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Titanic (1997 film)
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Titanic is a 1997 American romantic film directed, written, co-produced and co-edited by James Cameron about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. It features Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, and Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, two members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ill-fated voyage of the ship. The main characters and the central love story are fictional, but some characters (such as members of the ship's crew) are based on real historical figures.
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Titanic is a 1997 American romantic film directed, written, co-produced and co-edited by James Cameron about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. It features Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, and Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, two members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ill-fated voyage of the ship. The main characters and the central love story are fictional, but some characters (such as members of the ship's crew) are based on real historical figures. Gloria Stuart plays the elderly Rose, who narrates the film in a modern day framing device.
Production of the film began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the real wreck of the RMS Titanic. He envisioned the love story as a means to engage the audience with the real-life tragedy. Shooting took place at the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh - which aided Cameron in filming the real wreck – for the modern scenes, and a reconstruction of the ship was built at Playas de Rosarito, Baja California. Cameron also used scale models and computer-generated imagery to recreate the sinking. Titanic became at the time the most expensive film ever made, costing approximately US$200 million with funding from Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox. Both studios were nearly bankrupted during production.
The film was originally to be released on July 2, 1997, but post-production delays pushed back the film's release to December 19, 1997. After this news broke, the news media believed that Titanic would fail and take Fox and Paramount with it. The film turned into an enormous critical and commercial success, winning eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It became the highest-grossing film of all time, with a worldwide total of $1.8 billion (it is the sixth-highest grossing in North America once adjusted for inflation.)
Plot
In 1997, treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) and his team explore the wreck of the RMS Titanic, searching for a necklace set with a valuable blue diamond called the Heart of the Ocean. Unsuccessful, they instead discover a drawing of a young woman reclining nude, wearing the Heart of the Ocean, dated the day the Titanic sank. 101-year-old Rose Calvert (Gloria Stuart) learns of the drawing, and contacts Lovett to inform him she is the woman in the drawing. She and her granddaughter Elizabeth "Lizzy" Calvert (Suzy Amis) visit Lovett and his skeptical team on his salvage ship. When asked if she knew the whereabouts of the necklace, Rose Calvert recalls her memories aboard the Titanic, revealing for the first time that she was Rose DeWitt Bukater, a passenger believed to have died in the sinking.
In 1912, the upper-class 17-year-old Rose (Kate Winslet) boards the ship in Southampton, England, with her fiancé, Caledon "Cal" Hockley (Billy Zane) and her mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater (Frances Fisher). Distraught and frustrated by her engagement to Cal and her controlled life, Rose attempts suicide by jumping from the stern, but a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) intervenes. Initially Cal, his friends and the sailors, overhearing Rose's screams, believe Jack attempted to rape her. She explains Jack saved her life, hiding her suicide attempt by explaining she slipped after trying to see the propellers. Jack supports the claim, although Hockley's manservant, former police officer Spicer Lovejoy, is unconvinced. Jack and Rose strike up a tentative friendship as she thanks him for his corroboration, and he shares stories of his adventures traveling and sketching; their bond deepens when they leave a first-class formal dinner of the rapport-building wealthy for a much livelier gathering of Irish dance and ale in third-class.
Cal is informed of her partying in steerage and during breakfast flips the table in rage and forbids Rose to meet Jack again. However, after witnessing a woman encouraging her seven-year-old daughter to behave like a "proper lady" at tea, Rose defies him and her mother, asking Jack to sketch her nude, wearing only the Heart of the Ocean, an engagement present from Cal. Afterwards, the two playfully run away from Lovejoy, going below deck to the ship's cargo hold. They enter William Carter's Renault and have sex, before moving to the ship's forward well deck. Rose decides when they arrive in New York, she will leave the ship with Jack. They then witness the ship's fatal collision with an iceberg. Meanwhile, Cal discovers Rose's nude drawing and her taunting note in his safe, so he frames Jack for stealing the Heart of the Ocean by having Lovejoy plant it in Jack's pocket. Upon learning Cal intends to leave Jack to die below deck, Rose runs away from him and her mother to rescue him from imprisonment in the master-at-arms's office.
