At this moment is a 24 year anniversary. Pending my own story being launched on 10th April, I wanted to tell you how I felt leaving the cinema after the James Cameron film – which I was now doing in 1998 – and my relationship with it. This is as long as the movie and the ship, and it will mention other screen Titanic outings.
My Titanic interest then was toddler aged; but I had not seen the hype of Cameron’s movie, did not know who Jim Cameron is, and had only a passing knowledge of his previous work. So whereas I bustled with anticipation like the other hundreds in Norwich’s Prince of Wales Road ABC, my reaction was soon another sort of agitation. It was so great that I went home and despite the late hour and my need to rise early, scrawled out my ire in blue felt tip.
It seems there are two cinematic poles among Titanic fans. Although like me, the 1958 docudrama was the first inspiration for James Cameron, A Night to Remember draws different adherents than those who like his blockbuster. In many ways, they are diametrically opposed – one British, in black and white, more of a series of vignettes, without a strong personal drama at the core. The one person we focus on is a real British officer – Lightoller. It is based on a book by Walter Lord of the US, dramatised by an Irishman who actually saw the Titanic. Cameron’s colour version was a huge budget Hollywood film, filled with effects, made by a Canadian, with an imagined central love story between American teenagers. As I write that, I squirm. I squirm more to record that not only do these pair spit, make out in a car, but there are gun shots and chases, axe wielding and handcuff chopping, bookended by a modern diamond hunter subplot. Cameron tried to fit as many genres and movie motifs as he could around this period drama and disaster – underwater exploration (he seems to like to launch in both directions – up and down), fights, chases, guns, silly humour, nudity, romance, adventure, and then self-conscious cultural references and international class divisions set against what he claimed was historically accurate.
So, in the passionate world of Titanic fans, we have those who claim that A Night To Remember is a truthful film (it isn’t, and it too has an agenda), but it is strangely dispassionate – the classically British response in all ways. James Cameron aims for another kind of classic, harking back to the epics such as Gone With The Wind and Doctor Zhivago, pulling their older audience back to the cinema whilst inciting teenagers into a frenzy.
Cameron’s fan base are drawn into the love story. I will say this, that one of its more successful aspects is that it is the story of one woman and the rest of the cast fan around her. I prefer this to the ensembles of all the other Titanic dramas I know, save the 1953 one with Barbara Stanwyck. I found the ensembles harder to relate to and often forget who I’ve been watching in the 1979 and 2012 versions.
It is odd to me that on one of the best known Titanic forums, some said that they liked Cameron’s film but that they fast forwarded the Jack and Rose parts. To enjoy the film despite that story was a surprise to me – until I realised that I did too.
There are many, those who are interested in the Titanic and those who are not, who hate this film. Despite its long theatrical release when it was new, ten years on, when I wanted to show it as part of my course, History In Film, the cinema didn’t want to give up a screen for three hours to this film. They assumed that their local audience no longer wanted to watch this.
My own view has veered and undulated. I have my own personal story with this film. It took me some years to understand.
I hope that what I say comes from knowledge, so when I am critical, I am speaking as someone who has seen this film many, many times, has watched the extras, read the companion volumes, even gone to exhibitions. And has seen all the English language Titanic films from 1950 (and some others), and written my own. Although I hope I am also knowledgeable about the ship from other sources, my critique isn’t going to be about matching Cameron’s behemoth to what I believe to be true, but as a film.
My initial feelings about this film were the catalyst for my penning The Jury In My Mind: an anti-inspiration. I thought: there is another kind of story here to tell.
Helping me keep in the zone for writing it was one of the main reasons that I have watched the Cameroon movie so often and obtained artefacts. I have also written an MA essay on it, which I’ll be posting anon.
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That the special edition DVD is in two discs is significant, for it is a film of two halves and many components, as this will be.
I hated the Brock part of the story at first. I thought: Why are we with this present day modern bounty hunter and his uncouth friends, and not on an Edwardian liner? (It was actually a George on the throne in 1912, but Georgian refers to the 18th century). Yes, I was glad to see the wreck and draw a link between now and then. I believe this is why Cameron made his movie – and it is a movie, not a film – when he did, because he knew that old Rose wouldn’t be possible by the time of the centenary. (He cashed in again then anyway – I’m ashamed that I let him do so at my expense.)
Old Rose – Gloria Stuart – is the best thing about this film. I really watch it for her. She reminds me a bit of my grandma. This is the only film that links modern times to 1912 and allows us to talk to a contemporary survivor. I was happy with that aspect, but the choice of framing device was terrible. How could anyone treat the Titanic like a treasure chest to raid? I couldn’t see that Brock’s journey was necessary. I am attracted of the ship, but the most important part of the Titanic has always been the drama, the human aspect. How could anyone miss that?
Well, now I know that there are such bounty hunters, and that I wonder if some Titanoraks are more interested in the technical detail of the ship and the mystery of its sinking. There seem to be passionate – that word again – guardians of what passes for historical fact. But as Cameron says, there are differing accounts; and I stand by his right to have the freedom to invent as a writer, as I will.
