U-571 is a 2000 film directed by Jonathan Mostow, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel, Thomas Kretschmann, Jon Bon Jovi, Jack Noseworthy, Will Estes, and Tom Guiry. In the film, a World War II German submarine is boarded in 1942 by disguised United States Navy submariners, seeking to capture her Enigma cipher machine.

The film was financially successful and generally well received by critics in the USA^[1] and won an Academy Award.

The real U-571 was never involved in any such events, was not captured, and was in fact sunk in January 1944, off Ireland, by a Short Sunderland flying boat from No. 461 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. The real U-570 was captured almost intact by the Royal Navy in 1941, although not before her crew had destroyed almost all the secret materials on board.

U-571 was filmed in the Mediterranean Sea, near Rome and Malta.^[2]

Plot[link]

This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (December 2011)

The film begins with a summary on how the Allies are struggling to stop U-boats from sinking their freighters. The scene transfers to U-571, which torpedoes and sinks a freighter. The crew is happy with the kill but seconds later the sonar man reports to have detected high speed screws. The Captain sights a destroyer forcing U-571 to dive. The destroyer drops depth charges snapping a fuel line, which catches fire and kills the entire engineering crew. Because of sustained damage, U-571 is forced to resurface. The Captain learns that the batteries are almost flat, both diesel engines are inoperable, and the engineering crew is dead. An Enigma-encoded SOS is sent to Berlin for aid.

Meanwhile, the crew of the United States Navy submarine S-33 are celebrating Crewman Larson wedding and 48 hours leave. During the party, Lt. Andrew Tyler enters looking solemn, having been denied his own command. After complaining to Lt. Commander Dahlgren, he is rebuffed and upset to learn that Dahlgren voted against him receiving the promotion. Military Police suddenly arrive announcing a secret mission that ends shore leave. The men arrive to find their boat, the S-33, modified to resemble a German U-boat. The crewman must wear German uniforms. Hirsch, a Naval Intelligence officer who is fluent in German, orders Tyler to locate Radioman Wentz, who is fluent in German due to his immigrant parents. At the same time, a Marine named Coonan arrives in a convoy loaded with high explosives. After the S-33 sails, Hirsch explains that the Allies intercepted the disabled U-571's SOS. They will masquerade as the resupply ship for U-571, board it, capture the Enigma coding device and scuttle the U-571. Tyler is skeptical but goes along. Wentz asks Tyler to keep his German heritage a secret. The S-33 leaves Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth New Hampshire.

Back on U-571, attempted repairs fail and the Captain is alerted that survivors from the merchant ship he sank have been spotted on a lifeboat asking for asylum. He orders his men to shoot them, as their orders are not to spare any survivors. His men reluctantly do so.

During a storm, the S-33 comes across U-571 and sends the boarding party over, led by Coonan. Hirsch temporarily freezes and Wentz is forced to speak German in front of his friends in order for the group to retain their cover until their rafts are tied up. At first, the Germans openly welcome the S-33, but when a midshipman looks through his binoculars, he immediately identifies the weapons as American. He alerts the rest of the Germans and they exchange fire with the S-33 crewmen. The Americans are able to take the boat by force, capture the Enigma and begin rounding up the prisoners, including the Captain. As the prisoners are transferred between ships and the scuttling charges are laid, Dahlgren, standing on the upper deck of the S-33, notices the sound of a detonation. He turns around in horror to see a streak coming towards the S-33 underwater. The ship is torpedoed and sunk by the real German resupply sub. CO Dahlgren, wounded in the water, orders his men on the captured U-boat to submerge and save themselves. (This scene was based on an actual incident in World War II: Commander Howard W. Gilmore, USN, after being seriously wounded in an encounter with a Japanese destroyer, ordered his men to abandon him on deck and submerge to save the ship and crew. Gilmore was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his sacrifice. The movie quotes Gilmore's last recorded words: "Take her down.") Coonan, Larson and many others are lost, forcing Tyler to take command and dive the captured U-boat. There is a desperate scramble to disarm the charges they placed. With only Hirsch and Wentz able to read German, after struggling with interpreting the controls they fire a salvo of torpedoes, destroying the enemy U-Boat, draining the last of the sub's batteries and spending all but the last torpedo, loaded in the malfunctioning aft torpedo tube. Surfacing, Tyler and his men search for survivors and find two: Eddie the cook from the S-33 and a German sailor claiming to be an electrician, but who is actually the Captain of U-571.

