
06:43and so we have to look at that.
06:46It has to be of informational value to the American public,
06:49and it doesn't hurt if it helps recruiting.
06:53Cat and I. What do you got, Jonesy?
06:55Distant contact. Probably submerged.
06:57It's a wild guess, but I'd say we had a boomer coming out of the barn.
07:00Could be a missile boat out of Pagliani.
07:05Okay, start your track. I'll be there in a minute.
07:07Sonarai.
07:08We put a lot of effort into making sure they don't give away classified information,
07:12but when we deal with something like a submarine security system or something,
07:18we go to the people who are involved in that and get the unclassified version
07:22and get the elements that they can put into the film.
07:25You juggle that with a tremendous opportunity to inform the people about what our submarines do
07:31and what those people are out there doing.
07:44It's a great thing.
07:45But this drive by filmmakers to get the US Navy's most impressive war machines on the big screen
07:52leaves a wishy-washy liberal like me just a tad concerned.
07:58Because somewhere along the way, the line between entertaining feature film
08:03and highly elaborate recruitment tool became very blurred.
08:10For the US Navy, any movie in which they are involved is viewed as a recruitment opportunity.
08:16And they will even hand out promotional material to members of the public
08:20inside the cinema where the film is playing.
08:25We do that for just about every military picture.
08:27They'll invite the recruiters down to set up tables and meet people that come out of the film
08:33and might be interested in getting more information on the Navy.
08:36And we've had a very good relationship with theatre operators and things to do that.
08:41And we're very grateful that they do.
08:44Diving officer, make your depth 1,200 feet, 20 degrees down.
08:49While it may be that the US Navy simply want to use the movie for their own purposes,
08:54unreportedly, recruitment did surge in the year following the film's release.
08:58For director John McTiernan, the opportunity for actors to experience life on board a real operational submarine
09:06helped them to achieve a more authentic performance.
09:11The Navy guys taught our actors to be a lot less gung-ho and a lot less emotional and a
09:18lot less warrior-like,
09:22because that isn't what the real men are like.
09:25Men on a submarine behave the way men do in a monastery.
09:30In fact, it's very much like a monastery.
09:33I'll be damned.
09:35Now what?
09:36Submariners speak softly.
09:39All right.
09:41If defection...
09:42They never move quickly.
09:45They don't make very large gestures when they talk.
09:48They make small gestures.
09:50Mr. Thompson, call Chief Watson to the con with his sidearm.
09:54It showed them as men who were not in the least eager to go to war with anyone.
09:59It showed them as intelligent.
10:02The Navy liked all that. They really did.
10:06However, there are occasions when the US Navy isn't always on board with the filmmakers.
10:13Control bridge.
10:14Sounding. Bridge control. Sounding one through zero.
10:17Crimson Tide was a 1995 release directed by Tony Scott,
10:21from a screenplay by Mike Schiffer.
10:24Look out. Clear the bridge.
10:26Clear the bridge. All right, sir.
10:27Officer to the deck.
10:28Set just after the Cold War on a US submarine,
10:32a young First Officer stages a mutiny to prevent his captain launching a nuclear missile
10:37against a group of Russian rebels.
10:41You continue upon this course and insist upon this launch without confirming this message first.
10:45Chief of the boat.
10:47As Captain Commanding Officer of the USS Alabama, I order you to place the XO under arrest under charge of
10:53mutiny.
10:54I say again, I order you to place the XO under arrest under charge of mutiny.
11:02For the US Navy, an on-screen mutiny was totally unacceptable, and they pulled the plug on their support.
11:10There was one in 1849, there was a small mutiny on board a ship there, but we've never had one,
11:16and it's not, it's just such a strong thing with us not to portray the reality of something like that
11:26happening, because we don't feel it ever would happen.
11:29We gave the producers several other scenarios that they could choose, and for reasons that you'd have to get from
11:37them, they wanted to stick to the one they had, and we helped them up to the point where, as
11:42far as we could, and then we had to break off and let them go their own way.
11:48Fire control ready?
11:49Aye, sir.
11:49Launcher ready!
11:50Aye, sir.
11:52Initiate fire.
11:53Wait!
11:54Hold it!
11:54Grab the weapon now!
11:55Move forward!
11:56Move forward!
11:56Move, move, move!
11:57Let's get his pistol!
11:59Fire one!
12:01Number one did not fire, sir.
12:04Sir, the captain's key has been removed.