Perhaps the place this freedom was most controversial was regarding First Officer Murdoch, who having shot at passengers to prevent them panicking and taking up places on the lifeboats, then shoots himself. I had thought this was Cameron using artistic licence; on the special edition DVD, Cameron admits he was insensitive and was heavily criticised, not least by Murdoch’s relatives. But the miniseries of the previous year, which parallels Cameron in many ways, also showed this. A brief search reveals that there were several witnesses to Murdoch doing so. Should the beliefs of relatives be able to steer public memory and truth?
Murdoch’s portrayal is interesting because it draws us into the themes I was just dipping into – money and honour.
For a huge budget movie (that in my definition is an expensive, populist story on celluloid) which made a huge amount of money, Cameron’s Titanic has an odd message. I was intrigued to read that some are claiming he was involved in his namesake’s mind control program. I will only say that I can see how much the media moulds us, and how the vastly wealthy and influential movie making machine – especially Hollywood – could be used as a form of population control. But the theory continues that Jim Cameron breaks free with this movie.
He certainly knows how to make an audience feel, and I know some of us want to resist that, especially when it is done so blatantly – the industry would call this exposition and ‘on the nose’, as it is here. Feel scared, now sad; now, a little sensuous; now have your heart swell with pride and then beat with anxiety. If you’ve heard a film from another room, it can be surprising how thumping the sound is, and how often strident noise tries to stop you from feeling calm and disengaged.
So although Cameron is manipulating us, the overtness is perhaps also deliberate. The 1997 Titanic could be called a self reflexive film – Cameron compares his projects to being on the modern explorer ship Keldish which he features, often being on phones trying to placate funders for going over budget. Perhaps there is a hint to confession of shared obsession of such aquatic ventures.
But I think Cameron wants to say more than that.
His own DVDs won’t reveal this, understandably, but if he is a mouthpiece and master as some claim, this is an odd film for him to have made. Because the man who spent $200m making this, with even some shots costing six figures, doesn’t seem to care about money. He has as his framing device a man who learns to lose his obsession with possessions and wealth. He learns to let in the human tragedy and put emotions and people first – and it’s a great release. There’s a slightly different ending where Brock sees Rose with the necklace, and she lets him hold it before lecturing him on ‘making it count’ rather than bean counting, then throwing it in the sea. And although his business partners are livid, Brock laughs in epiphany. And now he’s free to date the granddaughter, played by Suzi Amis – who in real life married Cameron. The point here is that the self and materially obsessed bounty hunter is now open to love.
In the 1912 story, the sort of villains are also obsessed by money and status. J. Bruce Ismay, the real life chairman of White Star Line, has often been created as the man who should have not survived the disaster he is responsible for (unlike Cameron’s Murdoch, who took his own life for his own failures – a strange discharge of duty and reclamation of honour). Jonathan Hyde’s Bruce is obsessed with size, strength, luxury, and headlines. He is lampooned by our heroine, and the people we’re meant to like laugh at her Freud quip; the others are nonplussed or offended. Rose’s mother Ruth is hiding ‘bad debts with a good name’. She fears having to work for a living, like the near 900 staff and 1000 third and second class passengers – and many viewers. Ruth and her ilk care about being seen – the right clothes, manners, behaviour, and thus being allowed into the right circles. There must be much of that in the film industry. Cameron must also understand the importance of name – although he has rather tagged his to this version of the 1912 sinking. I do point out that at least four other dramas on the subject simply call themselves Titanic too, which isn’t helpful for differentiation.
Cal Hockley and his valet Lovejoy are comparable to the Tim Curry character in the miniseries of the previous year. Their thirst for greed, power and control is their ultimate comeuppance. We see the fate of many who do not ‘deserve’ death, people we have come to care about – Irish immigrant Tommy Ryan is shot; Leo’s friend Fabrizio is hit by a falling funnel; and we see many families and individuals ravished by water. Cal, unlike Tim’s thieving steward, is allowed to live a little longer, but he takes his own life during the Depression: it is the loss of money that loses him the will to live. And that his children fight over his estate like aggressive vultures shows not only a biblical Jezebel outcome, but that his materialism over compassion has passed on to his children. Their father’s value to them is what he is worth; and the siblings don’t seem inclined to share and work together, let alone love one another.
Before he too takes his own life with a pistol, Murdoch has redeemed himself (another pawnshop term turned biblical, as I thought about on Sunday) by throwing back the bribe at Cal and Lovejoy. One of the first things they did in the movie was to bribe Titanic crew members into doing what they wanted: they were late to board, and now to disembark. In both cases, they expected special treatment because of their riches. On Weds 10th, they got it; on Mon 15th, it was literally thrown at them. Like everyone, after the sinking their clothes are in tatters, no matter the cut or the price of those garments. The safe is in the sea, along with all the wealth people took with them.
The sinking was a great leveller; and loss of everything is the same, whatever your station in life.