After repairing one of the diesel engines, thus restoring power and propulsion, Tyler decides to take the disabled submarine to England. Some of the men disagree with Tyler's decision and Tyler replies with "I don't know" to their questions. Chief Klough privately rebukes Tyler, saying "A Captain always knows what to do, whether he does or not." He also rebukes Mazzola in front of others for openly disagreeing with Tyler. They spot an aircraft and Mazzola tries to convince Rabbit to fire on the plane with the deck gun against Tyler's orders, which appears to be coming in for an attack, but is only scouting for a German destroyer named the Anschluss. Tyler punches Mazzola for ignoring the Chain of Command and his stupidity. The captured German Captain breaks free, attacks Tank and kills Mazzola before being subdued. Unaware that the U-571 has been commandeered by Americans, the Anschluss sends over a small contingent to meet and greet with their German comrades. Right before boarders arrive, Tyler has Rabbit fire a shot from the deck gun right into the ship's radio tower, preventing the destroyer from reporting that the enigma code has been compromised and dives underneath her. The destroyer begins to drop depth charges to try to sink U-571.

Tyler plans to trick the destroyer into stopping by ejecting debris and Mazzola's corpse out of an empty torpedo tube, faking their own destruction. The younger men balk at using their crewman's body this way, but Tyler states that Mazzola is saving their lives. U-571 will then surface and hit the ship with their last torpedo.

The German destroyer continues dropping depth charges. U-571, hiding at great depth of below 200 meters, is damaged by the high water pressure. In preventing the submarine from sinking, control of the main ballast tanks are lost and the ship ascends uncontrollably. Tyler orders Trigger to submerse himself in the bilge underwater to repressurize the torpedo tubes. During the ascent the German prisoner tries to warn the destroyer in Morse Code that they're not dead yet. Wentz translates the message in German, "I am U-571. Destroy me!" Enraged, Hirsch grabs a large wrench and kills the prisoner. Trigger manages to close the air valve for the tubes, but a second leak and valve is unexpectedly revealed, both behind a wall of pipes; Trigger's arm can't reach, and his air hose is too short. When Tank reports this, Tyler rushes to the engine room himself. Tyler tells him that they need him to do this and orders him to get the job done. U-571 surfaces without a torpedo to fire. The destroyer fires on the ship, which runs using its diesel engine, but takes heavy damage from the destroyer's deck guns and starts to flood. Trigger leaves behind the air hose and closes the second valve, but the damage causes pipes to collapse, trapping his leg and he drowns. The second the pressure is available, Tyler orders Tank to fire the final torpedo. The German ship is destroyed; in front of everyone, Chief Klough tells Tyler that if he ever needs a Chief, he would gladly go to sea with him anytime. Tank reports Trigger's death while carrying out his order, but U-571 has taken severe damage and will not stay afloat for long. The crew abandons ship with the Enigma in tow, and watches it sink while mourning for their lost crewmates and also for the German sub which ironically saved their lives. Floating aboard an inflatable lifeboat, they are eventually spotted by a US Navy sea-plane.

Cast[link]

• Matthew McConaughey as Lieutenant Andrew Tyler
• Bill Paxton as Lieutenant Commander Mike Dahlgren
• Harvey Keitel as Chief Gunner Henry Klough
• Jon Bon Jovi as Lieutenant Pete Emmett
• David Keith as Major Matthew Coonan
• Jake Weber as Lieutenant Michael Hirsch
• Jack Noseworthy as Seaman Bill Wentz
• Tom Guiry as Seaman Ted "Trigger" Fitzgerald
• Will Estes as Torpedoman Ronald "Rabbit" Parker
• T. C. Carson as Seaman Eddie Carson
• Erik Palladino as Seaman Anthony Mazzola
• Dave Power as Motor Machinist Charles "Tank" Clemens
• Derk Cheetwood as Seaman Herb Griggs
• Matthew Settle as Ensign Keith Larson
• Thomas Kretschmann as Kapitänleutnant Gunther Wassner

Critical reception[link]

The film was generally well received by critics, with 63 out of the 93 critics tallied by review aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes giving the film positive reviews.[1]. The movie performed well at the box office.^[3]

Controversies regarding content[link]

Historical events[link]

United States' direct participation in World War II commenced in 1941 with Lend-Lease and the Attack on Pearl Harbor, but the history of capturing Enigma machines and breaking their codes had already begun in Europe.