Jack and Rose return to the top deck. Cal and Jack, though enemies, both want Rose safe, so they persuade her to board a lifeboat. But after realizing that she cannot leave Jack, Rose jumps back on the ship and reunites with Jack in the ship's first class staircase. Infuriated, Cal takes Lovejoy's pistol and chases Jack and Rose down the decks and into the flooded first class dining saloon. When Cal runs out of ammunition, he realizes he left the Heart of the Ocean in Rose's overcoat. Cal returns to the boat deck and boards Collapsible A by pretending to look after an abandoned child. When Jack and Rose return to the top deck, the lifeboats have gone, and they are washed into the freezing Atlantic waters once the ship sinks. Jack and Rose manage to grab hold of a carved oak panel, which can only support one person. Jack dies of hypothermia, but Rose is rescued when Fifth Officer Harold Lowe returns with Lifeboat 14 with five other survivors.
Rose is taken by the RMS Carpathia to New York City, where she gives her name as Rose Dawson (adopting Jack's surname, leading everyone to believe Rose DeWitt Bukater died on the Titanic). Having completed her story, the elderly Rose goes to the stern of Lovett's ship. After she steps onto the railing, it is revealed she still has the Heart of the Ocean in her possession. She drops the diamond into the water, sending it to join the remains of the most important event of her life. The film ends with a shot of Rose in bed. Around her are pictures of her doing everything she said she would do with Jack throughout her life. The final shot of the film is a vision of the young Rose reuniting with Jack at the Grand Staircase of the Titanic, surrounded and applauded by those who perished on the ship as she kisses him.
Cast
Fictional characters
- Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson: A penniless artist who travels the world, Jack wins tickets to the RMS Titanic in a poker game. He is attracted to Rose's beauty at first sight and incidentally talks her out of attempting suicide. This heroic act enables him to mix with the first-class passengers for a night. He in turn shows her a carefree way of life which she had dreamed of but never had the courage to experience firsthand. Billy Crudup and Stephen Dorff were considered for the role of Jack.
- Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater: A first-class socialite, seventeen-year-old Rose is forced to become engaged to Caledon Hockley so she and her mother, Ruth, can maintain their status after the death of her father which left them a "reputated" empty shell. Feeling trapped, Rose becomes suicidal, but discovers a completely new lease on life when she meets Jack.
- Billy Zane as Caledon "Cal" Nathan Hockley: Rose's fiancé, Cal is the heir to an enormous steel fortune and the quintessential arrogant and snobbish first-class man and the main antagonist of the film. He becomes increasingly embarrassed, jealous, and cruel over Rose's relationship with Jack. He gives Rose the famous "Heart of the Ocean" diamond as a reminder of his feelings for her, and then asks her to "open her heart to him." After the main events of the film, Cal commits suicide in 1929, shooting himself after the stock market crash hits his interests hard.
- Frances Fisher as Ruth DeWitt Bukater: Rose's widowed mother, who marries Rose off to ensure their high-class status. She loves her daughter but believes marriage to Cal is the right thing to do. The epitome of the shallowness and hypocrisies of high-class society, she scorns Jack, even though he saved her daughter's life.
- Danny Nucci as Fabrizio De Rossi: Jack's Italian best friend, who comes aboard the RMS Titanic with him after Jack wins two tickets in a poker game. Fabrizio is killed during the sinking when one of the ship's funnels collapses and crushes him while he tries to swim away.
- Jason Barry as Tommy Ryan: An Irish third-class passenger who befriends Jack and Fabrizio. He comments to Jack about the faint chance he has of getting next to Rose. Tommy is shot dead by First Officer Murdoch during the sinking of the ship, after he is pushed during the chaos on the deck and Murdoch mistakes him for trying to enter a lifeboat.