12:08Hunter.
12:10I felt that every great movie about submarines, and most great movies about, or many great movies about the Navy,
12:17involve this kind of power struggle.
12:19Run Silent, Run Deep, the Kane Mutiny.
12:21I mean, mutinies are part of the lore of great Navy tales, but they decided because there was a mutiny
12:27on board, they wouldn't support it, and we were very disappointed.
12:30The biggest loss would have been the loss of these beauty shots of the submarines at sea.
12:37Because once you're underneath it, you've got to build a set anyway, you're not going to shoot in a live
12:41submarine.
12:42And Tony Scott, God bless him, went to Hawaii, rented a helicopter, and cowboyed those shots of the USS Alabama
12:49submerging, which are beautiful.
12:51I think he got ordered out of airspace.
12:54I really think he stole the shot, and I'm eternally grateful.
12:59These high-concept blockbusters may be the biggest manifestations of the submarine movie, but there were many others that set
13:07sail before them.
13:08From the moment the very first submarine was built, it gripped the imagination of writers and filmmakers.
13:14In fact, the first fictional submarine was planted in the public's imagination in 1870 by a Frenchman, the writer Jules
13:22Verne.
13:23In his novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a renowned professor sets off to investigate the mysterious disappearance of
13:30ships in the Pacific Ocean.
13:32He encounters the anti-hero, Captain Nemo, in his futuristic submarine, Nautilus.
13:40It was Verne's wonderful science fantasy that, a few years later, would inspire a new breed of storyteller.
13:49In fact, one of the first films ever made was a submarine movie in 1907, directed by Georges Méliès, a
13:58pioneer of early cinema.
14:01His 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea film features a kind of fantastic journey done with big sort of cardboard
14:08cut-out sets.
14:10And then you get a line of very pretty chorus girls who come on and do a very elegant ballet.
14:16It's in line with the kind of stage review that you would have seen at the Moulin Rouge or the
14:20Folies Bergères at that time.
14:22It's a long way from Jules Verne's story about, you know, hard-bitten adventurers facing incredible risks.
14:29It's really a different world.
14:33This is a very rare print of Méliès's work.
14:37In 1913, his company went bankrupt, and the French army seized some 500 of his films in order to use
14:45the cellulose to make boot heels for their soldiers in the First World War.
14:49As a result, many of his films no longer exist.
14:58But it wasn't just Méliès who took inspiration from Verne.
15:02In 1916, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was remade by Glasgow-born director Stuart Payton for Hollywood studio Universal.
15:12This feature-length version was much more faithful to the Verne story, and was applauded for its groundbreaking underwater photography.
15:22Perhaps not a great film in the annals of cinema, but it really does take seriously how to produce those
15:28undersea effects.
15:29And the diving sequences look very convincing.
15:34Much more convincing than anything that had been done before.
15:36We really believe that we're under the sea.
15:41This was the start of our obsession with the submarine, and the storytelling opportunities it presented.
15:48If early filmmakers used it as a springboard for their imagination, there was one further element that would establish the
15:55cinematic submarine story.
15:57And that was the Second World War.
16:02There were a handful of submarine movies made before World War II, including a couple of talkies directed by John
16:08Ford and Frank Capra.
16:10But it wasn't until the outbreak of that war, where submarines played a vital strategic role, that the British public
16:16became fascinated with the submarine movie.
16:19None more so than the 1943 classic, We Dive at Dawn.
16:24Stop starboard, slow port, destroyer, maybe a screen. You getting anything?
16:27No, sir.
16:29Wait a minute.
16:30Picking her up now.
16:32Two of them.
16:33Up, let us go.
16:34You're getting green 5-0.
16:36The film stars plucky John Mills.
16:39Yes, it's him.
16:40In the first of his many Second World War submarine pictures as the captain of HMS Sea Tiger,
16:46on a top secret mission to sink the German battleship, the Brandenburg.
16:50Plates.
16:51Plates.
17:01Plates.
17:01It's her.
17:02It's the Brandenburg.
17:05Blow up all tubes.
17:07Four ends.
17:08Blow up all tubes.
17:09Blow up all tubes, sir.
17:11Made at a time when Allied forces were suffering severe losses, the film, with its message of solidarity,
17:18was intended as a morale booster to calm public anxieties regarding Britain's role in the Second World War.
17:26Confounded boat level number one. She's bouncing about like a pea in a blasted drum.
