A Night to Remember (1958 film)

A Night to Remember is a 1958 British historical disaster film, directed by Roy Ward Baker. Its screenplay by Eric Ambler was based on the 1955 book by Walter Lord, depicting the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912, after it struck an iceberg. The film recounts the events of that night in a documentary-style fashion in considerable detail. It stars Kenneth More as the ship's Second Officer Charles Lightoller and features Michael Goodliffe, Laurence Naismith, Kenneth Griffith, David McCallum and Tucker McGuire.
A Night to Remember was filmed at Pinewood Studios from October 1957 to March 1958. The production team, supervised by producer William MacQuitty, used blueprints of the ship to create authentic sets, while Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall and ex-Cunard Commodore Harry Grattidge worked as technical advisors on the film. Its estimated budget of up to £600,000 made it the most expensive film ever made in Britain up to that time. The film's score was written by William Alwyn.
Released on 3 July 1958, A Night to Remember disappointed at the box office. However, it received widespread critical acclaim, with praise going to its sets, soundtrack, cinematography, historical accuracy and the performances; it won the 1959 "Samuel Goldwyn International Award" at the Golden Globe Awards. Among the many films about the Titanic, A Night to Remember is regarded highly by Titanic historians and survivors for its accuracy, despite its modest production values, compared with the 1997 film Titanic.
In 1912, the luxurious Titanic is the largest vessel afloat, widely believed to be unsinkable. On 10 April, Titanic sails from Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York. On 14 April, in the Atlantic, the ship receives a number of ice warnings from steamers, which are relayed to Captain Edward Smith, who orders a lookout. That evening, the SS Californian spots floating ice in the distance and tries to send a telegraph message to Titanic. On Titanic, first class passengers Sir Richard and Lady Richard, and second class passengers the Clarkes, a young newlywed couple, overhear the band, led by Wallace Hartley, play various songs, while steerage passengers Pat Murphy, Martin Gallagher, and James Farrel enjoy a party in third class, where Murphy becomes attracted to a young Polish girl and dances with her.
In the telegraph room, operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride are changing shifts. Phillips receives an ice warning but, when more messages arrive for him to send out, the warning is lost under them. On the Californian, field ice is spotted. The ship stops due to the risk, and a message is sent to Titanic. As the Californian is so close, the message is very loud, and Phillips angrily cuts it off. Second Officer Charles Lightoller gives charge of the bridge to First Officer William McMaster Murdoch. Titanic's passengers begin to settle in for the night, while gamblers Hoyle and Jay Yates stay up.
Suddenly, the vessel encounters an iceberg; despite Murdoch's evasive actions, she collides with it and begins to flood. Captain Smith sends for Thomas Andrews, the ship's builder, to inspect the damage; Andrews determines the ship has suffered a 300-foot gash opening five of her compartments to the ocean. Andrews calculates to Smith that the Titanic will sink in one and one half hours, and both realise that the ship lacks sufficient lifeboat capacity for all the passengers. Distress signals are sent out, but the Californian's wireless operator is off duty. 58 miles away, the RMS Carpathia's wireless operator receives the distress call and alerts Captain Arthur Rostron, who orders his ship to turn around. Unfortunately, it will take about four hours to reach the Titanic.
Seeing the Californian on the horizon 10 miles away, Titanic begins to signal the ship, but the Californian's crew fails to comprehend why a ship within sight is firing rockets, as Captain Smith orders Lightoller to start lowering the lifeboats, while the orchestra performs ragtime. In the Grand Staircase, passenger Robbie Lucas is told the truth by Andrews, so he gets his wife and children safely into a boat.
Murphy, Gallagher and Farrel help the Polish girl and her mother to the boat deck and get them to a boat. The Richards and Hoyle are admitted to a boat by Murdoch. Yates gives a female passenger a note to send to his sister. Ida and Isidor Straus refuse to be separated, inadvertently setting an example for Mrs Clarke, who decides to stay with her husband until Andrews advises them on how to survive.
