Try to focus on the actual disaster, having just occurred sixteen, seventeen years earlier than when this film came out, and see what was known, what was rumored, what was accepted to have happened, and not dwell on the rawness of the film-making.
Well, that was near impossible to do, right up to the end. I thought Alfred Hitchcock's "Murder" (which came out about the same time) was about one of the most experimental films I had ever seen, but I think this one might outdo it.
The sound is awful, but a silent film done well, or a totally non-talking piece, such as what Laurel & Hardy did, could be just as entertaining, if it has a good story structure. Well, this movie can't claim that either.
Hands down, that mother constantly weeping about her nerves and pressing the hankie to her mouth because she has learned her husband was cheating on her was a constant irritation. Oh, if only she had gone down with the ship!
As with the Barbara Stanwyck-Clifton Webb-Robert Wagner 1953 version, this film delved into adultery. No idea why that theme was always attached to the sinking.
Franklin Dyall, father of the impressive Valentine Dyall (best known for Doctor Who appearances to the American audience) strived for his best Lionel Barrymore, but was outdone in two seconds by Elaine Terriss as his wife, in her brief appearance when she learned he wouldn't enter a lifeboat.
Even to a novice like me, there clearly was a problem with direction; with how sound on the film would sound as opposed to dialogue delivered on stage, as well as to how it was recorded.
I was dumbstruck by Dyall questioning Manchester "you seem to think this is damn serious?"
Wasn't it a really big deal when Clark Gable said 'Damn' in "Gone With the Wind"?
Oh, he was a MAJOR star. A major star doing that. I see.
And I look at most depictions of Blacks in these old films as being historical, but to put a pair of Blacks on this thing just to have them shot because they try to storm the lifeboats I'm sure didn't help race relations back then. While these were actual Black people and not blackface, I tend to try to think how much the performers enjoyed working and getting to dive off the boat like that.
Other than the 1912 version with actual Titanic survivor Dorothy Gibson in it, wearing the outfit she was wearing when she was rescued, this stands as about the earliest version of the disaster. No idea what that Italian 1915 film could be, if it is even based on the ship-in-question.
This film was to be titled Titanic, but outrage and sensitivity toward the event, which again, had just occurred sixteen years earlier, saw a retitling, and it became "Atlantic".
The version I have on tape has a reworked title with the old stock footage of the doomed liner and it is now titled "Titanic". As a film, I would have preferred the original title to be present.
As it is, scenes of the film's disaster, and for that matter still shots I have seen from this movie, did not match up to what was present here, so I'm not sure what is going on as far as editing goes.
There are other Titanic movies depicting the ship to check out, but if you are a buff, like me, you enjoy checking out as many different versions of the Titanic that you can find.
Of all I have seen now (S.O.S. Titanic, 1943 German version, Cameron's Titanic, Night To Remember, George C. Scott-Catherine Zeta Jones, 1953, Unsinkable Molly Brown, even have the recent musical soundtrack), this one has to be the worst.
