Expensive wreck.

Rating: 5/10 (20 November 2005)

I've always enjoyed the British version, "A Night to Remember," based on Walter Lord's popular book. Yes, it's black and white, and a bit dated, but it's a straightforward telling of an awesome disaster.
The 1953 Hollywood version was a boring soap opera which was set aboard the Titanic simply so that some exciting and dramatic scenes could be tacked on at the end.
This one is more like the Hollywood version, only with a budget extended to the power of n. What a wreck! In some shots the ship doesn't seem the size of a man-made artifact at all. It seems impossibly huge, twenty leagues long. When the stern rises into the air and a figure falls from the fantail, the figure dwindles down toward the sea which seems a million miles away, and vanishes except for a minuscule white spot marking its splash point. The Titanic in this movie is colossal, stupendous, magnificent, gargantuan, or -- in a word -- titanic.
Before the f/x-resplendent climax we endure a romance between a lower-class handsome young man and a pretty, rich young lady. Now, few people realize this, but this is the first cinematic exploration of the theme of True Love overcoming Class Distinctions. Yes, it's true. Love conquers all and you can be sure that threepence or so will be no more than grist for its mill.
The film's full of stereotypical character and they're not worth going into. Well, one example -- the wealthy coward who tries to buy his way into a lifeboat. More examples. (There are so many.) Here are the two lovers clinging to the flagstaff as they plung into the see. "This is where we first met!", she says breathlessly. Earlier the couple find a brand new automobile in the cargo. He leaps into the driver's seat and beeps the ancient horn gaily, as in a Walt Disney movie. She sits elegantly in the coach. "Where to?" he asks. "Take me to the stars!," she chirps. There's a subplot involving a stolen jewel, straight out of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes movies. Basically this is a megabuck special effects extravaganza built around a B-movie script.
So much is lost. Like the irony of the California, sitting a few miles away, watching and misinterpreting the Titanic's distress rockets. The piling up of personal telegrams that kept the radio officer too busy to tend to the ice warnings.
The Titanic disaster was an interesting lesson in sociology though, factually speaking. Women and children only, right? Very gentlemanly. Very Edwardian.
And most of the women in first class passage were in fact saved. A far lesser proportion of women and kids in second class were saved, and only a handful from third class. You can actually MEASURE the relative impact of social class, gender, and age.
I don't want to make this film sound like the catastrophe that the Titanic's first voyage was. If you liked, say, "Pearl Harbor," you'll probably like this. It has pretty much the same structure.
There's something else that occurred to me while watching this though. When should we just leave the real Titanic alone? Some years ago, Telly Savalas was featured in a TV program called something like, "Treasures from the Titanic," in which he displayed and described items retrieved from the wreck and the surrounding sea floor. Savalas gave his best imitation of a carnival barker. You know, smiling, holding up a boot for the camera, pronouncing, "This was somebody's shoe. Imagine. Someone wearing this shoe as the stately liner made its final descent." The disarticulated carcass of the Titanic is a giant necropolis, filled with human remains and, who knows?, benthic ghosts. It's a burial ground of sorts. Should we really go searching among the bodies for watches and gold teeth?