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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1990s
    Movies - 1990s Movies - T 4 Mins Read

    Titanic (1997)

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    On 15 April 1912, five days after embarking on her maiden voyage, from England to New York, the unsinkable Titanic hit an iceberg and went down off the coast of Newfoundland, leaving 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers dead.

    At $200 million, James Cameron’s Titanic was the most expensive film ever made when it was released in 1997. Much of the budget for the movie – filmed over two gruelling years – was spent on a near-life-size replica of the doomed ship built in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, with reproductions of the original interiors down to the silverware, wallpaper, and carpeting.

    Instead of a straightforward action movie, writer-director Cameron created a surprisingly old-fashioned romance in which the strongest character was a young woman, proving that the magic of Hollywood was far from gone.

    titanic2

    Kate Winslet carried the film as Rose DeWitt Bukater, a 17-year-old upper-class American passenger who escapes her stuffy background and hated millionaire fiancé, Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) when she meets 20-year-old Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a penniless artist who wins his steerage ticket in a poker game.

    After a contrived meeting – Jack saves Rose from suicide – he borrows a tux intended for the son of Molly Brown (Kathy Bates is a bawdy delight in too brief a role) and charms Rose at the captain’s table with his philosophy about “making every day count”.

    Later, Rose boldly asks Jack to sketch her in the nude, wearing only a priceless blue diamond, a gift from Cal. Later still, in a Renault touring car tucked away in the ship’s hold, Jack trembles as he and Rose make love for the first time.

    titanic4

    When the iceberg hits, Jack has been falsely arrested for stealing the diamond, and Rose – rivalling the determination shown by Linda Hamilton in Cameron’s The Terminator (1984) – braves flood and fire to get him out of handcuffs.

    The movie opens and closes with present-day scenes of Bill Paxton as treasure hunter Brock Lovett using a submersible vehicle to dive two and a half miles beneath the Atlantic to the rusted ruins of the Titanic, trying to find the blue diamond that Rose wore the night Jack drew her.

    To that end, he enlists the aid of Rose, now 102-years-old and played, beautifully, by Gloria Stuart.

    titanic6

    Titanic skimps on details about the ship’s crew, the shortage of lifeboats and the distress signals that went unheeded, and the film is, at times, overblown (it drags at three-plus hours) and over-loud, yet there are undeniable moments of pure cinema.

    The film is strongest when its images are most harsh: the great ship cracking in two, the stern standing nearly straight up with passengers clinging to its sides before plunging into the sea; Molly Brown failing to persuade the passengers in her lifeboat to risk their lives to save others; and that final moonless night, the sea teeming with life-jacketed passengers – faces blue and throats raw from screaming for help before hypothermia reduces them to silent, floating corpses.

    Near the end, the prow of a lifeboat moves silently through the frozen dead – a detail that says more about the real-life tragedy than any other moment in the film.

    Rose DeWitt Bukater
    Kate Winslet
    Jack Dawson
    Leonardo DiCaprio
    Cal Hockley
    Billy Zane
    Molly Brown
    Kathy Bates
    Brock Lovett
    Bill Paxton
    Rose DeWitt Bukater, aged 102
    Gloria Stuart
    Ruth DeWitt Bukater
    Frances Fisher
    Captain Smith
    Bernard Hill
    Bruce Ismay
    Jonathan Hyde
    Fabrizio
    Danny Nucci
    Spicer Lovejoy
    David Warner
    Thomas Andrews
    Victor Garber
    Lizzy Calvert
    Suzy Amis
    Lewis Bodine
    Lewis Abernathy
    Bobby Buell
    Nicholas Cascone
    Anatoly Milkailavich
    Anatoly Sagalevitch
    Tommy Ryan
    Jason Barry
    First Officer Murdoch
    Ewan Stewart
    Fifth Officer Lowe
    Ioan Gruffudd
    Second Officer Lightoller
    Jonny Phillips
    Chief Officer Wilde
    Mark Lindsay Chapman
    Quartermaster Rowe
    Richard Graham
    Quartermaster Hichens
    Paul Brightwell
    John Jacob Astor
    Eric Braeden
    Madeleine Astor
    Charlotte Chatton
    Colonel Archibald Gracie
    Bernard Fox
    Benjamin Guggenheim
    Michael Ensign
    Madame Aubert
    Fannie Brett
    Helga Dahl
    Camilla Overbye Roos
    Trudy Bolt
    Amy Gaipa
    Sir Duff Gordon
    Martin Jarvis
    Lady Duff Gordon
    Rosalind Ayres
    Countess of Rothes
    Rochelle Rose
    Wallace Hartley
    Jonathan Evans-Jones
    Bert Cartmell
    Rocky Taylor
    Cora Cartmell
    Alexandre Owens
    Frederick Fleet
    Scott G. Anderson
    Lookout Lee
    Martin East
    Harold Bride
    Craig Kelly
    Jack Phillips
    Gregory Cooke
    Chief Baker Joughin
    Liam Tuohy
    Father Byles
    James Lancaster
    Ida Straus
    Elsa Raven
    Isidor Straus
    Lew Palter
    Yaley
    Mark Rafael Truitt
    Chief Engineer Bell
    Terry Forrestal
    Leading Stoker Barrett
    Derek Lea
    Carpenter John Hutchinson
    Richard Ashton
    Steward Barnes
    Oliver Page
    Olaf Dahl
    Erik Holland
    Bjorn Gunderson
    Jari Kinnunen
    Olaus Gunderson
    Anders Falk

    Director
    James Cameron

    Video

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