As the crew struggles to hold back the third-class passengers, most first- and second-class passengers board lifeboats and row away. As Titanic lists, passengers begin to realise the danger; when the third-class passengers finally access the deck, chaos ensues. White Star Line Chairman J. Bruce Ismay steps into one of the last lifeboats. Passengers—among them Murphy, Gallagher and Farrel—retreat towards the stern as it rises into the air, while Lightoller and other able seamen struggle to free the two remaining collapsible lifeboats, as the Titanic's bow submerges. Captain Smith shouts through his megaphone, "Abandon ship! Every man to save himself!"
The Clarkes use a rope to get down the ship's side as the orchestra performs the hymn, "Nearer, My God, to Thee" and Smith returns to the bridge to go down with his ship. Titanic begins its final plunge; Lightoller and many others are swept off. Andrews awaits his end in the first-class smoking room, while a steward comforts a lost boy. Lucas looks out towards the lifeboats, knowing he will never see his family again, while the Clarkes are killed by a falling funnel. The passengers pray as the stricken liner finally sinks into the ocean.
In the freezing water, many die of hypothermia. Lucas's dead body floats by an overturned collapsible, as Yates, unwilling to overcrowd the boat, swims away to his death. Lightoller takes charge on the boat as Murphy and Gallagher make it aboard, although Farrel is lost. Chief Baker Charles Joughin, after having given up his lifeboat seat and turning to the bottle to ease his ailments, also climbs aboard. The men are saved by another boat. The Carpathia arrives to rescue the survivors, as Lightoller tells Colonel Archibald Gracie, "I don't think I'll ever feel sure again, about anything." On the ship, as a group prayer is held, Murphy and Gallagher stand with the Polish girl and her mother, while Mrs Farrel and Mrs Lucas and her children mourn the loss of their loved ones. Rostron tells Lightoller on deck as Carpathia sails by the floating wreckage from the Titanic that 705 were saved and 1,500 lost. The Carpathia receives a message from the Californian, which heard of the disaster, but Rostron informs them that "everything that was humanly possible has been done".
Cast notes:
The film is based on Walter Lord's book A Night to Remember (1955). In Ray Johnson's documentary The Making of 'A Night to Remember' (1993), Lord says that when he wrote his book, there was no mass interest in the Titanic, and he was the first writer in four decades to attempt a grand-scale history of the disaster, synthesising written sources and survivors' first-hand accounts. Lord dated the genesis of his interest in the subject to childhood. So did producer MacQuitty, who had vivid memories of, as a boy of six, watching the launch of the Titanic at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast on 31 May 1911 and seeing it depart on its maiden voyage the following April.
The book had previously been adapted as a live American TV production, screened by NBC and sponsored by Kraft Foods as part of the Kraft Television Theatre series on 28 March 1956. It was described as "the biggest, most lavish, most expensive thing of its kind" attempted up to that point, with 31 sets, 107 actors, 72 speaking parts, and 3,000 gallons of water and costing $95,000 ($816,000 at 2023 prices). George Roy Hill directed and Claude Rains narrated – a practice borrowed from radio dramas, which provided a template for many television dramas of the time. It took a similar approach to the book, lacking dominant characters and switching between a multiplicity of scenes. Rains's narration was used "to bridge the almost limitless number of sequences of life aboard the doomed liner", as a reviewer put it, and closed with his declaration that "never again has Man been so confident. An age had come to an end." The production was a major hit, attracting 28 million viewers, and greatly boosted the book's sales. It was rerun on kinescope on 2 May 1956, five weeks after its first broadcast.
The film adaptation came about after its eventual director, Roy Ward Baker, and its producer, Belfast-born William MacQuitty, both acquired copies of the book -– Baker from his favourite bookshop and MacQuitty from his wife – and decided to obtain the film rights. MacQuitty succeeded in raising finance from John Davis at the Rank Organisation, who in the late 1950s were expanding into bigger-budgeted filmmaking. The job of directing was assigned to Roy Baker, who was under contract to Rank, and Baker recommended Ambler be given the job of writing the screenplay. Lord was brought on board as a consultant.