- David Warner as Spicer Lovejoy: An ex-Pinkerton constable, Lovejoy is Cal's English valet and bodyguard, who keeps an eye on Rose and is suspicious of the circumstances of Jack's rescue of her. According to Rose, Lovejoy was hired by Cal's father to "keep an eye on his little boy." He accompanies Cal, Rose, and Ruth on the RMS Titanic and tells the porters where to put their luggage. He dies during the sinking and is last seen clinging onto the deck rail for dear life as the ship splits apart beneath him.
- Bill Paxton as Brock Lovett: A treasure hunter looking for the "Heart of the Ocean" in the wreck of the RMS Titanic in the present. Time and funding to his expedition is running out.
- Gloria Stuart plays the 101-year-old Rose Dawson: She comes to give Lovett information regarding the "Heart of the Ocean", after he discovers a nude drawing of her in the wreck of the RMS Titanic. She narrates the story of her time aboard the ship, mentioning Jack for the first time since. The final scene in the movie (where she reunites with Jack) is ambiguous – some believe her to be merely asleep (remembering her time with Jack) while others believe she had died (and reunited with Jack in the afterlife). Stuart herself believes the character to have died, whereas in his DVD audio commentary Cameron says that he prefers to leave the viewer to interpret the shot.
- Suzy Amis as Lizzy Calvert: Rose's granddaughter, who takes care of her, and accompanies her to the ship on her visit to Lovett. In a deleted scene of the film, she angrily confronts Lovett and warns him not to browbeat Rose.
- Lewis Abernathy as Lewis Bodine: Lovett's friend, who expresses doubt at first whether the elderly Rose is telling the truth. He also explains to Rose, with little regard for sensitivity, how the RMS Titanic sank with a 3-D computer simulation. At the conclusion of Rose's story, he appears slightly more sympathetic.
Historical characters
- Kathy Bates as Margaret "Molly" Brown: Brown is depicted as being frowned upon by other first-class women, including Ruth, as "vulgar" and "new money" due to her sudden wealth. She is friendly to Jack and lends him a tuxedo (bought for her son) when he is invited to dinner in the first-class dining saloon. She survives the sinking and is witnessed in a shot of the boat of survivors after Rose is rescued.
- Victor Garber as Thomas Andrews, Jr.: The ship's designer, Andrews is portrayed as a very kind and pleasant man who is modest about his grand achievement. After the collision, he tries to convince the others, particularly Ismay, that it is a "mathematical certainty" that the iron ship will sink. He is depicted during the sinking of the ship as standing next to the clock in the first-class smoking room, lamenting his failure to build a strong and safe ship. He gives Rose a life jacket so she does not drown in the icy water, and is last seen looking at his watch and adjusting the clock in the same room. He is probably killed when the smoking room splits in two.
- Bernard Hill as Captain Edward John Smith: The ship's captain, who plans to make the Titanic voyage his final one before retiring. This later influences his decision to increase the ship's speed to make headlines. The film depicts the captain of the RMS Titanic as retiring to his quarters before the ship hits the iceberg. He retreats into the wheelhouse as the ship sinks, dying when the icy water bursts through the windows.
- Jonathan Hyde as Joseph Bruce Ismay: Ismay is portrayed as an ignorant first-class rich man who does not even know who Sigmund Freud is. He uses his position as White Star Line managing director to influence Captain Smith to go faster with the prospect of an earlier arrival in New York and favourable press attention. After the collision, he struggles to comprehend that his "unsinkable" ship is doomed. His infamous role in history features him taking the opportunity to get into a lifeboat, and turning his back as his ship sinks.
- Eric Braeden as Colonel John Jacob Astor: A first-class passenger whom Rose calls the richest man on the ship. The film depicts Astor and his 19-year-old wife Madeleine as being introduced to Jack by Rose in the first-class dining saloon. He is presumably drowned when the Grand Staircase glass dome implodes and water surges in.