17:30Making films about the Second World War was pretty difficult while the war was still on,
17:35because there were tremendous restrictions about what could be shown.
17:38Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!
17:46Fire! Fire! Fire!
17:53It was very important that no one was seen to panic. So nobody panicked, but they sweared.
18:06It was also, I think, trying to send a message back to the home front, that, you know, in these
18:10dire circumstances,
18:11we really had to pull together and forget old differences.
18:16Captain, sir, we've got a nice leak in the water room, and we can't get a suction on the pump.
18:19Right, get our baggy team going, Coxton.
18:21Ah, sir, give us those baggy's pen fry. Take out the lucky.
18:23OK.
18:23Let's get all the baggy's you can find and bring them on.
18:33The home of the Royal Navy Submarine Service during the Second World War was HMS Dolphin at Gosport.
18:40Now it's the location of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, and I've come here to try and understand what it
18:46was really like for the men who served on submarines during the war.
18:54This is HMS Alliance. Launched towards the end of the Second World War, she is the only surviving example of
19:01her class.
19:08The simulated depth charge experience on board Alliance is probably as close as I will get to the real thing.
19:35There's no point denying it. I jumped at a sound effect. That was terrifying. Blimey.
19:43Dive, dive, dive. Dive, dive, dive.
19:46Life on a submarine during the Second World War was hard for the men on board, who had to be
19:51ready for action at any time.
19:53So, Cyril, you obviously survived the conflict, but did you ever have...
19:56Two men who remember it well are Cyril Sothcote and Captain Michael Crawford.
20:04In 1941, aged 20, Cyril joined the 9th Flotilla, based in Dundee.
20:13When war broke out, Michael was then a sub-lieutenant, but by 1942, aged only 25, he took command of
20:22HMS Unseen, operating out of Malta in the Mediterranean.
20:27I think the most frightening period I had was being depth charged off too long, and our Q tank, which
20:38was the quick diving tank, flooded, and we started plummeting down.
20:45More than you wanted to go?
20:46Much more than you wanted to go. In fact, we nearly went to double the safe diving depth, so it
20:53was very frightening.
20:56One or two close encounters with mine cables slapping down the side of the ship.
21:03You're just hoping that the cable won't snag on anything and pull the mine down on top of you.
21:12It does tend to concentrate the mine.
21:15Yes.
21:17Our losses were very heavy, but you never thought about it, but, I mean, that was the case.
21:31Having watched dozens of submarine movies, the question which still haunts me, and I'm feeling it even more acutely now,
21:39having met those very brave former submariners, is could I do what they've done?
21:45I'd like to think that I could, but I'm really not sure.
21:50I'm going to read a quote from Winston Churchill now. I'm going to read it so that I'll make sure
21:54that I get it just right.
21:56He said,
21:57Of all the branches of men in the forces, there is none which shows more devotion and faces grimmer perils
22:03than the submariner.
22:05Great deeds are done in the air and on the land. Nevertheless, nothing surpasses your exploits.
22:12I wouldn't disagree with that. Not for a second.
22:17All in for leaving harbour.
22:26From 1950 to 1959, there were more naval war films made than any other branch of the military,
22:33and more submarine movies than at any other time, which kept John Mills very busy.
22:40In Britain, this post-war period proved to be a difficult time as the nation was struggling to deal with
22:46the debt of the Second World War that was crippling the economy.
22:49These nostalgic films reminded audiences how great Britain once was, when Britannia ruled the waves.
23:02There are a couple of submarine pictures from this period which are reliving moments of heroism, particularly heroism against all
23:11odds, when the outcome was not so very wonderful.
23:14For instance, a film like Above Us The Waves, which I remember seeing in the cinema. It was a tremendous
23:19impression on me.
23:26Above Us The Waves stars John Mills, as the skipper once again, but this time in a film based on
23:32the true story of a World War II attack on the German ship the Tirpitz.
23:37Mills is captain of an aircraft, otherwise known as a midget submarine.
23:42These tiny subs were able to creep under enemy torpedo nets to carry out highly dangerous missions.
23:50Blimey. We're through.
23:54Do you know how I believe we are?
23:58Periscope depth. Periscope depth, sir.
24:01Half head group down. Half head group down.
24:02There was room for only four men on board, and so the feeling of claustrophobia was intense.
24:15This is HMS X-24, the only remaining X-craft to have seen service in World War II.
