One of many movies and many stories from the ship of dreams, but still floats at the top of the list.

Rating: 10/10 (30 June 2020)

From "Cavalcade" in 1933 to "Titanic" in 1953, "A Night to Remember" in 1957 and "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" in 1964, the doom ship Titanic became a voyage of legendary, if tragic, proportions, and in the time leading up to its 85th year spawned a TV movie, a Broadway musical and this masterpiece which had audiences preparing to get tickets for it even before it was finished shooting. The reason is clear: James Cameron, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, the promise of effects like you'd never seen in any movie, and a Celine Dion song sung over the teaser trailer that would shoot her to super-stardom.
This is told in flashback through the experiences of the 102 year old survivor Rose Calvert (veteran 1930's movie actress Gloria Stuart, nearly forgotten until cast in this), shocked to see a drawing of herself in pristine condition. The nude drawing of her as a young woman wearing a valuable diamond is found in a safe pulled from the ancient wreckage and she immediately notifies the explorers who are searching for more Titanic artifacts and stories. Arriving with pretty much every single belonging of hers as well as her doting granddaughter, Stuart winces in tears with a sudden memory, but insists on going on with her story.
From there, we are swept back decades to the luxurious ship on its maiden and only voyage, and the huge vessel is grandly detailed and scaled as only an epic of this nature can scale it to be. Winslet is engaged to the vain Billy Zane, forced by her desperate mother (Frances Fisher) to tolerate him because they are broke and only have their "name" to benefit them. Fisher, obviously having married "up" , is ultra snobby to the neuvo riche Kathy Bates, and when she meets Jack Dawson (DiCaprio), she knows trouble lies ahead, and her demeanor is enough iceberg for any young lady. Dawson has saved young Roe from committing suicide in the icy waters below, and their first encounter turns into a love that you know can only end tragically.
With real life Titanic passengers Brown, John Jacob Astor and his wife Madeline (which would be a great subject for a separate movie), Benjamin Guggenheim and Isadore and Ida Strauss (another subject that would be a touching film), this mixes in these real life characters with the fictional ones. Zane and his humorless right hand man (David Warner) are great villains, with Zane absolutely vile as he psychotically tries to maintain his stolen dignity when he loses his trophy wife to be to a commoner. Watching Zane go psychotic as he stoops to the depths of evil makes you wish he wouldn't make it off, but the writers have an even better plan for him.
The film takes well over 90 minutes before the disaster sequences start, and from then on, it is a dizzying, sometimes headache inducing bit of tense moments as DiCaprio, locked to a metal pole to drowned for daring to love Winslet, struggles to be set free. It goes on a bit too long, but for first time viewers is truly frightening. There were buckets of tears being flowed at the Paramount Studios theater I saw this in prior to the release, and even after half a dozen or so viewings, it can still bring them on.
Certainly this is filled with cliches, but they are the type of cliches that have worked since the days of the silent movies. This was probably the first film since "Gone With the Wind" to be considered a guaranteed Oscar winner, sweeping a good majority of them when it came out. In many ways,, this has very old fashioned ideals and is thus an old fashioned style movie, one of the last of its kind that still worked ("The Artist" from 20 years later was a rare exception.) I can watch this once a year and still be emotionally turned to mush by it. That is what makes an instant classic.