- Bernard Fox as Colonel Archibald Gracie IV: The film depicts Gracie making a comment to Cal that "women and machinery don't mix", and congratulating Jack for saving Rose from falling off the ship (he is unaware it was a suicide attempt).
- Michael Ensign as Benjamin Guggenheim: A mining tycoon traveling in first class. He openly shows off his French mistress Madame Aubart to his fellow passengers while his family waits for him back home. When Jack joins the other first-class passengers for dinner after his rescue of Rose, Guggenheim refers to him as a "bohemian." Before his death, he utters the famous words, "We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down as gentlemen", before asking for a final glass of brandy. He is last seen sitting on a chair with his glass of brandy at the base of the Grand Staircase while a huge wave bursts into the room through the A-deck cabins.
- Jonathan Evans-Jones as Wallace Hartley: The ship's bandmaster who plays uplifting music with his colleagues on the boat deck as the ship sinks, culminating in a final, emotional performance of Nearer, My God, to Thee. His final words are "Gentlemen, it has been a privilege playing with you tonight."
- Ewan Stewart as First Officer William Murdoch: The film's most controversial depiction. During a sudden rush for the lifeboats, Murdoch's gun discharges and kills Tommy Ryan as well as another passenger. Murdoch then commits suicide out of guilt. When Murdoch's nephew Scott saw the film, he objected to his uncle's portrayal as damaging to Murdoch's heroic reputation, considering that he did try to get a number of passengers off. A few months later, Fox Vice-president Scott Neeson went to Dalbeattie, where Murdoch lived, to deliver a personal apology, and also presented a £5000 donation to Dalbeattie High School to boost the school's William Murdoch Memorial Prize. Cameron apologized on the DVD commentary, but noted that there were officers who fired gunshots to follow the "women and children first" policy.
- Jonathan Phillips as Second Officer Charles Lightoller: The ship's most senior surviving officer of the sinking. The film depicts Lightoller discussing with Captain Smith that it would be difficult to see the icebergs with no breaking water. He is seen brandishing a gun and threatening to use it to keep order. He can be seen on top of one of the overturned collapsibles, when the first funnel falls.
- Mark Lindsey Chapman as Chief Officer Henry Wilde: The ship's chief officer who lets Cal on board a lifeboat because he had a child in his arms. Before he dies, he tries to get the boats to row back to the sinking site and rescue passengers by blowing on his whistle. After he freezes to death, Rose uses his whistle to attract the attention of Fifth Officer Lowe, which eventually leads to her being rescued.
- Ioan Gruffudd as Fifth Officer Harold Lowe: The only ship's officer who led a lifeboat to retrieve survivors of the sinking on the icy waters. The film depicts Lowe rescuing Rose from freezing to death.
- Edward Fletcher as Sixth Officer James Moody: The ship's only junior officer who died in the sinking. The film depicts Moody admitting Jack and Fabrizio onto the ship only moments before it departs from Southampton, follows Mr. Murdoch's orders putting the ship in full, and informs First Officer Murdoch about the iceberg.
- James Lancaster as Father Thomas Byles: Father Byles, a Catholic priest from England, is portrayed praying and consoling passengers during the final moments before the ship sinks. He is last seen consoling passengers when the aft section of the ship is going vertical. He probably falls to his death in the icy waters. He doesn't survive the sinking.
- Lew Palter as Isidor Straus: died in his first class cabin bed with his wife. Former owner of R.H. Macy and Company, former Congressman from New York; member of the New York and New Jersey Bridge Commission. His body was recovered and buried in Brooklyn, N.Y.
- Elsa Raven as Ida Straus She remained onboard to die with her husband, Isidor Straus.
Cameos
Several crew members of the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh appear in the film, including Anatoly Sagalevich, creator and pilot of the Mir submersibles. Anders Falk, who filmed a documentary about the film's sets for the Titanic Historical Society, cameoed in the film as a Swedish immigrant who Jack Dawson meets when he enters his cabin, and Ed and Karen Kamuda, then President and Vice President of the Society, were extras on the film.