24:24At just over 50 feet long, and with a beam of 5 foot 9, in its day it was capable
24:29of diving to depths of 300 feet.
24:33Midget submarines of this class received no less than four VCs.
24:46You can see how tight a space it is in here, and how claustrophobic it would have been for the
24:51four crew members.
24:52In fact, they nicknamed them Mad Men.
24:59It really isn't very nice in here.
25:01In fact, can I get out now?
25:05Get ready to bail out.
25:10Above us the waves really does seem to capture the risks and the heroism of the submariner during the Second
25:16World War.
25:17And John Mills epitomized the British spirit of grace under pressure.
25:22But in America, it was a rather different story.
25:32The role of the U.S. submarine captain was one of rugged masculinity and prowess.
25:38Who better to lead a crew into battle than the Duke himself, John Wayne, even though it's only a small
25:46plastic boat in a tank.
25:49For Hollywood filmmakers, the submarine became the perfect setting for an all-out, action-packed, star-studded naval drama, where
25:59the skipper is king.
26:02Put air pressure in that compartment! Put air pressure in that compartment!
26:05I think for quite a number of years, doing one of those war action movies in on a submarine was
26:11regarded as no bad thing.
26:13Because, you know, you could be a kind of tough-guy hero when men were men in a confined space.
26:21You're in charge, you're god of this universe, and wasn't it fantastic?
26:25And, of course, a lot of those actors gave very, very powerful performances.
26:31One film that featured not one, but two Hollywood alpha males, Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster, was the 1958 classic
26:40Run Silent, Run Deep.
26:43Right full rudder. Come right to course 030. Open out of doors on tubes one and two.
26:48Open out of doors on tubes one and two.
26:50Deep in the Pacific, Clark Gable plays a submarine commander on a revenge mission to sink a Japanese destroyer, the
26:56Momo.
26:56He is accompanied by Burt Lancaster as his first officer.
27:02Angle on the bow now, starboard 70. Company to spread one right, one left.
27:06Solution checking. Everything set, sir.
27:10But Gable's authoritarian style of command clashes with Lancaster's more democratic approach.
27:16And the film cements what was to become a staple of the genre.
27:21The head-to-head power struggle.
27:25We have operational orders. They're explicit. We have a crew that expects the captain to follow those orders.
27:29You know as well as I do that a captain can redefine orders if he feels he has an advantage.
27:33What advantage?
27:34You just named it a bow shot. We proved we can do it with the Momo. We can do it
27:38again.
27:39This pointed to wider concerns about the best style of leadership to deal with the new enemy in 1950s America.
27:48Communism.
27:51Although it's ostensibly about the Second World War, there's a lot being dramatised which is about, you know, Eisenhower's America
27:58and how it faces up to the communist threat.
28:02Destroyer's angle at the pound now, zero. Bearing.
28:05Harold Hecht, who was the producer, had been one of the stool pigeons at the House Un-American Activities Committee.
28:12He'd named names only 18 months before.
28:17And the film can definitely be interpreted as what's the best style of leadership for taking on the commas.
28:24The democratic style represented by Lancaster. The authoritarian style represented by Gable.
28:30We're going to have to be very ingenious and nimble on our feet to cope with the commas.
28:35And that comes displaced into this, the 32 second bow torpedo, followed by a quick dive.
28:42If you had any questions about the drills, I think you'll have them answered now.
28:47We're taking on the mobile. Right standard rudder. Come right to course 045.
28:53Down the throat. It's a bow shot.
28:55It's a clever manoeuvre that Clark Gables worked out to outwit a Japanese destroyer.
29:01Fire three. Fire three.
29:04Three fired, sir.
29:06You get less films about the Nazis in the 50s at that time, but the Japs were still the bad
29:11guys and that was okay.
29:12So there's a lot of sort of gung-ho kind of chauvinism.
29:17We got him. We got him. We got him.
29:2032 seconds. 32 seconds.
29:30At the end of the 50s came one last World War II submarine movie
29:34that would take on both the Japanese and gung-ho chauvinism,
29:39bringing the red-blooded crew of a US submarine to their knees.
29:43Good morning. Good morning, sir.
29:46In Operation Petticoat, Cary Grant and Tony Curtis would discover just how chaotic life could get
29:53if you allowed real women on board.
29:56Good night, Marilyn.
30:03As the crew of USS Sea Tiger sets off on patrol in the Pacific, they come upon a group of
30:09survivors who have been stranded on a remote island.
