Early today TCM is showing Titanic from 1953 starring Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb, and today’s star of the day Thelma Ritter as Maude Young, a fictionalized version of Molly Brown. The tragic events of the night of April 14, 1912 have inspired many a filmmaker to add their own touch to the story. It’s appeared in theatrical cameos (Calvalcade, Time Bandits), television movies (S.O.S. Titanic), television miniseries (the 2012 Titanic), German propaganda (the 1943 Nazi produced Titanic), computer games (Titanic: Adventure Out of Time), fictionalized spy thrillers (the none too thrilling Raise the Titanic) and, of course, full-blown Hollywood period productions. It’s that last category I’ll deal with for this post.
Of all the Titanic movies, the three most prominent versions are 1953′s Titanic, 1958′s A Night to Remember, and 1997′s Titanic, directed by Jean Negulesco, Roy Ward Baker, and James Cameron respectively. Since this is Thelma Ritter’s day, let’s start with the 1953 version first.
Jean Negulesco’s Titanic uses a storytelling device that would become cliche for “based on a true story” dramas for years to come. That is, it took an actual historical event, the sinking of the Titanic, and attached a melodrama to it in an attempt to keep the audience emotionally invested in the story. Does it work? As its own story, yes. As a more interesting take on the Titanic, no. The story of Julia Sturges (Stanwyck) taking her two children away from her husband, Richard (Webb), is intended to emotionally involve us but the problem is, given the short length of the movie and the nature of its historical backdrop, most viewers don’t connect to it because they know, going in, that’s it’s just there to get us to the catastrophic iceberg encounter. And since the son secretly leaves the lifeboat to find his father, who wasn’t supposed to be on the ship anyway, the viewer can’t help but think, “Wait, so if Richard didn’t pursue Julia, the son would have stayed on the lifeboat and lived. Nice going, Richard!” Seriously, I think that every time. That doesn’t mean the story itself, and of itself, doesn’t work, though. In fact, I’ve sometimes thought it’s not really so much a Titanic movie as a good Stanwyck movie set on the Titanic. When looked at that way, it makes more sense.
Honestly, the movie’s problems don’t emanate from the fictional story as much as from the handling of the historical story. Aside from the plentiful historical inaccuracies (but that’s NOT what this post is about; rather it’s simply whether the movie works or not on its own terms), is that the sinking isn’t too terribly well-staged. The model is well done but despite it’s size (it was about 25 feet long – click to see it here) doesn’t look much more than a small model in a pool which robs the film of the impact it could have had. And while the history doesn’t matter in a melodrama like this, the undeniable truth is that the history is simply more interesting. They didn’t realize what they had going in. That happened again over forty years later with James Cameron’s Titanic but only for part of it.
James Cameron also inserted a story that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the actual events of that fateful night. Mercifully, however, he dealt with the sinking of the ship for a good half of the movie and so while we may have had to suffer through the manufactured drama of Rose, Jack, and Cal, we also got a fairly good look at the sinking from a historical point of view, even if Cameron shamefully besmirched the name of First Officer Murdoch (he portrayed, falsely, Murdoch accepting a bribe, shooting a passenger, and then committing suicide, none of which was true. Cameron has never edited those portions out of the movie, even though doing so would eliminate mere seconds of screen time and restore the good name of William Murdoch).
The fact is, I like the parts of the movie dealing with Captain Smith, ship builder Thomas Andrews, and the struggle to bring order from chaos as the ship went down. I don’t like much else, however, and I’ve tried. I watched parts of it again recently (I say “parts” because, while I used to be able to sit through the whole thing – I even saw it in the theater – I can no longer do so and had to skip ahead early and often) and it most decidedly did not hold up for me. The dialogue is simply awful. The acting, from two actors I generally like, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, is quite lacking. DiCaprio never seems comfortable reading his lines and the odd stilted quality to them make it impossible to not feel sympathy for him. The modern day story is, and let me spell this one out, u-n-b-e-a-r-a-b-l-e. It is atrocious. Bill Paxton and company, including classic horror queen Gloria Stuart (Old Dark House, The Invisible Man), are given the unenviable task of filling the audience in on how the Titanic sank while trying to sound modern, hip, and cool (failure on all three counts) and ask Rose (Stuart) to relate her story while looking emotionally devastated (multiple failures again) and then, we have to hear Paxton tell us, tearfully (or as close to tearfully as he can do) that he never let Titanic in until now. Oh, dear me. Oh my.
Fortunately, as Yoda once said to the ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi, there is another. A Night to Remember does not make the mistake of assuming that some phony-baloney, fictionalized soap opera could ever outdo the real life drama of the night of April 14th, 1912. A Night to Remember is extraordinary simply because it has one purpose and one purpose only: dramatize the actual events. It’s main character, if there even is one, is 2nd Officer Lightoller (Kenneth More) and the plot is simply that the Titanic, grandest ship on earth, struck an iceberg and sunk. It’s one of the best films of the fifties and the best movie dealing with the Titanic disaster by a nautical mile. I watched it again recently, too, for about the tenth time and it held up perfectly. The attention to physical detail is on par with that of Cameron’s (though Cameron’s obviously had better effects) and the drama of Lightoller doing his best to save as many people as he can is captivating. I highly recommend it.
Today, however, you have the 1953 version and while I don’t hold it in the same high regard as A Night to Remember, I should make clear, it’s still plenty entertaining and certainly Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb, and Thelma Ritter can hold anyone’s attention for two hours. It’s a good first step into the waters of Titanic movies but the 1958 version is the one to remember.