Production
| "The story could not have been written better...The juxtaposition of rich and poor, the gender roles played out unto death (women first), the stoicism and nobility of a bygone age, the magnificence of the great ship matched in scale only by the folly of the men who drove her hell-bent through the darkness. And above all the lesson: that life is uncertain, the future unknowable . . . the unthinkable possible." | | — James Cameron |
James Cameron was fascinated by shipwrecks, including the RMS Titanic, and wrote a treatment for a film. He described the sinking of the Titanic as "like a great novel that really happened." Yet, over time he felt that the event had become a mere morality tale, and described making the film as putting the audience in an experience of living history. Cameron described a love story as the most engaging part of a story. As the likable Jack and Rose had their love blossom and eventually destroyed, the audience would mourn the loss. Lastly, Cameron created a modern framing of the romance with an elderly Rose, making the history palpable and poignant. The treasure hunter Brock Lovett is meant to represent those who never connected with the human element of the tragedy. Cameron wanted to honor the people who died during the sinking, and he spent six months fully researching what happened, creating a timeline of all the Titanics crew and passengers.
He met with 20th Century Fox, and convinced them to make a film based on the publicity afforded by shooting the wreck itself and organized a dive to the wreck of the Titanic over two years. The crew shot in the Atlantic Ocean twelve times in 1995, shooting during eleven of those occasions, and actually spent more time with the ship than its passengers. Afterwards, Cameron began writing a screenplay. Harland and Wolff, the RMS Titanics builders, opened their private archives to the crew, sharing blueprints that were thought lost. For the ship's interiors, production designer Peter Lamont's team looked for artifacts from the era, though the newness of the ship meant every prop had to be made from scratch. Fox acquired of waterfront south of Playas de Rosarito in Mexico, and began building a new studio on May 31, 1996. A seventeen-million-gallon tank was built for the exterior of the reconstructed ship, providing 270 degrees of ocean view. The ship was built to full scale, but Lamont removed redundant sections on the superstructure and forward well deck for the ship to fit in the tank, with the remaining sections filled with digital models. The lifeboats and funnels were shrunk by ten percent. The boat deck and A-deck were working sets, but the rest of the ship was just steel plating. Within was a fifty-foot lifting platform for the ship to tilt during the sinking sequences. Towering above was a tall tower crane on of railtrack, acting as a combined construction, lighting and camera platform. After shooting the sinking scenes, the ship was then dismantled and sold for scrap metal to cover budgetary costs.
Filming
The modern day scenes were shot on the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh in July 1996. It was during this shoot that someone sprinkled phencyclidine into the crew's dinner, affecting many including Cameron, and sending several dozen of them to the hospital. The person behind the prank was never caught. Principal photography for Titanic began in September 1996 at the newly-built Fox Baja Studios. The scenes on the poop deck was built on a hinge which could rise from zero to ninety degrees in a few seconds as the ship's stern rose during sinking. For the safety of the stuntmen, many props were made of foam rubber. By November 15, they were shooting the boarding scenes. Cameron chose to build his RMS Titanic on the starboard side as study of weather data showed prevailing north-to-south wind that blew the funnel smoke aft. This posed a problem for shooting the ship's departure from Southampton, as it was docked on its port side. Writing on props and costumes had to be reversed, and if someone walked to their right in the script, they had to walk left. In post-production, the film was flipped to the correct direction.
Filming Titanic was an arduous experience for all involved. The schedule was intended to last 138 days but grew to 160—twenty days shy of six months. Many cast members came down with colds, flu, or kidney infections after spending hours in cold water, including Kate Winslet. Several left and three stuntmen broke their bones, but the Screen Actors Guild decided, following an investigation, that nothing was inherently unsafe about the set. Cameron never apologized for running his sets like a military campaign, although he admitted, "I'm demanding, and I'm demanding on my crew. In terms of being kind of militaresque, I think there's an element of that in dealing with thousands of extras and big logistics and keeping people safe. I think you have to have a fairly strict methodology in dealing with a large number of people." After almost drowning, chipping an elbow bone, and getting the flu, Winslet decided she would not work with Cameron again unless she earned "a lot of money."
