Titanic
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Audrey Dalton, Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb, Robert Wagner, Thelma RitterBrand: Fox
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 98 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-09-02
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of Titanic
Movie Review: A Film To Remember
Summary: 5 Stars
With all due respect to the superbly "authenticised" James Cameron 1997 "Titanic", which is supposedly NOT a re-make of this film (in essence it isn't, but in spirit it is), the fact remains that---when all the glorious technicolor and super CGI
FX of "The Adventures of Jack & Rose" is set aside---THIS film, the Fox 1953 version, all its faults included, is the DEFINING
dramatic narrative of the sinking of the Titanic. "A Night to
Remember" is more technically accurate, and the Cameron version more replete with verisimiltude (aided by discoveries made by and after Robert Ballard's 1985 discovery of the wreck) but this one is imbued with a heart and soul that the others can only approximate. THIS is the version that is truly riveting to watch.
The performances in this film are excellent. Barbara Stanwyck , the Meryl Streep of the Golden Age of Cinema, is awesome as usual, and what can you say about Clifton ("Richard Sturges") Webb? This man, who looked like an "everyman" rather than a movie star, never did---in my estimation---turn in anything other than a top-knotch performance in anything he ever appeared in. And such a NATURAL actor, as well, working with the voice, the dialog, the body language, and the eyes...all in perfect sychronization. Webb was always right up there with Spencer Tracy in that respect.
Thelma Ritter as the Molly Brown clone, "Maude Young", turns in another of HER outstanding performances. Seems that "Maude" is a composite character. Molly Brown didn't play cards (in 1912 that was unladylike and Molly was reinventing herself into a "proper matron" of the time, so her card playing days were behind her in the Colorado Rockies). There was another woman on board ship who...SCANDALOUSLY...DID play bridge (she goes un-named here)...and this woman and the famous Ms. Brown were merged, scriptwise, into "Maude Young".
Robert Wagner's "Giff Rogers" is a memorable young "swain" for Audrey Dalton's "Annette". That legendary Wagner grin (unequaled in cinema until Tom Cruise showed up years later)
gets a full work-out in "Titanic", and Wagner's natural likeability makes it easily believable for Annette to fall for him. Wagner's "Giff" is someone you DON'T want to see die at all and the scriptwriters wisely chose to get him into a lifeboat. A balance is worked here, somewhat; "Norman" , the youngest Sturges,gets OUT of a lifeboat and dies, while "Giff" gets put INTO one and saved. Curiously, down through the years, one of the scenes that has most vividly stayed with me from this film is the scene where the young collegians and their girlfriends sing
college songs in the ship's salon while the captain listens in at the end of a long Sunday's work (not knowing he has less than two and a half hours to live). There's a strong poignancy to this scene...with Giff and Annette embracing lovingly to the singing of Cornell University's "Far Above Cayuga's Waters"---that make the collision with the iceberg a few minutes later all the more emotionally wrenching. On the one hand you are shown young people who...supposedly...have their whole lives before them....and looking forward to living those lives...and, on the other, you have an older man, the captain, looking---he thinks---to the last years of his own existence with retirement looming. It is a reflective time for all of them.
But none of these people , young or old, has a CLUE about what fate has momentarily in store for them.
Very good sequence, well conceptualized and well executed onscreen.
It might also be noted here that some film historians say the underwater "blooper" that occurs when the ship hits a spur of the iceberg was inadvertent. Supposedly Ray Kellogg's FX team SHOT the scene to show the spur gouging the STARBOARD side
of the ship model, but, later, when the film was being edited,
the collision clip got reversed in splicing and this made the
rend appear on the PORT side of the ship. This, so it is said, went un-noticed thereafter and was never corrected.
Oddest story about this film is that 2nd Officer Charles Lightoller is one of the major heroic characters in the movie, AS he was in the real-life sinking. Edmund Purdom plays Lightoller in the movie (and was he ever considered for James Bond in "Dr. No" nine years later?), but he NEVER gets a screen credit ANYWHERE. A major character and an actor who gets no credit whatsoever!!!!
The movie also leaves the viewer with the impression...since Lightoller is shown standing on the deck singing "Nearer My God to Thee" before the last boiler explosion and the final sinking...that Lightoller "went down with the ship". Not so. He in fact commanded one of the collapsible boats and was one of the officers shown searching in the water for survivors after the plunge in Cameron's movie version. More to the point, Lightoller's heroism at sea was not over after that night. Twenty eight years later, when British army divisions had their backs to the English Channel at the French port of Dunkirk and Winston Churchill called on the British people to "put every ship afloat that WILL float" to try and save them from the advancing Germans, one old sixty-foot "coaster" that made many a run through the night to save soldiers (160 of them by this boat by the official government count) was captained by one Charles H. Lightoller...an honorable and courageous sailor his entire life.
I would tell people wondering about this DVD to give it a shot if they are not familiar with it. Cameron's "Titanic" is good, and "A Night To Remember" is good, but this one...this one is sheer magic. Oh, and the end narration is voiced by Michael "Klaatu" Rennie, but he left Gort back home when he did these vocals. Some very interesting "special features" turn up on this disc as well, one of them, called "Beyond Titanic" quite an interesting piece of filmmaking in itself.
Overall, a good job by the folks at Fox video.
Summary of Titanic
Unhappily married and uncomfortable with life among the British upper crust, Julia Sturges takes her two children and boards the Titanic for America. Her husband Richard also arranges passage on the doomed luxury liner in order to let him have custody of their two children. Their problems soon seem minor when the ship hits an iceberg.Although it was never known for strict authenticity, the elegant 1953 production of Titanic holds just as much fascination as A Night to Remember and James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster. Its original screenplay deservedly won an Oscar® for its brilliant, dramatically involving creation of fictional characters--primarily a strained couple on the verge of divorce (Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck)--whose lives are forever altered on that fateful morning of April 15, 1912. Director Jean Negulesco focuses on this human drama, lending a personal touch to the luxury liner's fatal collision with an iceberg; if the scale-model disaster (complete with motorized miniature lifeboat rowers) looks quaint by modern special-effects standards, it still captures the emotional impact of Titanic's ultimate fate. While Titanic's sinking is inaccurately depicted (here the ship is damaged on the port side, and sinks in one piece), the Webb/Stanwyck relationship is handled with sophistication, style, and well-earned redemption. As would happen with Cameron's Titanic 44 years later, fiction proved a perfect vehicle for tragic factual history. --Jeff Shannon
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