Petersen, 81, directed ‘Das Boot’

Wolfgang Petersen, the German filmmaker whose Second World War submarine epic “Das Boot” propelled him into a blockbuster Hollywood career that included the films “In the Line of Fire,” “Air Force One” and “The Perfect Storm,” has died. He was 81.

Petersen died Friday at his home in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Brentwood after a battle with pancreatic cancer, said representative Michelle Bega.

Petersen, born in Emden, Germany, made two features before his 1982 breakthrough, “Das Boot.” Then the most expensive movie in German film history, the 149-minute “Das Boot” (the original cut ran 210 minutes) chronicled the intense claustrophobia of life aboard a doomed German U-boat during the Bat- tle of the Atlantic, with Jürgen Prochnow as the submarine’s commander. Heralded as an antiwar masterpiece, “Das Boot” was nominated for six Oscars, including for Petersen’s direction and his adaptation of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s best-selling 1973 novel.

To Petersen, who grew up on the northern coast of Germany, the sea long held his fascina- tion. He would return to it in the 2000 disaster film, “The Perfect Storm,” a true-life tale of a fishing boat lost at sea.

“Das Boot” launched Petersen as a filmmaker in Hollywood, where he became one of the top makers of action adventures of massive cataclysms that spanned war (2004’s “Troy,” with Brad Pitt), pandemic (the 1995 ebolavirus-inspired “Out- break”) and other ocean-set di- sasters (2006’s “Poseidon,” about the capsizing of an ocean liner).