Le vaisseau fantôme

The first movie to have its world premiere on a ship: the luxury liner "America", during a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Until the era of the 1st World War, the practice on board a ship was to call orders for the helmsman to move the tiller either to port or to starboard. Calling "hard a-port" meant moving the tiller to port, which means the rudder and the vessel, will then move to starboard. With wheel steering, putting the helm/tiller to port, means spinning the wheel to starboard. Ships no longer use this system - these days helm directions refer to the desired turn of the rudder/vessel. The James Cameron movie "Titanic" also contained a similar scene, which generated a lot of puzzlement. It IS a bit confusing at first, unless one is a sailor and is familiar with tiller steering.

The film was cut by approximately 12 minutes down to less than 90 minutes for re-issue. The deleted footage consisted of little, but integral, moments throughout the story which added considerably to the quality of the film as a whole. For many years, the only known existing print of the original 99-minute theatrical version was a 16mm print which belonged to the film's star, John Garfield. However, Warner Brothers studio recently discovered a 35mm print of this original version at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It was subsequently restored and used for distribution on DVD and Blu Ray.

Edited into Le loup des mers (1993)