An Appreciation

Rating: 10/10 (4 July 2002)

As a Maritime Historian by choice and having been formerly involved with the BIG ships, the traditional passenger liners for nearly 30 years, I found James Cameron's handling of, and mixing, fact and fiction extremely good and an excellent way to bring to people's notice what it must have been like on that cold night in 1912.
The idea of using a fictional story of two young people on the edge of adulthood to show the optimism then dispair was a master stroke. Whilst people may snear at the storyline with Rose and Jack, the fact that this was seamlessly integrated into the story was impressive. In my shipping life I have known bigger liners than Titanic, but in her day she was as big in the national conciousness as the RMS Queen Mary or RMS Queen Elizabeth was to those of the mid 1930-60s.
If one takes the view that the film, as named, was about the all too brief life of a great and majestic ship, and, as I believe Cameron himself said, putting two young people into the story as a love story and making them face the harsh realities of life should make people experience the horror of that night so long ago.
Full marks to all that were involved in and around the film, and remember those whose ship of dreams took them to their death and to the death of what should have been a great ship.(as indeed her sister ship Olympic proved for nearly 20 years.)