30:13Women! Wow!
30:16The captain is forced to do the gentlemanly thing.
30:19Okay.
30:21Am I going down right?
30:22Sorry.
30:23Is she going down right?
30:24She sure is.
30:25Good morning.
30:26Good morning.
30:27Too late.
30:28Though set in the Second World War, the usual conventions of the submarine movie are blown completely out of the
30:34water by the arrival of the nurses on board.
30:37And the submarine, far from being a confined, claustrophobic space, is transformed into a hotbed of sexual innuendo and excitement.
30:47operation petticoat is very much of its moment it's very much a 1950s film about men being in
30:54charge except when they're slightly befuddled by sex excuse me yeah it's very 50s because it is
31:02absolutely fixated on breasts uh which is which is a very 1950s hollywood thing think about
31:07marilyn monroe or ava gardner japanese have nothing like this i always think of the 50s as
31:12the era in which america regressed into infancy and and developed a breast fixation if anybody
31:18ever asked you what you're fighting for there's your answer the final feminization of the boat
31:27occurs when poor emasculated ussc tiger due to lack of supplies is painted not regulation battleship
31:35gray but pink 25 years i've been in the navy i ain't never seen nothing like this
31:48as the concerns of war faded the submarine movie withdrew from the front line and refocused on
31:54the realms of fantasy and adventure it would take on more forward-looking aspects and these colorful
32:01creations would occasionally conceal powerful ideas sometimes from the most unlikely filmmakers
32:13in 1954 more than 80 years after jules verlin first published his classic undersea tale of the
32:21nautilus submarine walt disney decided to revisit this story that had so inspired the early filmmakers
32:27only this time 20 000 leagues under the sea would be walt's first cinema scope live action feature
32:34film shot in glorious technicolor the motion picture screen explodes with unprecedented power
32:41as the two masters of imagination jules verne and walt disney join to bring you a shattering
32:48your experience in entertainment all stations ready prepare for diving it's a natural conjunction
32:56disney was aware that submarine movies were becoming very popular they're right in the heart of the
33:02the peak production period from the mid-40s to the late 50s of submarine movies
33:13after their ship is sunk the professor and his crew come across a strange submarine-like vessel
33:19and decide to investigate is anyone down there
33:29when captain nemo played by james mason returns to find the intruders on board the nautilus
33:35he is less than happy james mason as captain nemo is brilliant dark saturnine seriously believable
33:45as a man who was a grudge against humanity when he sits down plays at the organ and that is
33:50one of
33:50the great moments when you really do believe this kind of fantasy world that he's built for himself
33:56under undersea disney of course was very interested in the new technologies that were being developed
34:05for well military purposes and yes he was aware of the the looming nuclear standoff and it's very
34:13natural if you're making an up-to-date version of the verne novel that you will incorporate nuclear power
34:18because the source of the nautilus's power in jules verne is mysterious
34:25now the mystery is solved it's nuclear
34:33it had its roots in the victorian gothic but it's actually coming up into the present
34:44the end when nemo decides to self-destruct you not only get a mushroom cloud
34:52but you get a voiceover from james mason saying one day the world will be ready for this in god's
34:58good
34:58time there is hope for the future and when the world is ready for a new better life all this
35:09will
35:09someday come to pass in god's good time
35:21it's no coincidence that in the same year that 20 000 leagues under the sea was released
35:26the u.s navy launched its first ever atomic powered submarine the uss nautilus and by 1957
35:34it had achieved 20 000 leagues that's distance not depth thus matching jules verne's fictional vessel
35:42more than that though it became apparent that disney was helping to promote a positive role
35:48for the atom in general and atomic submarines in particular
35:53take a look at this for an early disneyland ride
35:58and now for the ride that i nominate is the most unusual and completely fascinating that i've ever
36:04enjoyed the general dynamic corporation which had built the uss nautilus built for walt disney
36:11the atomic submarine ride for disney world in anaheim california
36:16so i mean there was a complete connection between disney making 20 000 leagues under the sea 54
36:22and what was going on in the real world with the development of nuclear submarine technology
36:27is quite extraordinary moment who would have thought that the man who brought us the magic kingdom
36:33would treat the children of the 1950s to a disney ride on an atomic submarine
36:38with make-believe missiles of course
36:43furthermore disney produced with the us navy and the general dynamic corporation
36:48a film called our friend the atom which predicted a bright clean future where the atom will truly
