Lifeboat: Hitchcock & Steinbeck Film

This 1944 film, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, is from a story by John Steinbeck, who, by then, was already a highly respected author, famous for, "The Grapes of Wrath," and, "Of Mice and Men," both also made into very successful movies. "Lifeboat" received Academy Award nominations, including for Hitchcock for best director.

The story takes place in the lifeboat of a ship sunk by a U-boat during World War Two. The film opens with a sole woman, writer Connie Porter, played by Tallulah Bankhead, sitting in the middle of the lifeboat. We see all sorts of debris floating past the boat. It isn't long before a crewman of the ship, Kovac, played by John Hodiak, climbs up into the boat. He is followed by a number of other passengers, including, Gus Smith, played by William Bendix, who has a badly wounded leg. A lady, played by Heather Angel, is also brought into the lifeboat, clutching her baby, a baby it turns out, that is dead. Already emotionally unstable from the wartime air raids, the deeply distraught woman later quietly slips into the water to drown herself. The final person to be hauled into the boat is a German, Willi, from the U-boat, which had been sunk by the ship before it plunged from the surface. Willi, played by Walter Slezak, speaks in German, only to be answered by Connie, who is fluent in German. A couple of the survivors want Willi thrown overboard to drown, but others feel this is morally, and perhaps legally, wrong, so he remains in the boat. He claims to have been just a crew member, but Connie cleverly catches him off guard by calling, "Herr Kapitän!" Only to have him answer, "Ja?" With a sail hoisted, the group wants to head for Bermuda, which they believe is not all that far off, but the problem is, in what direction IS Bermuda? One of their group tries using the sun, and points in one direction, but Willi, the German captain points in another direction. Given that he is a sea captain, this carries more weight with a couple, but Kovac establishes himself as the lifeboat's leader and they follow the course to Bermuda determined by one of the sunken ship's crew, played by Hume Cronyn.

Then Gus must have his leg amputated, as gangrene has set in to his wound. Willi tells Connie that he was a surgeon before the war, so the group prepares to witness the operation, which will need to be done without anesthetic, except for some brandy Connie has. Willi gains a little more respect by performing the emergency surgery, and then he gains much more respect, as a storm hits, and Willi's taking control of the boat in the violent sea helps to save them. During this scene the others learn that Willi speaks fluent English. When things settle down, it is determined Willi will guide the boat to a nearby German supply ship rather than to Bermuda, as he tells them it will take a couple of weeks to reach Bermuda, and they have lost their food and fresh water in the storm. While the others sleep, Gus has some hallucinations because of his condition, but he really does see Willi take a drink of water from a bottle he has stashed. Willi knocks Gus overboard and he drowns. When the others find out that Willi indeed stashed water and that he likely killed Gus, they descend on him and beat him, pushing him overboard, with one using the shoe from Gus's amputated leg to land the decisive blow.

It's not long before the survivors see the German supply ship in the distance, and a small craft with Germans begins to approach, only to turn back. Then they see why, as an Allied warship begins firing at the German ship, * which is hit and begins to sink. A young, trembling German sailor is helped up into the lifeboat and the survivors face the same situation; toss him back into the sea or keep him? He draws a gun, but he is quickly disarmed. He looks at the passengers and asks, "Werden Sie mich nicht umbringen?" (Aren't you going to kill me?)

* In actual fact, throughout the war the German U-boats were a major problem for the Allies. The U-boats that traveled the farthest out to sea needed a way to refuel and to get provisions, so I do believe the German navy had some special supply ships in distant waters, near neutral countries, where they could periodically stock up, then return to sea to supply their U-boats. The Allies tried to sink or bottle up the supply ships to limit the illusive U-boats operating so far out to sea. If you have seen "Das Boot" (also dubbed in English, and often called "The Boat," its English translation), the absolutely fabulous early 1980's movie about a German U-boat, the U-boat in the story meets a German supply ship in Portugal, a neutral country during the war. German "Boot," is pronounced very similarly to its close English cousin, "boat," not like the English word of the same spelling, but meaning, "a type of foot wear." 

 WORD HISTORY:
Bear-This is the noun for the name of the animal, although English also has a verb form spelled the same way, but from a different source. The noun goes back to Indo European "bher(os)," which had the notion of, "brown, dark," but "seemingly" also, "bright, shining," perhaps from the glistening of some brown and dark objects. This gave Old Germanic "beron," meaning "bear," the animal, so, "the brown animal." This gave Old English "bera," which then became "bere" (ending "e" pronounced "eh"), before the modern form. The other Germanic languages have: German "Bär," Low German Saxon "Boor," West Frisian "bear," Dutch "beer," Danish and Norwegian "bjørn," Icelandic and Swedish "björn."