Effects
An enclosed five-million-gallon tank was used for sinking interiors, in which the entire set could be tilted into the water. To sink the Grand Staircase, ninety thousand gallons of water were dumped into the set as it was lowered into the tank. Unexpectedly, the waterfall ripped the staircase from its steel-reinforced foundations, though no one was hurt. The long exterior of the RMS Titanic had its first half lowered into the tank, but being the heaviest part of the ship meant it acted as a shock absorber against the water. To get the set into the water, Cameron had much of the set emptied and even smashed some of the promenade windows himself. After submerging the Dining Saloon, three days were spent shooting Lovett's ROV traversing the wreck in the present. The post-sinking scenes in the freezing Atlantic were shot in a 350,000-gallon tank, where the frozen corpses were created by applying a powder on actors that crystallized when exposed to water, and wax was coated on hair and clothes.
Cameron wanted to push the boundary of special effects with his film, and enlisted Digital Domain to continue the breakthroughs on digital technology the director pioneered on The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Previous films about the RMS Titanic shot water in slow motion, which did not look wholly convincing. He encouraged them to shoot their long miniature of the ship as if "we're making a commercial for the White Star Line." Afterward, digital water and smoke were added, as were extras captured on a motion capture stage. Visual effects supervisor Rob Legato scanned the faces of many actors, including himself and his children, for the digital extras and stuntmen. There was also a long model of the ship's stern that could break in two repeatedly, the only miniature to be used in water. For scenes set in the ship's engines, footage of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien's engines were composited with miniature support frames and actors shot against greenscreen. To save money, the First Class Lounge was a miniature set incorporated into a greenscreen backdrop.
Editing
During the first assembly cut, Cameron changed the planned ending, which had given resolution to Brock Lovett's story. In the original version of the ending, Brock sees Old Rose preparing to drop the necklace into the ocean. Assuming that she is going to jump, he and Lizzy stop her. She then reveals that she had the Heart of the Ocean diamond all along, but never sold it, as it reminded her of Cal too much. She tells Brock that life is priceless and throws the diamond into the ocean, after allowing him to hold it. Accepting that treasure is worthless, Brock laughs at his stupidity. He then falls for Lizzy, and Rose goes back to sleep, whereupon the film ends in the same way as the final version. In the editing room, Cameron decided that by this point the audience would no longer be interested in Brock Lovett and cut the resolution to his story, so that Rose is alone when she drops the diamond. He also did not want to disrupt the audience's melancholy after the Titanics sinking.
The version used for the first test screening featured a fight between Jack and Lovejoy which took place after Jack and Rose escape into the flooded dining saloon, but the test audiences disliked it. The scene was written to give the film more suspense, and featured Cal (falsely) offering to give Lovejoy, his valet, the Heart of the Ocean if he can kill Jack and Rose. Lovejoy goes after the pair in the sinking First Class dining room. Just as they are about to escape him, Lovejoy notices Rose's hand slap the water as it slips off the table behind which she is hiding. In revenge for framing him for the "theft" of the necklace, Jack attacks him and smashes his head against a glass window (this explains the gash on Lovejoy's head that can be seen when he dies in the completed version of the film). The test audiences disliked this scene, saying it would be unrealistic to risk one's life for wealth, and Cameron cut it for this reason, as well as for timing and pacing reasons. Many other scenes were cut for similar reasons.
Release
Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox financed Titanic, and expected James Cameron to complete the film for a release on July 2, 1997. With production delays, Paramount pushed back the release date to December 19, 1997. The film premiered on November 1, 1997, at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where reaction was described as "tepid" by the New York Times.
