Titanic

A doomed ocean liner is perfect fare for a big-budget studio like Fox, whose production unit gives the real life tragedy the conventional Hollywood treatment. Wagner and Dalton charm as the attractive young lovers, while Stanwyck lends a formidable presence as the matron with a past. However, Webb is an unusual choice for the lead, given his rather brittle personality. The script makes good use of his aristocratic demeanor by squaring him off against his estranged commoner wife Stanwyck. He's all stuffy rules and European airs, while she's taking their two kids and returning to her practical American roots. There's a subtext here about Webb coming to realize a human side buried under layers of snobbish pretensions. It's an interesting idea, but I wonder how many viewers were able to warm up to Webb's basically cold personality. Fox took a chance here and I doubt that it helped at the box-office.

Nonetheless, Ray Kellogg's special effects are outstanding, especially the liner as it lists headfirst into the water that became a spectacular logo for the movie's ad campaign. Note, however, the general absence of noisy panic surrounding the evacuation, the opposite of what you would expect given the life and death circumstance. Generally, both passengers and crew react efficiently as if executing a fire drill. I suspect anything more realistic would have risked unsettling 1950's audiences and dampening box-office appeal, but whatever, the general absence is noticeable. Also, I'm not clear on what happened to the women and children in steerage. These are the poor folk presumably responding to America's "give us your huddled masses yearning to be free". Maybe I missed something, but the class segregation aboard the liner is made unmistakably clear and we do know the ladies and children of wealth made the cut. But what about those "huddled masses" since the movie is based on fact? Still and all, not to worry since they're all going to heaven anyway as the final choral overlay assures us.

Speaking of class struggle, too bad the screenplay doesn't exploit the lively potential of a Clifton Webb-Thelma Ritter face-off. They're two extreme ends of the refinement spectrum — the earthy commoner and the waspish aristocrat. Yet no one was better at delivering sarcastic barbs than these two. Squaring them off against one another would have produced great verbal fireworks and social contrast. All in all, the movie is entertaining with some good moments, but fails to hit the dramatic high points inherent in the real life tragedy. Ultimately, the screenplay reflects the extreme cautiousness of its time period.

The story follows a handful of characters, most fictional but a few real ones, on the ill-fated transatlantic sea voyage in 1912 that ended in tragedy. Wife Julia (Barbara Stanwyck) and husband Richard Ward Sturges (Clifton Webb) are squabbling over the upbringing of their two children, daughter Annette (Audrey Dalton) and son Norman (Harper Carter). Julia admits that Annette is a hopeless snob, but she plans to bring young Norman up in America where she hopes to make a normal person of him. When hubby balks at giving up his son as expected, Julia has one ace up her sleeve. Complications ensue, some of them quite touching even considering the overall situation.

Meanwhile drunkard George Healey (Richard Basehart) staggers around on deck, nouveau riche Maude Young (Thelma Ritter) tries to relax, and ship's captain Smith (Brian Aherne) is oblivious to the impending danger. Robert Wagner stars as the wholesome college boy whose teeth practically sparkle who might be able to bring Annette down to earth.

The setting and situation are familiar to most by now, but I still enjoyed this disaster effort that resembles the future disaster "epics" of the 1970's. It follows the usual formula of establishing the characters and their petty troubles before casting them into harm's way, many of them to their doom. I thought Stanwyck and Webb were an odd couple on paper, but it works out fine in the movie, and Webb is very good, especially during the last 20 minutes or so. I was also impressed with Edmund Purdom as a ship's officer with a suspicion of the dangers ahead. The movie won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch & Richard L. Breen), and was also nominated for Best B&W Art Direction.

What a surprise to see this 1953 sinking of the Titanic after the long and expensive James Cameron version. To say that Jean Negulesco's version is better is saying only half of it. In fact it is much, much better. The whole story told in half the time with a scrumptious script by Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch and superb performances by Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. The 1953 special effects are as effective as anything in Cameron's film but, I believe, that the secret of the older version is that the heart and mind of the filmmakers were on the human drama and the effects came to be part of it and not its center. It was also a time when stories were told thinking of an adult audience. The poignancy of of the tale is thought out by thinking people for thinking people. In the modern version, Leo teaches Kate how to spit, remember? Just look in Negulesco's version the power of the unfolding. Two disasters, one natural, irreversible, the other, human with unexpected twists and turns. Thelma Ritter plays Molly Brown with extraordinary little touches. Look at her eyes when she witnesses Webb shabby treatment of his son. Young and gorgeous Robert Wagner is a delightful plus. I advise you to rent it, you'll be amazed.

Just a precaution: If you are expecting a completely accurate historical account of the night with all the scientific details neatly in place, look elsewhere. This film instead focuses (touchingly) on the human drama involved with the ship, with many of the elements of real passengers' accounts rolled into the story of Clifton Webb and wife Barbara Stanwyck (Both excellent; when Isn't Barbara Stanwyck excellent?) and their children. A few real characters are involved, but for the most part the drama surrounding the fictional characters is in the forefront. A beautiful and striking account, the film deserved a few more Oscars than it got, primarily for Miss Stanwyck and a supporting Oscar for Robert Wagner, who does wonderfully in his role.

I just saw this film again. The only other time I saw it was probably 40 years ago on "Saturday Night at the Movies," when it made a powerful impression. It still does, in part thanks to the marvelous acting of Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck, who looks particularly lovely in this movie. They and their young son and daughter are the focus of the story. Both wonderful actors, if they seem an unlikely couple at first, you probably won't think so by the end of the movie, they are so superb.

In this version, Stanwyck is actually leaving her husband (Webb), unbeknownst to him, but when he realizes what's happening, he bribes the father in a lower class for his ticket. Webb is a social climbing, superficial man, and his American wife wants more for her kids than snobbery, arranged marriages, and a series of hotels instead of a home, so she is going back to her family with the children. What happens to Webb and Stanwyck's relationship during the voyage is powerful, touching - and, alas, too late.

While on board, a young, gorgeous Robert Wagner plays a college student suitor to the daughter, played by Audrey Dalton. Webb's last scene with Stanwyck will leave you in tears, and if it doesn't, there's also the poignant scene on deck with his son, Norman, which is beautiful.

I don't pretend to be an expert on the Titanic - however, I know a little more than a friend at work who, announcing she was seeing the Cameron version when it first came out, said, "Don't tell me how it ends." I realize that the Fox script drew a good deal of information from the navigation reports of the ship; however, I saw a documentary which showed footage of this film while it demonstrated that in this telling, the underwater scene shows the iceberg hitting on the wrong side.

I have also seen "A Night to Remember," which I also remember as being a very emotional experience. Perhaps it's the story that tugs at our hearts, or the site of that huge vessel sliding beneath the surface. Whatever it is, this is a truly engrossing and heartwrenching film.