An earlier military Enigma machine had been captured by Polish Intelligence in 1928; Polish intelligence broke the Enigma code in 1932 and gave their findings to Britain and France in 1939, just before the German invasion of Poland.^[4]

The first capture of a Naval Enigma machine and associated cipher keys from a U-boat was made on May 9, 1941 by HMS Bulldog of Britain's Royal Navy, commanded by Captain Joe Baker-Cresswell. The U-boat was U-110. In 1942, the British seized U-559, capturing additional Enigma codebooks. "The captured codebooks provided vital assistance to the British cryptographers, led by Alan Turing, at the code-breaking hothouse of Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes."^[4]

The capture, rather than sinking, of U-570 – the only ship to be captured by an aircraft – on 27 August 1941 by a Lockheed Hudson from RAF Coastal Command was important for determining the fighting capacity of U-boats, although her crew destroyed the Enigma and cipher information. The boat was towed to port and commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Graph.

Out of some 15 captures of Naval Enigma material during World War II, all but two were by the British – the Royal Canadian Navy captured U-774, and the U.S. Navy seized U-505 in June 1944. By this time the Allies were already reading Naval Enigma routinely.

The film caused irritation and anger in Britain. At Prime Minister's Questions, Tony Blair agreed with questioner Brian Jenkins MP that the film was "an affront" to British sailors.^[5] In response to a letter from Paul Truswell, MP for the Pudsey constituency (which includes Horsforth, a town proud of its connection with HMS Aubretia), U.S. president Bill Clinton wrote assuring that the film's plot was only a work of fiction.^[6]

A written acknowledgment does appear on-screen that the Royal Navy captured the first, and subsequently the vast majority, of the Naval Enigma devices.^[7]

David Balme, the British Naval officer who led the boarding party aboard the U-110, called U-571, "a great film"^[7] and said that the movie would not have been financially viable without being Americanised. The film's producers did not agree to his request for a message making it clear that the film was a work of fiction, but agreed to include a message at the film's end mentioning the Royal Navy's role in the capture of U-110.^[6]

In 2006, screenwriter David Ayer admitted that U-571 distorted history and stated that he would not do it again.^[8] Ayer told BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme that he "did not feel good" about suggesting Americans captured the Naval Enigma cipher rather than the British:^[8]

Falsely negative portrayal of U-boat sailors[link]

The movie portrays a scene in which the U-boat sailors kill the Allied merchant crewmen who have survived their ship's sinking, in compliance with naval policy and so that the survivors do not report the U-boat position. Although German U-boat crews were under War Order No. 154 not to rescue survivors, which was also the policy of the Allies, out of several thousand sinkings of merchant ships in World War II, there is only one documented case of a U-boat crew deliberately attacking the ship's survivors: that of the U-852, whose crew attacked survivors of the Greek ship Peleus.^[9]

General inaccuracies[link]

The real U-571, captained by Oberleutnant zur See Gustav Lüssow, was lost with all hands on 28 January 1944, west of Ireland.^[10] She was hit by depth charges, dropped from a Short Sunderland Mk III flying boat, EK577, callsign "D for Dog", belonging to No. 461 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). The aircraft's commander, Flt Lt Richard Lucas, reported that most of the U-boat's 52 crew managed to abandon ship, but all died from hypothermia. "D for Dog", which was crewed partly by Royal Air Force (RAF) personnel, was based at RAF Pembroke Dock, in Wales.

The presence of the German destroyer in the Atlantic Ocean is a likely inaccuracy, as most of the surface fleet of the Kriegsmarine never ventured that far west, and none did so from 1942 onwards. The few exceptions were their capital ships, such as the Admiral Graf Spee, Scharnhorst, and Bismarck.^[11]

Additionally the Messerschmitt 109 that buzzes the submarine prior to her encounter with the destroyer is referred to as a "long range reconnaisance" aircraft. In reality the 109 was a relatively short range aircraft not typically deployed on such duties.

