The epic tale of Titanic still is grand now on DVD

Rating: 9/10 (1 September 1999)

James Cameron's record-breaking epic `Titanic' yesterday sailed into stores in the first DVD edition. Paramount has done an outstanding job of bringing the pictorial and auditory splendor of this film to its latest video incarnation. Watching this story unfold after about a year reminds one of what a cinematic masterpiece it is. Cameron has used many of the tried and true movie conventions to great effect. Slow motion enhances the lovers' flight through the engine rooms, using the glow of the furnaces to foreshadow the romantic scene to come and the ensuing tragic events. Instead of constantly bombarding the viewer with a blaring soundtrack, in the sequence just before the ship finally sinks, the director uses the spare violins playing `Near My God to Thee' as the Captain, the architect and other characters near their approaching doom. The sound design also includes some extremely effective use of surround sound as Rose (Kate Winslet) searches the bowels of the ship for Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio). The creaks of the near-collapsing hull of the ship envelop the viewer as does the sometimes soaring and sometimes-quiet musical score of composer, James Newton Howard.
Performances are impassioned all around. Kathy Bates is both humorous as she dresses DiCaprio and touching as she observes the foundering ship in its final moments. Francis Fisher portrays Rose's selfish mother in such a way that even though she is selfish and bigoted, you somehow understand her. When she laces up Roses corset and explains her reasons for desiring a marriage for wealth rather than love, she holds a mirror up to the society of class distinctions that would be disappearing with the sinking of the ship. Eric Braeden has too few scenes as John Jacob Astor. However, he is perfect in projecting that image of new American wealth and class. Surely many of his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. (In the excellent CD-ROM, `James Cameron's Titanic Explorer', Astor searches frantically for his dog as the sea engulfs the ship.) Victor Garber is most sympathetic as Titanic's architect. His final moments setting a clock as he awaits the inevitable is memorable. Bernard Hill is the Titanic's Captain Smith. Hill imbues this oft portrayed character with a subtlety so you sense his frustration as he realizes that his hands are tied as the ship sinks from under him. In a scene with a steerage class mother who asks him where she must go to a lifeboat he just barely shrugs and turns away from her. Jonathan Hyde is the steamship line's representative and a major heavy in his insistence that the ship break speed records and his quiet slinking on to a lifeboat to save his own neck. Incidentally, he lived the rest of his life in shame and seclusion.
Of course, the tale is carried along by the expert thesping of DiCaprio and Winslet as the star-crossed lovers. Their travels throughout the length and breadth of the magnificent expanse of ocean liner give the viewer a perfect sense of the luxury and size of Titanic. Although their characters are fictional they bring them gloriously to life, so that in the end one really cares whether they live or die.
One hopes that Cameron will, in the future, release a Collector's Deluxe edition including deleted scenes and a detailed `making of' feature giving the digital effects crew a chance to show how some of the fantastic special effects made everything seem so real. What made the effects so special is that they were unnoticeable. Cameron has made a film for the ages. It has earned all of the many awards it has won. Its place as a classic will only be realized with the passage of time. However, its records as the most popular American film to date will probably not be broken for many years to come.