In addition to basing the script – both in action and dialogue – on Lord's book, the filmmakers achieved nuanced performances and authentic atmosphere by consulting several actual Titanic survivors, who served as technical advisors. Among them were Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall and passengers Edith Russell and Lawrence Beesley. One day during shooting, Beesley famously gatecrashed the set. He infiltrated the set during the sinking scene, hoping to 'go down with the ship', but was discovered by the director, who ordered him off and vetoed this unscheduled appearance due to the actors' union rules. Thus, as Julian Barnes puts it, "for the second time in his life, Beesley left the Titanic just before it was due to go down". The filmmakers went out of their way to cast actors who resembled their real life counterparts. Charles Lightoller's widow Sylvia was also consulted during production, at one point visiting Pinewood Studios and meeting with Kenneth More, whom she introduced to her children on set. Sylvia commended More for his portrayal of her husband. When Helen Smith, Captain Smith's daughter, visited the set and met Laurence Naismith, she was overcome with emotion by his striking physical resemblance to her father.
There were numerous changes made to real events to increase the drama and appeal. For example, there is a limited involvement of American passengers (with the exception of the Strauses, Guggenheim, "the unsinkable" Molly Brown and Colonel Gracie), and several characters based on Americans are depicted as being British. When questioned as to why he did this, Roy Baker noted that "it was a British film made by British artists for a British audience". Also, the film diverges from both the book and the NBC TV adaptation in focusing on a central character, Second Officer Charles Lightoller, who performs actions that other crewmembers did and said during the actual disaster. Its conclusion reflects Lord's world-historical theme of a "world changed forever" with a fictional conversation between Lightoller and Colonel Archibald Gracie, sitting on a lifeboat. Lightoller declares that the disaster is "different ... Because we were so sure. Because even though it's happened, it's still unbelievable. I don't think I'll ever feel sure again. About anything." Rank wanted a star for the part, so it was offered to Kenneth More, who accepted. It was the first film that he made under a new contract with Rank to make seven films in five years for a fee of £40,000 per film (about £1,090,000 in 2023 terms, with a total of £6,600,000 for all seven).
Producer MacQuitty had originally contracted with Shaw, Savill & Albion Line to use its former flagship QSMV Dominion Monarch to shoot scenes, but the company pulled out of the production at the last minute, citing that they did not want to use one of their liners to recreate the Titanic sinking. However, according to MacQuitty, the Shaw Savill Line at the time was managed by Basil Sanderson, son of Harold Sanderson, the White Star Line's director in the US at the time of the sinking. Harold Sanderson would later succeed J. Bruce Ismay as president of the International Mercantile Marine Company, J.P. Morgan's shipping conglomerate that owned the White Star Line. This connection to White Star, according to MacQuitty, is what actually led the Shaw Savill Line to pull out. MacQuitty eventually got permission from Ship Breaking Industries in Faslane, Scotland to film scenes aboard RMS Asturias, a 1920s ocean liner that the company was scrapping. The liner's port side had been demolished, but its starboard was still intact, so MacQuitty got art students to paint the liner the White Star Line colours and used mirrors to recreate scenes that took place on the port side. 30 sets were constructed using the builders' original plans for Titanic.
Filming began on 15 October 1957 at Pinewood Studios, until 5 March 1958. When the set was being raised at an angle, the microphones picked up the sounds of the set creaking. The director kept them in the sinking scenes because they made the scenes more realistic. The last shot to be filmed was Sir Richard and Lady Richard's departure from their home past the waving orphans, according to Ray Johnson's documentary The Making of 'A Night to Remember' (1993).
Kenneth More recalled the production of the film in his autobiography, published 20 years later in 1978. There was no tank big enough at Pinewood Studios to film the survivors struggling to climb into lifeboats, so it was done in the open-air swimming bath at Ruislip Lido, at 2:00 on an icy November morning. When the extras refused to jump in, More realised he would have to set an example. He called out: "Come on!".