During the destroyer's depth charge attack more than 80 depth charges are detonated in the film, despite the fact that German destroyers rarely carried more than 30 depth charges during the war.^[12]

Although the American submariners crewing U-571 successfully sink the German resupply U-boat in an undersea battle, in reality this was extremely difficult for any World War II submarine to achieve. The only instance of a submerged submarine sinking another submerged vessel was in February 1945 when HMS Venturer sank the U-864 with torpedoes.^[13]

Additionally German Type XIV supply U-boats didn't have torpedo tubes and thus could not have attacked S-33.^[14]

The real S-33 was stationed in the Pacific Ocean from June 1942 till the end of the war. She was not sunk during World War II and was sold for scrap in 1946.^[15] The S-26 did not sink in a test dive, instead sinking in a collision with a patrol combatant, PC-460, in January 1942.^[15]

Deleted scenes[link]

The movie was originally (in the USA) rated "R" due to a scene where Lt. Pete Emmett (Jon Bon Jovi) is decapitated by flying debris. To get a "PG-13", the shot was redone with Emmett this time knocked overboard by flying debris. This left many audience members not knowing what happened to his character. A death scene was also filmed for Maj. Matthew Coonan (David Keith), but the effect did not work well so it was cut from the film.^[16]

Awards and nominations[link]

The film was nominated for two awards at the 73rd Academy Awards: Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing (Steve Maslow, Gregg Landaker, Rick Kline and Ivan Sharrock). It won the sound editing award.^[17]

Trivia[link]

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (December 2011)

In the beginning of the movie - which shows the German submarine attacking a convoy - all the dialogue is in German. Some lines were taken out of the movie Das Boot, spoken by Jürgen Prochnow, and are even delivered using the very same intonation. Example: "Tja meine Herren, dem haben wir das Rückgrat gebrochen" - "Well, Gentlemen, we broke her (the ship's) backbone there".^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

• Das Boot
• Submarine films
• History of cryptology — World War II cryptology
• First seizure of Enigma
• Enigma (2001 film)

Notes and references[link]

• David Kahn, Seizing the Enigma: the Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
• Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma: the Battle for the Code, Phoenix, 2001.

External links[link]

• U-571 at the Internet Movie Database
• U-571 (film) at AllRovi
• U-571 (film) at the TCM Movie Database
• U-571 at Rotten Tomatoes
• U-571 at Box Office Mojo
• Independent Movie Review by www.enigmahistory.org
• Imperial War Museum description of the capture of the Enigma machine
• American Histories - How The War Wasn't Won by Ben Falk, BBC
• U-571: You give historical films a bad name by Alex von Tunzelmann, Guardian
• Virtual Enigma Machine

U571 or U-571 may refer to:

• German submarine U-571, a German submarine during World War II
• U-571 (film), a fictional war film, about a submarine, released in 2000

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title formed as a letter-number combination. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Harvey Keitel
Keitel at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival
Born	(1939-05-13) May 13, 1939 (age 73) Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1967–present
Spouse	Daphna Kastner (2001–present)
Partner	Lorraine Bracco (1982–1993)

Harvey Keitel (born May 13, 1939) is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma & Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and From Dusk Till Dawn, Jane Campion's The Piano, Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, James Mangold's Cop Land, Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing, and Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysses' Gaze. He recently played Detective Lieutenant Gene Hunt on the American adaptation of Life on Mars.

Early life[link]

Keitel (/kaɪˈtɛl/ ky-TEL) was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the son of Miriam (née Klein) and Harry Keitel, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Poland.^[1] His parents owned and ran a luncheonette and his father also worked as a hat maker.

Keitel grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn,^[2] with his sister, Renee, and brother, Jerry. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School. At the age of sixteen, he decided to join the United States Marine Corps,^[2] a decision that took him to Lebanon, during Operation Blue Bat. After his return to the United States, he was a court reporter for several years and was able to support himself before beginning his acting career. ^[2]

Career[link]

Keitel in November 2009

Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio, eventually landing roles in some Off-Broadway productions.^[2] During this time, Keitel auditioned for filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a part in Scorsese's student production, Who's That Knocking at My Door.^[2] Since then, Scorsese and Keitel have worked together on several projects.^[2] Keitel had the starring role in Scorsese's Mean Streets, which also proved to be Robert De Niro's breakthrough film. He later appeared with De Niro in Taxi Driver, playing the role of Jodie Foster's pimp.^[2]

Cast as Captain Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Keitel was involved with the first week of principal photography in the Philippines. Coppola was not happy with Keitel's take on Willard, stating that the actor "found it difficult to play him a passive onlooker".^[3] After viewing the first week's footage, Coppola made the difficult decision to replace Keitel with a casting session favorite, Martin Sheen.