36:54become our friend
36:59i remember watching it at school here's america and the use of nuclear power with an amazing sequence
37:06where they show how a nuclear explosion occurs with the aid of hundreds of mouse traps watch
37:18an atomic chain reaction works in exactly the same way
37:22our friend the atom in medicine in hygiene in energy in transportation the atom is going to
37:30sort out all our problems and then the atom will run our ships
37:40disney loved new technology he loved american ingenuity yankee ingenuity
37:45and of course the atomic submarine already exists
37:50i gave everyone else he was you know the sputnik goes up and they're very very paranoid that the
37:55russians are actually getting rather better at this than the americans are so they redouble
37:59their efforts to show how american ingenuity leads the world
38:10but not everyone shared walt disney's optimism
38:15the catastrophic events of hiroshima and nagasaki were still in people's minds and there was
38:21significant anxiety about the dangers of nuclear power
38:30these concerns were captured in the 1959 melodrama on the beach based on the novel by neville shoot
38:39and our scientists disagree as to when radiation will reach australia the atomic war has ended but the
38:45prime minister reports no proof of survival of human life anywhere except here
38:51solar any contacts topside no contact
38:56an atomic explosion in the northern hemisphere has wiped out all of humanity all that's left is a u.s
39:04submarine
39:09the given is so gloomy you know the only safe place in the world is inside a metal tube at
39:15the moment
39:15you surface you've had it so you don't need the japanese and the nazis you just need to breathe the
39:21air
39:24it's the last vessel that can explore the ruined world that they've destroyed
39:31it's the last place that they can hide in it's the last place they can escape to before it's all
39:40over
39:43when it's up periscope it's not to see a predator it's to see the real world it's information about
39:50civil life they want through the periscope rather than information about the enemy
40:00it's downhill all the way this movie it begins downhill and it gets worse until at the end they
40:05all kill themselves you cannot imagine a big budget film with the star of the statue of gregory
40:12paling made about that now gives an idea of the atmosphere of the time
40:22although the nuclear threat still hovered at the beginning of the 60s it felt like things were looking
40:26up space was now the place and new frontiers were presenting themselves you are listening to the
40:34sound of a completely new screen experience a startling new kind of excitement as 20th century
40:42fox plunges you into the most incredible adventure that man could ever achieve
40:46this is what we're going to do with the fantastic voyage the submarine movie proved how adaptable it
40:58was this time it wasn't a journey to the bottom of the sea but to inner space inside the human
41:03body
41:04itself inject it wasn't so much that sinking feeling as that shrinking feeling as a group of
41:11scientists were miniaturized in order to enter the patient's bloodstream but this was back in 1966
41:18and things were getting groovier so obviously one of the scientists had to be played by raquel welsh
41:26oh yes take me down doctor phase one phase one
41:50it's interesting to see when women start to come on board submarines in the in the guise of scientists
41:55raquel welsh pretty much a classic example of that
41:58uh the film spends about 30 seconds you know informing us that she's very very smart
42:03and then she never does anything intelligent again and uh you know and she's there in a very
42:07tight-fitting suit so that we can um admire her figure but what the fantastic voyage lacked in its
42:14commitment to women's lib it more than made up for in scientific innovation
42:21it was the swinging 60s but it was also that thing where technology was moving
42:24really rapidly and the submarine was still very much at the forefront of technology it had moved
42:31from being this kind of quite crude weapon that you know was there to blow up ships in in the
42:38great
42:38films of the 40s and the 50s and suddenly it was a pioneering scientific exploration vessel exploring
42:47things that other people couldn't explore the film 1966 is anticipating being able to insert essentially
42:56humans but also technology into the bloodstream and the brain and do operations with lasers on
43:01the brain etc etc it's very prescient in that sense and anticipates a lot of things that would then
43:07come true the submarine was at the cutting edge of innovation technology
43:12and where that cutting edge technology intersects with cold war espionage
43:23you will find only one man james bond
43:28surface no far full ahead full line on both ways
43:32in the spy who loved me a british polaris submarine has been captured oh my god
43:39for bond it's a race against time as he tries to locate the submarine
43:43before its nuclear warheads are fired
43:47can you swim
44:02the most audacious scene in the film comes as bond's lotus esprit morphs into a midget submarine
