Rating:  -
The Bottom Line:
I would never use the words "historically-accurate" to describe this version of the Titanic's sinking, but it's one of those balls-to-the-wall melodramas that makes no secret of its sudsiness while managing to deliver affecting scenes and splendid performances by the leads: by combining the inherent drama of the sinking ship to the melodrama of a fractured family trying to piece itself together, this Titanic really cooks up quite an involving story.
3.5/4
Rating:  -
My only complaint about this film is that it depicts the port side of the ship being ripped open as opposed to the starboard side, which is the side where the Titanic hit the iceberg (or the iceberg hit the Titanic). I guess someone in the studio's crew forgot to flip the film over. It had pretty astounding special effects for its day. I can remember setting my alarm clock to get up to watch this movie at 2 in the morning in the days before the advent of the VCR. This is the movie which started my life-long fascination with the Titanic.
Rating: -
This is a very worthwhile Black-and-white drama. The acting is fine, the sets beautiful, and the drama realistic.
This is not meant to be a documentary--leave that to the movie "A Night to Remember". This is a
more gripping tale, however.
By the way, this is the movie where the ship band plays "Nearer my God to Thee", as the ship slips
beneath the waves.
Rating: -
With the recent passing of the final surviving passenger on the Titanic, Millvina Dean, it seems quite timely for me to be reviewing the 1953 film version starring Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Wagner.
Directed by Jean Negulesco, Twentieth Century-Fox's TITANIC was praised for it's innovative special effects (including some very impressive miniature work) and earned an Academy Award for 'Best Screenplay'. While the story doesn't focus on real characters on the ship, preferring to create new ones to paint the various dramas onboard, it does feature genuine characters like John Jacob Astor and his young wife Madeleine (William Johnstone and Frances Bergen), and the Strausses (Roy Gordon and Helen Van Tuyl) in small peripheral roles.
TITANIC focuses on Richard and Julia Sturges (Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck), a married couple in crisis. Sick of their empty, shallow life in Europe, Julia has decided to take her children, teenage Annette (Audrey Dalton) and young Norman (Harper Carter) back to her family in America, with or without the blessing of Richard who'd rather see Annette married into the European aristocracy.
Subplots include Annette's tender shipboard romance with collegiate bachelor Giff Rogers (Robert Wagner), and a never-ending poker game with brash Montana oil heiress Maude Young (Thelma Ritter), a character that is, for all intents and purposes, based on the "unsinkable" Molly Brown but unable to be called so because of a legal skirmish with Ms Brown's estate.
While the Titanic itself is reduced to only a backdrop for these stories to play against, it remains a very compelling and dramatic film experience over 50 years later. For trivia buffs, take special note of the lavish ship sets. With minor re-dressing they were later used again in the Fox productions of "Dangerous Crossing" and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes".
Rating:  -
The idea that this was somebody's fault has always plagued discussions of the ship wreck?
The captain and crew thought they had an unsinkable powerhouse of a steam ship that produced speeds unheard of in those days of 25 mph.
The company plan was to make a record time on the maiden voyage.
Had the steel in the hull been of any where near modern hardness,
one doubts that ice could have cut through it.
Soft steel, a bad watch and a lazy crew who were enjoying themselves
seem to have resulted in over a thousand deaths.
The reason that it got such coverage is that they claimed it was unsinkable, and many very rich people were passengers who died.
This movie isn't the modern romance, but did have Robert Wagner
as a young love interest.
I didn't like the film much.
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