Production: Vandor Film / Bavaria Film

Director: Kurt Bernhardt

Starring: Paul Hartmann, Olly von Flint, Attila Horbiger, Gustaf Grundgens, Elga Brink

Screenwriter: Kurt Bernhardt, Reinhart Steinbicker

Based on Der Tunnel (1913) by Bernhard Kellermann

80 (73) minutes; B/W

This ambitious German film tells of a near-future attempt by German engineers, imbued with nationalist fervor, to drill a tunnel under the Atlantic. A speculator attempts to sabotage the project. Technically, the film has a high standard, with convincing sets and special effects; the various disasters that occur - cave-ins, floods and volcanic eruptions - are realistically staged (too realistically, perhaps, as the film's associate producer was killed during the shooting of one such sequence). A French-language version was made simultaneously, starring Jean Gabin and Madeleine Renaud. The slightly inferior UK remake was The Tunnel (1935).