Four clips from the Nazi propaganda film Titanic (1943) were used in A Night to Remember; two of the ship sailing in calm waters during the day, and two of a flooding walkway in the engine room. As Brian Hawkins writes, the British came closest "to the Titanic truth in 1958 with their black-and-white production of Walter Lord's novel A Night to Remember, seamlessly incorporating sequences from director Herbert Selpin's 1943 (Nazi) Titanic without giving any screen credits for these incredible scenes". Selpin himself was arrested on the instruction of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels during production in early August 1942, for offering a negative opinion of the German military while directing this earlier Nazi-era film. He was then found dead in his prison cell.
The film is regarded as the most historically accurate Titanic film, except for not featuring the ship breaking in two. (There was still doubt about this fact when the book and film were produced. The accepted view at the time, and the result of the inquiries, was that she sank intact; it was only confirmed that she split after the wreck was found in 1985). Lightoller's widow Sylvia praised the film's historical accuracy in an interview with The Guardian, stating "The film is really the truth and has not been embroidered".
While some events are based on history, some of the characters and their storylines are fictional or dramatised; the characters of Mr Murphy, Mr Hoyle, and Jay Yates being composites of several men. Murphy, who leads the steerage girls to the lifeboat, is a composite of several Irish emigrants. Although there was, in fact, a Martin Gallagher travelling steerage aboard the Titanic, his actions in the film are fictionalised and although he survives the sinking, he actually died in real life. Hoyle, the gambler who gets into the lifeboat on the starboard side, is a composite of several such figures, men determined to save themselves at all costs. Robbie Lucas and Mrs Liz Lucas are composites of several married couples, notably Mr Lucian Smith and Mrs Eloise Hughes Smith. Lucas even says the words actually spoken by Lucien Smith to his wife: "I never expected to ask you to obey me, but this is one time you must". Mr Clarke and Mrs Clarke are composites of several honeymoon couples, notably John and Sarah Chapman, a pair of newlyweds from second class who died during the sinking. John Chapman's body was recovered by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett, and there were no mentions or indications that suggest that he had been killed by a falling funnel. The involvement of American passengers was either limited or left out (with the exception of the Strauses, Guggenheim, Margaret Brown and Colonel Gracie).
Several historical figures were renamed or went unnamed to avoid potential legal action. Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon and Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon are depicted as Sir Richard and Lady Richard (Lady Duff's secretary Miss Francatelli is completely omitted) and Bruce Ismay is referred to throughout only as "The Chairman".
The film omits several key historical figures, including John Jacob Astor IV, the wealthiest passenger aboard the Titanic, and Stoker Frederick Barrett, with Second Engineer Officer John Henry Hesketh's role being expanded to include duties and actions that were performed by Barrett and others.
In reality, the American gambler Jay Yates (played as British by the distinctive British actor Ralph Michael), travelling under the name of J.H. Rogers, was never on board, and the note he was said to have handed to a passenger was a hoax. Yates wrote the note in New York and then had a woman accomplice pose as a survivor and deliver the note to the newspaper. Yates did this in order to make the police think he was dead. They didn't fall for the ruse, and Yates was captured a couple of months later (he was wanted on federal charges connected with postal thefts). The fictional Yates says, "Good luck and God bless you", the words spoken by an unknown swimmer at Collapsible B, whom survivor fireman Walter Hurst thought was Captain Smith.
The first scene of A Night to Remember depicts the christening of the ship at its launch. However, the Titanic was never christened, as it was not the practice of the White Star Line to stage this sort of ceremony. This has come down in popular lore as one of the many contributing factors to the ship's "bad luck".
While describing the damage, Thomas Andrews states that a 300-foot long gash had been opened in the hull. While the damage indeed covered an area of 300 feet, it was due to a series of smaller incisions along the hull plates (the largest around 40 feet), rather than a single, continuous tear. If Titanic suffered this kind of damage, she would have sunk, likely capsizing, within minutes instead of nearly 3 hours.