Box office
The film received steady attendance after opening in North America on Friday, December 19, 1997. By the end that same weekend, theaters were beginning to sell out. The film debuted with $8,658,814 on its opening day and $28,638,131 over the opening weekend from 2,674 theaters, averaging to about $10,710 per venue, and ranking #1 at the box office, ahead of the 18th James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies. By New Year's Day, Titanic had made over $120 million, had increased in popularity and theaters continued selling out. Its biggest single day took place on Valentine's Day 1998, making over $13 million on that day, more than six weeks after it debuted in North America. After it was released, it stayed at #1 for 15 consecutive weeks in the U.S. box office, which was a record. By March 1998, it was the first film to earn more than $1 billion worldwide. Some theaters in Australia, Pakistan, India, and South Africa ran it for more than one year. The movie stayed in theaters in North America for more than nine months before finally closing on Thursday October 1, 1998 with a final domestic gross of $600,788,188, and making double that amount overseas with an international gross of $1,248,025,607. The film accumulated a grand total of $1,848,813,795 worldwide, and to this day Titanic retains the record as the most successful box office film in history, unadjusted for inflation.
Critical reaction
The film garnered mostly positive reviews from critics. It is a "Certified Fresh" film on Rotten Tomatoes, with 82% overall approval from critics. The film currently has a 74/100 metascore on Metacritic, classified as a generally favorable reviewed film.
Roger Ebert wrote, "It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted, and spellbinding...Movies like this are not merely difficult to make at all, but almost impossible to make well. The technical difficulties are so daunting that it's a wonder when the filmmakers are also able to bring the drama and history into proportion. I found myself convinced by both the story and the sad saga." It was his ninth best film of 1997. On the television program Siskel & Ebert, the film received "two thumbs up"; Ebert describing it as "a glorious Hollywood epic, well-crafted and well worth the wait" Gene Siskel found Leonardo DiCaprio "captivating"." James Berardinelli explains, "Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic, you experience it." It was his second best movie of 1997. Almar Haflidason of BBC wrote "The sinking of the great ship is no secret, yet for many exceeded expectations in sheer scale and tragedy. And when you consider that it tops a bum-numbing three-hour running time, then you have a truly impressive feat of entertainment achieved by Cameron."
Some reviewers felt that the story and dialogue were weak, while the visuals were spectacular. Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote a mostly negative review, criticizing the special effects and lack of interesting emotional elements. Kenneth Turan's review in the Los Angeles Times was particularly scathing. Dismissing the emotive elements, he says, "What really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only is it not, it is not even close." Barbara Shulgasser of San Francisco Examiner gave Titanic one star out of four, citing a friend as saying, "The number of times in this unbelievably badly-written script that the two [lead characters] refer to each other by name was an indication of just how dramatically the script lacked anything more interesting for the actors to say." Filmmaker Robert Altman called it "the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life".
Titanic suffered backlash from many after its release. In 2003, the film topped a poll of "Best Film Endings", and yet it also topped a poll by The Film programme as "the worst movie of all time". Parodies and spoofs abounded and were circulated around the Internet, often inspiring passionate responses from fans of various opinions of the film.
Since its release, Titanic has appeared on the AFI's award-winning 100 Years.... So far, it has ranked on the following six lists:
| AFI's 100 Years... 100 | Rank | Notes
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| Thrills | 25 | A list of the top 100 thrilling movies in American cinema compiled in 2001.
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| Passions | 37 | A list of the top 100 love stories in American cinema, compiled in 2002.
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| Songs | 14 | A list of the top 100 songs in American cinema, compiled in 2004. Titanic ranked 14th for Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On".
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| Movie quotes | 100 | A list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema, compiled in 2005. Titanic ranked 100th for Jack Dawson's (Leonardo DiCaprio) yell of, "I'm king of the world!"
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| Movies | 83 | A 2007 (10th anniversary) edition of 1997's list of the 100 best movies of the past century. Titanic was not eligible when the original list was released.