44:17it's time we said goodbye to an uninvited guest
44:30of course being 1977 the action just has to be played out to an exceedingly cheesy disco score
44:39look
44:42midget submarines don't get more bling than this stunning
44:51the submarine movies found themselves rather becalmed in the late 70s with only the occasional
44:57admittedly spectacular foray on screen the spy who loved me delivered the required
45:03subaquatic thrills and all without breaking a sweat or chipping its nail varnish
45:19but just when you thought the submarine film had all gone a bit silly from out of nowhere a film
45:26surfaced that would become the towering achievement of the genre
45:42this is the naval base of la palice in la rochelle on the french atlantic coast
45:47and it was from these brutal concrete submarine pens that the german u-boats departed
45:54it's also the setting for the opening of one of the finest most realistic submarine films
45:59at just under five hours running time director wolfgang petersen's das boat is a brilliant study
46:05of the terrifying psychological effects of waging war from a cramped underwater metal prison
46:13as is often the case though the story starts on a sunny day with dreams of heroism
46:23one of the most expensive german films ever made das boat was released at a time when germany was
46:29finally ready to dramatize its role in the second world war
46:38the story follows the crew of a u-boat as they set off on patrol in the atlantic in the
46:44early years of
46:44the war and is told from the point of view of lieutenant verna a war correspondent
47:14lieutenant verna is
47:17our guide to both the fearful nature of life on board and to the stoicism of its
47:22captain, played by Jürgen Prochnau.
47:44Dazbert is one of the great contributions to, you know, the cellulite history of war, you
47:49know, it's no two ways about it.
47:52He's an action filmmaker, Wolfgang Peterson.
47:54He wants to hit you in the chest.
47:56He wants you to feel it there.
47:59And Dazboot does that.
48:03You live the experience with them because of the very similitude of the technology, the
48:08sound, the look, the claustrophobia, the detail of the engineering.
48:16I think it's a remarkable film.
48:22I mean, it is one of the best submarine movies ever made, actually.
48:54The fifth sea day.
48:54There are long gaps in which there is time for self-reflection.
48:57There is time for fear to develop.
48:59There is time to get anxious about what's going to happen next and how they're going to respond
49:03to it.
49:03And I think what's exciting about Dazboot is that it very much puts that psychological perspective
49:09at the forefront of the film, which is you understand something about their fears and anxieties, and anything
49:16that does happen in the film happens with that as the obvious psychological backdrop.
49:23The crew face a constant barrage of physical and psychological pressure throughout the patrol.
49:30But nothing pushes them further to the edge than when to avoid enemy fire, they are forced
49:36to take the boat to a depth way beyond its limit.
49:52When they're stuck in the depths, and you hear the pressure on the metal, and the bolts start unscrewing,
50:00and everyone feels, my God, this machine is about to implode with us all stuck inside.
50:15No one had ever quite done that before.
50:18Submarines had got stuck, but you'd never quite seen the engineering effect of that.
50:25Very frightening.
50:28I even dreamt about it after I saw the film.
50:31It got to me, that scene.
50:32What would it be like to be in that situation, when you can do absolutely nothing about it,
50:37and you can actually see your environment implode around you very slowly as the pressure builds up?
50:43Yeah, I think that was very effective.
50:49You can do it.
50:51You're right.
50:52You're right.
50:52You're right.
50:54You're right.
50:55We like to watch the character losing it, because in some sense they represent us.
50:59We know, I know, that if I was in that situation, I would be that character.
51:03And of course, what's interesting from a psychology point of view is that fear is a very contagious emotion.
51:08Human social groups evolved successfully because if one person felt fear, there was usually a good reason for it.
51:13So we had to pick up on that and work out where the threat was.
51:18Don't turn into it.
51:20Back!
51:24In some sense, what's wonderful to watch is that if someone shows extreme fear, how does everyone else react?
51:34That's the beauty of the film, which is you feel sympathy for these people, because this is not part of
51:39the Great Third Reich.
51:40This is not part of the, you know, the blitzkrieg across Europe.
51:45This is human beings, like yourself, very vulnerable.
52:04It must have seemed pretty risky.
52:06You know, was the public ready to sympathise, as you have to do really,
52:12with German submarinas who were actually kind of, you know,
52:16cutting up convoys that are coming from America to Britain?
52:20As it turned out, they were.
52:30You've got a very conscious attempt to exorcise the Second World War.
52:35Germany was ready to make films about the Nazis in 1981.
52:40It had taken a very, very long time.
