‘Das Boot’: The claustrophobic classic Clint Eastwood called “very impressive”
Actors who find themselves in a position of power in Hollywood regularly seek out filmmakers they admire to helm their upcoming projects, even if there was a two-decade gap between Clint Eastwood being impressed by a movie and then hiring its director to steer one of his star vehicles.
Of course, as one of the industry’s most prolific and respected directors himself, Eastwood knows more than most on-camera performers what makes somebody stand out from the crowd. Once he’d made his own feature-length debut on 1971’s Play Misty for Me he wielded the megaphone on plenty of his own films, but he didn’t disregard the art of creative collaboration entirely.
Over the course of a legendary career Eastwood has worked with some true directorial titans, and it’s a pedestal he ended up on himself after winning two Academy Awards apiece for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ thanks to Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.
When he was seeking the perfect candidate to take the reins on an intense, politically-charged action thriller, his first instinct was to recall a movie he loved the first time he’d seen it. “You know when you think of a particular director, you think you would have liked to be with them on one particular film and not necessarily on some other one,” he said to The Guardian when reflecting on “terrific” directors.
“For instance, in deciding to work with Wolfgang Petersen on In the Line of Fire, I hadn’t seen any picture of his in some time, but I had always liked Das Boot,” he explained. “I thought it was a very impressive piece of film work, especially under the claustrophobic conditions that they had to shoot it.”
Petersen’s breakthrough film was an international success story, one that earned him Oscar nominations for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’. It arguably remained the finest work of his career up until his passing in August 2022, but Das Boot was hardly an indicator that the German would go on to become one of the most reliable pair of hands in blockbuster cinema.
Fantasy favourite The NeverEnding Story, star-studded disaster thriller Outbreak, phenomenal action extravaganza Air Force One, historical epic Troy, big budget remake Poseidon, and The Perfect Storm were among his Hollywood credits, with Eastwood taking the plunge on Petersen to direct In the Line of Fire in the hopes that he could recapture his best form.
“Maybe it was some superstition but I had had some luck with European directors doing American subject matter,” he pondered. “So I thought, ‘Let’s try him, maybe he’s got another great film in him.'” Fortunately, Eastwood’s instincts were correct, with In the Line of Fire an accomplished commercial success that snagged three Oscar nods and earned its place in the upper tier of its leading man’s back catalogue.
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