Visual Poetry Of Das Boot: The Spondees Of War

I was watching "Das Boot" early, early Sunday morning on cable. I enjoyed it again. However, I noticed a surprising editing they did to be "PG-13 Correct", and it struck me as odd. In the film, they receive order to go to the Western Mediterranean, the port of La Spezia. Their mood is somber, knowing that they must first pass by British-controlled Gibraltar, that bottle-neck between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. So a crewman says to another something to the effect that " Gibraltar - like the eye of a needle." There is German sound track and the subtitle underneath. Then, the next scene they are still talking, and making a joke to lighten the tension, the crewman says something like "You'll need a whole jar of Vaseline to get through there." German and subtitle. Perhaps the critical faculties are especially acute at 4:00 AM. Why would one thread a needle with Vaseline? And what is one to make of the unfortunate juxtaposition of a biblical reference, "eye of a needle", and a jar of Vaseline? However, while it was all fresh in my mind, I recalled the first scene: crewman speaking to a second crewman: "Gibraltar...( something I missed)...einer Jungfrau." Since "einer Jungfrau" means, "of a virgin" , and it is doubtful that the sailor was talking about a spinster seamstress and her needles, I missed a slang term for a part of the body. The producers decided to eliminate the bit of sexual levity for their non-Germanic audiences, and refused to translate the subtitle correctly. This was a mistake, I believe.

Films are somewhat like poems, and possess a tempo and meter. In a film like "Das Boot" it is very clear. As cruel act of war follows on cruel act of war, we have a heavy, insistent pounding of impending doom. Between the battles in the Atlantic and the coming struggle beneath the waters of the Mediterranean, the writers wished to changed the meter a bit, have a bit of a break, and even wanted to go so far as to laugh with the scent of remembered sensuality. I thought of it like having a bunch of spondaic feet: ' ' / ' ' / ' ' /... or " Crash! Blast! Blood! War!" being suddenly alleviated by a stretch of iambics: - ' / - ' / - ' / - ' / - ' / ... or "...we stop to gaze upon the sun, and dream of birthdays yet to come..." and a taste of the 'gather rosebuds while we may' type of business, before we returned to the terrible bass pounding of the spondees of war.