52:42I mean, Hollywood had been making films about the Nazis.
52:44Britain had been making films about the Nazis.
52:45French had been making films.
52:47But the Germans had not been making films about the Nazis.
52:49Suddenly, they found a way of doing it,
52:52which is maverick people who feel a long way away from Berlin.
52:58And that's what Das Boot does.
53:11It was director Wolfgang Petersen's aim to take cinema audiences, as he put it,
53:17on a journey to the edge of their minds.
53:21For me, no other submarine film before or since Das Boot
53:25has been able to give us quite such a brilliantly realistic
53:29and visceral cinematic experience.
53:40At the end of the 80s, the Berlin Wall came down
53:43and the Soviet Union's power began to crumble.
53:48Britain and the US lost their naval enemy.
53:52Despite the success of blockbusters like The Hunt for Red October,
53:56the days of the Cat and Mouse Cold War movie were now numbered.
54:02Filmmakers had to find a new focus for the submarine film.
54:07It's turbulence! We're in its wake!
54:10Help! All stop!
54:11Oh, my God!
54:13One director in particular showed the way
54:15as he created a curious cinematic hybrid,
54:19fusing the submarine to elements of science fiction and state-of-the-art CGI.
54:25In The Abyss, the technical wizardry of director James Cameron rebooted the genre.
54:34All right, just continue forward along the hall.
54:37The film is about a group of scientists on a mission
54:40to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a US submarine
54:44and the search for survivors.
54:47In the process of trying to mount the rescue, things start to go wrong
54:51and the scientists discover that they are not alone.
55:06The Abyss is a sort of submarine movie.
55:09What Cameron did in 1989 was he reached back to the imaginative space
55:16that the submarine movie and television series of the 1960s gave
55:21and said, no, actually, it's not necessarily up there where the imaginative space is.
55:27It's not necessarily in outer space.
55:30Maybe it is in inner space or in sea space.
55:37It was at the absolute limit of what CGI could do at that time.
55:44It was a very expensive and very brave film for 1989.
55:48It was really quite out of kilter as a sort of hybrid.
55:53But it confirmed what a distinctive and original directory was
55:57at doing things with genres and with that technology in submarine
56:01and undersea technology that other people just hadn't thought about.
56:12The Abyss grossed $90 million and won an Oscar for visual effects.
56:17But you have to wonder if it left the submarine movie in, well, a bit of a trough.
56:22Maybe underwater warfare just won't be the same
56:25without those plucky Brits and maverick U-boat Capitans.
56:30The genre still has life in it.
56:33And you can still use modern technology to tell submarine stories,
56:37but you can't tell them with the old bad guys,
56:39with the old stories in the old contexts, with the old politics.
56:43I think all that's gone.
56:46If the history of cinema tells us anything,
56:48it tells us that, you know, there is really no such thing
56:51as a genre that absolutely dies.
56:55After the bunch of films that we saw in the 1990s,
56:58Crimson Tide, for instance,
57:00I think there's no reason why there shouldn't be new submarine films
57:02because there will be new filmmakers
57:03who feel that they have a story they want to tell.
57:07Personally, I would love to see the first submarine film in 3D.
57:12It could be absolutely terrifying.
57:17It's difficult to see, you know, how...
57:20how the submarine or the sea, you know, sea and submarine genre
57:25can regain its space unless somebody of that ilk,
57:29unless it is Stevensburg or James Cameron
57:31or somebody just says, no, no, I'm gonna do that.
57:34And if they decided to do it,
57:35everyone would be talking about it all over again, I think.
57:43The sea remains one of our deepest metaphors,
57:47and the submarine is what takes us under the surface.
57:50To face what? Our fears? The unknown?
57:53The shortcomings and heroism of our fellow man?
57:56For what seems physically very limiting,
57:59the submarine is a great cauldron of emotion.
58:04With one inescapable element that will always remain.
58:09Absolute.
58:11Primal.
58:12Raw.
58:14Fear.
58:21I'm still gripped by submarine movies,
58:23and I'm deeply respectful of real submariners.
58:26But it would be dishonest of me not to confess
58:29that there are still times when this particular doggy paddler
58:31just wants to head for the shore and stay there.
58:44Marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall,
58:47our Cold War season next,
58:49and Rich Hall's turning his satirical eye
58:52to the relationship between the USA and the Soviet Union.
58:55Red menace.
59:02The
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