The painting in the first class smoking room is incorrectly shown as depicting the entrance to New York Harbor, while it actually depicted the entrance to Plymouth Sound, which Titanic had been expected to visit on her return voyage (there was a painting of New York Harbor at this spot on RMS Olympic, a sister ship of Titanic). This was an error made by Walter Lord in his research, which he acknowledged in the documentary The Making of A Night to Remember.
Stanley Lord was upset over his negative portrayal; he was depicted wearing pyjamas and as being asleep in his cabin while the Titanic was sinking. In fact, Lord was sleeping in the chart room wearing his uniform.
The film gives the impression second officer Lightoller had launched almost every single lifeboat. Actions that were actually performed by others were attributed to Lightoller. Lightoller is also depicted as nearly being crushed by the fourth funnel falling in the ship's last moments; it was actually the first funnel that fell near him.
Murphy and Gallagher make it to the overturned Collapsible B with a child in their arms, which they pass to Lightoller. Lightoller finds the child is dead and puts it back in the water. This was based on accounts that Captain Smith reportedly carried a child to the boat, which later died; along with these accounts being of dubious nature, Lightoller never reported receiving a child on Collapsible B.
The world premiere was on 3 July 1958, at the Odeon Leicester Square. Boxhall and Third Officer Herbert Pitman attended the premier along with survivor Walter Nichols. Titanic survivor Elizabeth Dowdell attended the American premiere in New York on Tuesday 16 December 1958.
After its December 1958 US premiere, Bosley Crowther called the film a "tense, exciting and supremely awesome drama...[that] puts the story of the great disaster in simple human terms and yet brings it all into a drama of monumental unity and scope"; according to Crowther:
The film won numerous awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best English-Language Foreign Film, and received high praise from reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The film was one of the twenty most popular films of the year in Britain according to Motion Picture Herald, but it was only a modest commercial success due to the size of its original budget and its relative underperformance at the American box office.
Kinematograph Weekly listed it as being "in the money" at the British box office in 1958.
By 2001, it had still not made a profit, in part because it was issued as part of a slate of ten films and all of its profits were cross-collateralised.
According to Professor Paul Heyer, the film helped to spark the wave of disaster films that included The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). Heyer comments that it "still stands as the definitive cinematic telling of the story and the prototype and finest example of the disaster-film genre". On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a score of 100% based on twenty-two critical reviews and a 90% value according to audience responses. It is considered "the best Titanic film before Titanic (1997)", "the most accurate of all Titanic films", and "the definitive Titanic tale", especially for its social realism, reflecting, in the words of one critic, "the overwhelming historical evidence that the class rigidity of 1912, for all its defects, produced a genuine sense of behavioural obligation on the Titanic among rich and poor alike; that the greatest number of people aboard faced death or hardship with a stoic and selfless grace that the world has wondered at for most of this century". Film critic Barry Norman called it "more moving" than Titanic (1997). Andrew Collins of Empire gave the film five out of five, writing that "this is a landmark in British cinema, as good today as it's always been". Catherine Shoard of The Guardian gave the film four out of five, saying: "A restrained, nearly austere ensemble drama that manages to intertwine a dozen different stories without tripping up on any of them, it relies on real-life survivor testimony for almost every line and incident, to immensely moving and dignified effect." Similarly, John Patterson praised the film for "the crispness and intelligence of its writing and direction".Filmink argued this was the best film Kenneth More ever starred in.
Titanic experts Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt describe the film as a huge step forward in terms of correctness compared to previous films about the disaster.
A Night to Remember was released by the Criterion Collection on DVD in May 1998. Initial versions of the DVD omitted Lightoller finding the child to be dead and putting it in the water. A new DVD and a high-definition Blu-ray edition were released on 27 March 2012 to commemorate the centennial of the sinking.