Baron's Tales Make For Good Fantasy Movie: Münchhausen

Baron Münchhausen was a real life German noble of the 1700s who became noted for the fantastic stories he told of his life's adventures. Books recounting the stories were written, "seemingly" based upon the stories told by the Baron, but the thing was, Baron Münchhausen became famous, especially in England and Germany.* By the early 1940s, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propagandist and overall head of the German film industry, ordered the making of a film about Münchhausen's adventures. Goebbels hoped the color film would demonstrate that the German movie industry could compete with Hollywood in the making of elaborate color films, complete with trick photography.

Erich Kästner, a highly regarded German writer, did much of the screenplay for the movie, but the thing was, Kästner was an anti-Nazi, and although Goebbels admired some of Kästner's works, he kept the author's name from the credits of the film. Kästner's earlier works had been burned as part of the Nazi campaign to limit the German public's access to writings by German Jewish or foreign authors, and to those writings they deemed to be "dangerous;" the translation of which was really, "writings that might make Germans oppose Nazi ideology." After that Kästner settled on publishing children's books and works that were non-political. Very likely Kästner's script for the movie was gone over word by word by Nazi censures, perhaps even by Goebbels himself.

The movie was filmed in 1942 and starred then well known German actor Hans Albers as the Baron. For those who remember actor Walter Slezak, known for films like "Lifeboat" (with Tallulah Bankhead and William Bendix) and "Bedtime for Bonzo" (with Ronald Reagan), as well as for appearances on the television series "Batman" in the 1960s, his father, Leo Slezak, co-starred in the film as the Turkish Sultan. Leo Slezak was well known in Europe in those times for his opera singing. The movie, with the title "Münchhausen," was released to theaters in March of 1943 and it returned a profit. The movie is available on DVD, with English subtitles, and it has some history of the film included, from which I took some of the info here.

I won't go into all of the movie, but it has some interesting turns to it, including the opening part, which is likely to give you a surprise after a few minutes. The most famous scene, taken from one of the books about the Baron, shows the Baron riding a cannonball into a Turkish fort. Other scenes depict the Baron's time in Russia, including with Tsarina Catherine the Great, a sword duel in Venice, and his visit to the moon in a balloon. Don't be concerned, as the movie is NOT a Nazi propaganda film (remember it was largely written by an anti-Nazi), and in fact, when I first saw it, I was surprised that Goebbels had allowed the film to be shown without more editing or script changes, as for instance, the Turkish sultan is shown meting out severe punishment, including beheading, at times for minor infractions. Also, the time on the moon is different from time on Earth, and Kästner has one of the characters in the script say, "the time is broken," seen by many as his subtle way of saying the same about the Nazi era.

* Münchhausen was from the Hannover (English: Hanover) area of Germany, which had close ties to England, as the "House of Hannover" provided the monarchs of England from the early 1700s until the early 1900s.

WORD HISTORY:
Baron-The ultimate origins of this word are complex, as there are two strong possibilities for the Indo European base of the word, both of which later provided English with words that are both spelled and pronounced the same; that is, "bear," but with one meaning "to carry" and "to give birth or to yield produce," while the other is a word for an animal. The problem is, in Old Germanic the source of baron meant, "servant, male follower, warrior." It is certainly not difficult to connect the dots for the use of "bear," the animal, for a "warrior," but it is far less likely for "servant" or "male follower." On the other hand, the connection of those last two meanings, which are similar anyway, to "carry," is not difficult to imagine, as a servant or follower has to "bear" responsibility to someone or to others. I very much favor this explanation, which therefore goes back to Indo European "bher," which meant the above noted "to carry" and "to give birth or to yield produce;" thus the notion "bearer," for the noun form. Indo European "bher" gave its Old Germanic offspring "beran," with the same meanings, which then produced "berun," "carrier," which then developed the "servant, follower" meaning, which then further developed the "warrior" meaning, as in feudal times, the "(male) servants" ("vassals") provided military service to the lord. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "biorn/beorn," meaning "warrior, (minor?) chieftain, man." In the meantime, Latin had borrowed a form of the same word from Germanic, perhaps from Frankish or Langobardic,^ as "baro" (with varied spellings using "n," depending upon usage in a sentence). This gave Old French "baron," a title in the nobility. The term was carried to England by the Normans and blended with the native English term, but with the French spelling "baron" prevailing. German too borrowed the term, initially as "Barun," but then as "Baron," with a long "o" (all German nouns are capitalized), but German also kept their own word "Freiherr" (literally "free (gentle)man," from the notion in the Middle Ages of a man owning his land outright and not being subservient to a lord directly above him. "Freiherr" became synonymous with "Baron."

^ The Franks and the Langobards were Germanic tribes, with the Franks having a strong presence in what developed into modern France, with the name "France" coming from the Franks, and the Langobards having a strong presence in part of northern Italy, where they gave their name to the province "Lombardia" (usually rendered in English as "Lombardy").