So Cameron bookends his two intertwined stories with the money obsessed reacting in opposite ways to wealth being thrown at them. One laughs; one cheats his way into a boat having had his wodge publicly chucked overboard; in the 96 miniseries, Tim Curry’s Simon Doonan dies with notes floating round him.
Cameron’s hero is a poor guy, who in 20 years has managed a full life of international travel, has created art which he has been able to share with the world – and one specimen survives, found after 84 years to be publicly displayed. But most importantly, its subject, to whom the picture is most meaningful, sees the drawing again. It isn’t sold for huge money, that we know. It’s not taken to a famous gallery.
His heroine wants to be poor, for she associates poverty with freedom and expression. As Jack rightly points out, being poor isn’t easy; but Rose isn’t interested in wealth and her long life is a bohemian one.
This message is received on a groundbreaking expensive ship – much like the movie itself – claiming itself to be longer and far more luxurious than all that went before, including the 96 mini series which I like as least as much, but took me over a decade to discover.
This Catherine Zeta Jones version has much in common with the next year’s blockbuster: an ensemble cast and imaginary people whose lives are changed by the disaster. The comedy Dodgeball quips that this sport shows your character. How you behave on a sinking class ridden ship also shows your character. With Catherine and Cameron, there are people who survive the disaster who are improved by it. Jamie is a professional thief who doesn’t win but steals his ticket to Titanic. You could see him as a kind of Leo character, whose first scene is also him running to/from a bar to the sound of whistles, except that this young man starts off as a kind of baddie. Leo’s Jack also steals – the coat of A L Ryerson – and is accused of being a diamond thief, but we’re meant to consider Jack as morally good. In Cameron, Jack is unchanging – his role is to change others. But Jamie is a crook who becomes one of our heroes, through love, the example of a Christian woman, and through the disaster he endures.
By the time I saw the 96 miniseries, I was aware of the messages in Cameron and a little more prepared for adding violence and thieving scams to a sinking horror. I think if I had seen this first, or at the same time as Cameron’s, I would have had several of the same criticisms of the Zeta version. I wonder how I would have reacted to Cameron’s if I had seen Zeta first.
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The big issue for me about Cameron is that…I’m not drawn into the Jack and Rose story. I know that some see this as a story of a special kind of love; I’ve even heard them called that extraordinary connection, twin flames. (I have seen it hilariously acted out with dolls by a twin flame teacher). For some years, I believed that Jack and Rose wouldn’t have lasted if he had survived. What was their love really based on? How can you make a meaningful connection in three days? I felt them to be very immature. I didn’t think that Jack would be so important to Rose so many decades later. I was appalled to hear Cameron say that in taking Jack’s name after the sinking, she had married him. (Not such a modern woman then, changing her name to her husband’s). I felt Leo at the time to be so boyish that the love scene was uncomfortable to watch. It felt like teen fodder, which it was, dangling to young sensibilities like Leo’s fringe in that first shot of him.
The Twin Flame theory is of interest, and the couple meet it in two ways: that they are culturally taboo and they meet in an unusual way. Twin Flames have differing definitions, but one is that they are a catalyst, a destiny fulfiller – not necessarily that you have a long relationship and a family with them. But this is not a spiritual story and I have heard many times that this deep connection needs brave and deep inner work; for some it can be a rollercoaster relationship. But Rose only poses near one; we don’t see the intense personal journey which twins and other spiritual soulmates speak of. As I wrote in my essay, I could see that Jack was an empowering male, who is unthreatening and unfazed; and despite the brevity of their liasion, that Jack and Rose do have a connection and spend time talking and getting to know each other beyond a superficial level; but I saw he and Rose as a close platonic relationship, more like Kate and Leo’s off screen friendship than eternal loves. I would have expected them to go like their next film together – Revolutionary Road, which I called A Lance To Puncture The American Dream.
I was more touched by other celluloid stories. David Warner was more interesting as real life teacher Lawrence Beesley in SOS Titanic in 1979, travelling in 2nd class alongside Kate and Allie’s Susan St James. Theirs was a gentle friendship, peppered with observations. I was interested in Jamie and his new Christian convert love interest Aase in 1996, and of Catherine Zeta Jones’s romance aboard the same production. Here was a will they/won’t they I really wondered about. They drew in real life Madeleine Astor, the young bride of wealthy JJ, who had challenged society to enter her marriage. This version uses the wireless to not only convey distress calls, but as a key part of the plot of the fictional characters. I was happier to observe grown ups Catherine opposite Peter Gallagher’s Wynn rather than puerile puppy love.
But the story which touched me most was that of the 1953 Barbara Stanwyck version. Cameron dismisses this, ironically, as too romantic! This film focusses on one family, and takes up a theme which interests me – estrangement. It was the most powerful of all, although I think that Britannic had an even greater effect. There Amanda Ryan proved herself capable of all that Kate Winslet was, and it seemed made of the same formula, wth action, romance, bravery and period drama against a real life disaster.
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This is my last disk now. I’m going to have a break before I turn over, and come back another day
Elspeth R - A skewed world view 