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If you want the true story of RMS Titanic - or as true as has been told on film to date - watch 'A Night to Remember' (1958) with Kenneth More as Charles Lightoller, Second Officer, who survived. It was produced by William MacQuitty (1905-2004) who, as a young lad, saw one of the anchors being dragged on a cart from the foundry to the Harland & Wolff shipyard where the Titanic was being built. And he also saw the vessel being launched, too.
However much historical veracity has been sought by the early filmmakers in retelling the story of the Titanic, though, the one big hurdle that couldn't be overcome was to dispel the myth that the ship went down whole, because it was not only considered 'unsinkable' but also 'indestructible'. This was partly excusable because those who survived after having been washed into the sea from the vessel as she sank away from them were convinced, having been underwater at the time, that the vessel went down whole. Those further afield heard noises likened to the great boilers tearing from their mountings and crashing through the deep interior of the ship - then the largest vessel afloat in the world. In fact the strange sounds heard were the tearing apart of metal plates and joints, and the vessel splitting into two parts as the unsupported stern, full of air, rose above the water - dragged skywards by the descending, flooded bow.
'Titanic' with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck depicts a human drama at the individual level which mirrors the class-laden thinking, whereby the appropriate dress, manners and deportment were supposed to represent material and intellectual superiority. But nature has a way of levelling man's superficial exterior and exposing the true inner being as it did on that fateful night of 14th/15th April 1912. Having watched Richard Basehart on television as the mature, steady and competent Admiral Nelson during 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' in countless episodes of the series during the mid-1960s, as a much younger man in 'Titanic' he couldn't be playing a more different part - an inebriated ex-priest going home in disgrace, perhaps reflecting the drunken cook who survived the actual sinking of the Titanic in real life, even though he remained on the ship to the last. As for the fate of the ex-priest - you'll have to watch the film to find out!
Captain Smith in command of the vessel set the speed, course and context for the disaster, in denial that the ice warnings could interfere with or hazard his pre-determined plans, but it was the First Officer Murdoch who was in charge on the bridge when the iceberg was spotted. The inky darkness, absence of binoculars for use in the look-outs' crows nest and stillness of the waters, averting their otherwise splashing movement against the towering monolith of ice, set the scene for what was to follow. The Second Officer on the delivery voyage from Belfast to Southampton, David Blair, was appointed to another ship the day before sailing and with him went the key to the locker containing the look-outs' binoculars. Try peering out into the garden at night from indoors (through an open window) and it is amazing how much more you can make out, especially of wild animals such as foxes on the move, using a pair of binoculars.
Although committed to speed, Murdoch sought to be tentative and reversed the propellers for maximum braking, thereby slowing the turning momentum of the giant vessel. He was going too fast to feel like ramming the giant berg and too slow to swing the vessel past without attracting a glancing blow. A light glancing blow, which, far from tearing a great gash all along the side, snapped the heads off many tiny rivets and caused the vessel's plates to leak fatally like a sieve.
Look for the parallels in the human drama of 'Titanic' and see how the whole disaster mirrored an age and a way of thinking that was shortly to die completely during the 1st World War - at even worse human cost.
Captain Smith was not only in denial that his lead could have caused such a disaster, but also in denial, I think, that the ship would actually sink before a rescue vessel could arrive, or even sink at all. The suggestion to put the women and children in the lifeboats was proposed to Captain Smith by Charles Lightoller (as highlighted by Colonel Archibald Gracie). Captain Smith added the afterthought, "Yes, and lower away" - so the crew were carrying out his orders. Yet, even though he knew there was insufficient capacity of the lifeboats, in the state of mind he was in, he omitted to give the critical order to pack the boats to capacity. The lack of directed urgency, coupled with an uncertainty as to how safe it might be to lower loaded lifeboats, caused a good number to leave the ship with spare places for others, who might otherwise also have been saved. And on one side of the ship it was, 'women and children only', whilst on the other it was, 'women and children first'.
But there was a certain kind of redemption for Captain Smith and many others through suffering an honourable death - as was a short while later promoted during the 1st World War with devastating effect. This concept is entirely mirrored in the very interesting fictional drama that unfolds in the film 'Titanic' against the very real and ultimate fate of the actual ship Titanic.
Make sure you buy the 20th Century Fox 2012 edition of the DVD, because, although I'd give the film 4* as a stand-alone movie, this 5* DVD edition comes with the special feature of a documentary film, 'Beyond TITANIC', as long as the main film, which follows the story of the ill-fated vessel through the following 100 years in film, theatre and publications. This excellent additional film also covers the discovery of the real ship on 1st September 1985 - and can you remember what you were doing when the first sight of the Titanic was obtained on a video monitor, linked by cable to the USA submersible Argo and its underwater video camera? Probably sleeping - given it was shortly after 4am in the morning in the UK - but, for myself and two friends, we had just exited, around 5 minutes earlier, from a near 17-hour trip, surveying and exploring in a deep Welsh cave near Crickhowell. And, as a teenager I'd bought a standard 8mm copy of the original newsreel film showing Captain Smith, RMS Titanic ( . . . and Olympic!) and RMS Carpathia - with its complement of absolutely miraculously located and saved Titanic passengers.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 18 February 2020
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 13 September 2022
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 18 August 2012
Some interesting back story lines and all the usual pre sinking drama run through it - you'll like some of the characters more t
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 14 February 2016