Titanic Movies Galore!

April 14, 1912, 11:40 p.m., the Titanic hit an iceberg.

April 15, 1912, 2:20 a.m., the Titanic sank.

Every decade since . . . someone produces a movie about the Titanic.

Actually, that's putting it mildly. Movies about the Titanic are like chick-flick movies: so many and yet . . . how can they ever really end differently?

Here are a few from okay to good to bad to horrendous:

James Cameron's Titanic

David Warner as Billy Zane's Go-To-Guy

This is the movie that got me interested in the Titanic. I knew the Titanic sank, but I knew nothing else until I watched the movie when it came out in the theaters.

And I was hooked!

I didn't care for the love story, especially since most of the time, I was rooting for Billy Zane and David Warner, but I was enthralled by the sinking: was it accurate? not accurate? what really happened?

Answer: the ship is nearly 100% accurate.

Everything else is about -10% accurate (my problem isn't with the inaccuracies per se; very few "historical" films are entirely accurate; my problem is with glaring and boring inaccuracies that are also stupid and vaguely dishonest--see below).

So much so that Twentieth Century Fox ended up apologizing to the Town of Dalbeattie for slandering Commander Murdoch's good name: he did NOT shoot any 3rd class passengers (the few 3rd class passengers who found their way to the upper decks were not kept off the lifeboats); he certainly did NOT shoot himself (no guns were fired at all, only flares). Like a good British officer, he went down with the ship.

Still, the movie got me hooked on Titanic, so I suppose it did its job.

National Geographic Video: Secrets of the Titanic

This documentary tells the story of Bob Ballard et al. finding the Titanic. It is interesting but not quite as much fun as some of Ballard's other ocean treks, such as his exploration of the Lusitania. He is just so darn reverent about the Titanic! I don't know if I'm a realist, a pragmatist or just cold-blooded, but I have trouble thinking of a disintegrating hunk of metal on the bottom of the ocean floor as anything more or less than a disintegrating hunk of metal. Very cool. But not endowed with any more properties or meaning than its material self. (If I were to show reverence to the drowned passengers, I'd much rather go to Halifax than down in a submersible--but then I get terribly seasick on the open ocean.)

A Night to Remember (based on the book, which is currently listed on my Examiner.com post "Iceberg Ahead! Read All About the Titanic")

This movie is quite good but rather impersonal. There's about fifteen minutes of intro and then the ship starts sinking. It is the most accurate movie out there and does a great job showcasing the brave, efficient, and reliable Commander Lightoller.

Unfortunately, the movie's impersonal accuracy makes it more like a documentary than a story, yet a documentary without the benefit of Ballard's discovery: the ship broke in two as it sank. Interestingly enough, there were passengers who thought the ship might have broken in two as it went down; however, the bulk of the survivors thought it went down in one piece, so that's what the movie shows. See this very cool CGI rendering to see how the Titanic did go down.

S.O.S. Titanic

This TV movie provides the pleasant surprise of Helen Mirren. David Warner shows up (again or, rather, first since this movie came out several years before Cameron's) as Lawrence Beesley, a passenger. In fact, the movie is mostly told from the passengers' points of view which is good because the crews' points of view contain far more inaccuracies.

Unfortunately, the stories don't hold together. Eventually, well, the ship sinks, so the movie ends.

One neat thing this TV movie does do is remember the 2nd class passengers--which is a first. Ha Ha.

Titanic with Barbara Stanwyck

Stanwyck plays an American woman who marries a pompous English man, then decides (18 years later) that her children are growing up to be prigs; she has to take them back to Michigan or Minnesota (someplace cold) to restore them to wholesome goodness. Her husband, played by the marvelously urbane Clifton Webb, follows her on board.

Eventually, the ship sinks and the husband proves that he is a pukka sahib when he goes down with the ship belting "Nearer My God to Thee" with all the other male passengers.

I recently re-watched this movie. The first half is actually pretty good; the characters are inaccurate (a bunch of American college students in first class?!) but engaging. And the information about the missing binoculars and the iceberg telegrams is reasonably correct. Clifton Webb has great dialog and delivery; Barbara Stanwyck gives a stunning performance, and the marvelous Thelma Ritter (from Rear Window) shows up.

However, the second half of the movie is completely spoiled by the most annoying air raid siren noise in the world. Imagine listening to nails on blackboards for nearly 30 minutes. It makes the movie almost unbearable. And it's pointless. There was no air raid noise on the boat. Since the movie attempted verisimilitude with the telegrams, why give up the pretense for an unnecessary sound that makes the movie almost unwatchable? It's very odd. 

Titanic starring George C. Scott and Tim Curry

This TV movie is completely awful. It is better written than the other TV movie on this list: the passenger stories have continuity and the scenery is well-done. The accurate bits are REALLY accurate, indicating that there may have been an "expert" on the set who insisted on inserting accurate information at various places.

Still, it's horrible. The passengers are thoroughly unpleasant from two ex-lovers who take the opportunity to commit adultery to a villain/rapist played with excellent but unnecessary sleaziness by Tim Curry. I kept hoping Billy Zane would show up and start shooting people.

Feel free to share other Titanic movies and/or movies where Titanic makes an appearance--even if only for a scene!