Keitel drifted into obscurity through most of the 1980s.^[2] He continued to do work on both stage and screen, but usually in the stereotypical role of a thug. In 1987 he again worked with Scorsese as Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ. Ridley Scott cast Keitel as the sympathetic policeman in Thelma & Louise in 1991. That same year, he landed a role in Bugsy, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, then played another mobster, Deloris's gangster ex-boyfriend Vince LaRocca in Sister Act several months later. Keitel starred in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (which he co-produced) in 1992,^[2] where his performance as "Mr. White" took his career to a different level. Since then, Keitel has chosen his roles with care, seeking to change his image and show off a broader acting range.^[2] One of those roles was the title character in Bad Lieutenant, about a self-loathing, drug- addicted police lieutenant trying to redeem himself.^[2] He also appeared in the movie The Piano in 1993,^[2] and played an efficient clean-up expert Winston "The Wolf" Wolfe in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. In 1996 he did a major role in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's film, From Dusk Till Dawn, and in 1997 he starred in the crime drama Cop Land, which also starred Sylvester Stallone, Ray Liotta, and Robert De Niro.

Keitel with singer Harry Belafonte in New York, April 2011

His later roles include the fatherly Satan in Little Nicky, a wise Navy man in U-571, diligent F.B.I. Special agent Sadusky in National Treasure, and the latter's sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets. In 1999, Keitel was replaced by Sydney Pollack on the set of Eyes Wide Shut, due to shooting conflicts. He has shown a willingness to help other start-up filmmakers by appearing in their first feature film. He did this not only for Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, but also Ridley Scott (The Duellists), Paul Schrader (Blue Collar), James Toback (Fingers), and Tony Bui (Three Seasons).

In 2002, at the Moscow International Film Festival, Keitel was honored with the Stanislavsky Award for the outstanding achievement in the career of acting and devotion to the principles of Stanislavsky's school.

He also appeared in the Steinlager Pure commercials in New Zealand in 2007. Unlike many American male actors, Keitel has appeared nude in several films, including full frontal nudity in Bad Lieutenant and The Piano.

In January 2008, Keitel played Jerry Springer in the New York City premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall.^[2] In 2008, Keitel was cast in the role of Detective Gene Hunt in ABC's short-lived US cover version of the successful English time-travel police drama series Life on Mars.^[4]

In June 2009, he made a cameo appearance in the Jay-Z video for "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)", a nod to his Brooklyn origins.

Personal life[link]

Keitel with wife Daphna Kastner in 2010

Keitel was formerly in a long-term relationship with actress Lorraine Bracco. He married actress Daphna Kastner in 2001. Keitel is the father of three children: daughter Stella (born 1985) from his relationship with Bracco; son Hudson (born 2001) from his relationship with Lisa Karmazin; and son Roman (born 2004) from his marriage to Kastner. He is godfather of close friend Michael Madsen's son Max.

Recurring directors[link]

Keitel has worked with a wide list of reputable directors. Along his 40 year long career, Keitel has established a solid collaboration with some directors such as: Martin Scorsese (5), Paul Auster (3), Quentin Tarantino (3), James Toback (3), Jane Campion (2), Abel Ferrara (2), Brad Mirman (2), Manuel Pradal (2), Alan Rudolph (2), Ridley Scott (2), Jon Turteltaub (2), and Wayne Wang (2). Moreover, Keitel has worked for other acclaimed directors such as: Theodoros Angelopoulos, Dario Argento, Luc Besson, Fernando Colomo, Brian De Palma, Stanley Donen, Philip Kaufman, Spike Lee, Barry Levinson, Jack Nicholson, Robert Rodriguez, George A. Romero, Paul Schrader, Ettore Scola, Luis Sepúlveda and Bertrand Tavernier; and for TV productions with Stephen Frears, Clint Eastwood, and Joel Schumacher.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

	Biography portal
	United States Marine Corps portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Harvey Keitel

• Harvey Keitel at the Internet Movie Database
• Harvey Keitel at the Internet Broadway Database
• Harvey Keitel at the Internet Off-Broadway Database

Persondata
Name	Keitel, Harvey
Alternative names	Keitel, Harvey Johannes
Short description	Academy Award-nominated American actor
Date of birth	May 13, 1939
Place of birth	Brooklyn, New York, United States
Date of death
Place of death