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| AFI's 10 Top 10 | 6 | The 2008 poll consisted of the top ten films in ten different genres. Titanic ranked as the sixth best epic film. |
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Awards
Titanic began its awards sweep starting with the Golden Globes, winning four, namely Best Motion Picture (Drama), Best Director, Best Original Score, and Best Song. Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Gloria Stuart, and James Cameron's screenplay were also nominees but lost. It won the ACE "Eddie" Award, ASC Award, Art Directors Guild Award, Cinema Audio Society Award, Screen Actors Guild Awards, (Best Supporting Actress Gloria Stuart), The Directors Guild of America Award, and Broadcast Film Critics Association Award (Best Director James Cameron), and The Producer Guild of America Awards. It was also nominated for ten BAFTA awards, including Best Film and Director.
It won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. It also picked up Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song, and Best Art Direction. Kate Winslet, Gloria Stuart and the make-up artists were the three nominees that did not win. James Cameron's original screenplay and Leonardo DiCaprio were not nominees. It was the second movie to win eleven Academy Awards, after Ben-Hur. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King would also match this record in 2004, with its 11 wins from 11 nominations.
My Heart Will Go On won the Grammy Awards for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television. The film also won Best Male Performance for Leonardo DiCaprio and Best Movie at the MTV Movie Awards, Best Film at the People's Choice Awards, and Favorite Movie at the 1998 Kids' Choice Awards. It won various awards outside the United States, including the Awards of the Japanese Academy as the Best Foreign Film of the Year. Titanic eventually won nearly 90 awards and had an additional 47 nominations from various award-giving bodies around the world.
Home video
Titanic was released worldwide in widescreen and pan and scan formats on VHS and laserdisc on September 1, 1998. The VHS was also made available in a deluxe boxed gift set with a mounted filmstrip and a color booklet. A DVD version was released on July 31, 1999 in a widescreen-only (non-anamorphic) single disc edition with no special features other than a theatrical trailer. Cameron stated at the time that he intended to release a special edition with extra features later. This release became the best-selling DVD of 1999 and early 2000, becoming the first DVD ever to sell 1 million copies.
Six years after the original DVD release, on October 25, 2005, a special edition release finally occurred with a three-disc set marketed as Special Collector's Edition in North America and as the Ultimate Edition in Japan.
An international two- and four-disc set followed on November 7, 2005. The two-disc edition was marketed as the Special Edition, and featured the first two discs of the three-disc set, only PAL enabled. A four-disc edition, marketed as the Deluxe Collector's Edition, was also released on November 7, 2005.
Available only in the UK, a limited five-disc set of the film, under the title Deluxe Limited Edition, was released with only 10,000 copies manufactured. The fifth disc contains James Cameron's documentary Ghosts of the Abyss. Unlike the individual release of Ghosts of the Abyss, which contained two discs, only the first disc was included in the set.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack album for Titanic was composed by James Horner and became the best selling primarily orchestral soundtrack of all time. The soundtrack includes performances from the Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø, and the Canadian singer Celine Dion. It became a worldwide success, spending 16 weeks at #1 in the United States and was certified diamond for over 11 million copies sold in the United States, alone. The soundtrack also became best selling album of 1998 in the U.S. It also led to the release of a second volume (Back to Titanic) that contained a mixture of previously unreleased soundtrack recordings with newly-recorded performances of some of the songs in the film, including one track recorded by Enya's sister, Máire Brennan of the Irish band Clannad. "Hymn to the Sea" features Bad Haggis's Eric Rigler on the uilleann pipes and whistles. Back to Titanic was also a sizeable hit, reaching #2 in the U.S. and selling over a million copies.
James Horner wrote the song "My Heart Will Go On" in secret with Will Jennings because Cameron did not want any songs with singing in the film. Dion agreed to record a demo with the persuasion of her husband René Angélil. Horner waited until Cameron was in an appropriate mood before presenting him with the song. After playing it several times, Cameron declared its approval, although worried that he would have been criticized for "going commercial at the end of the movie". It eventually won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song.
General
Specific
External links
at The Numbers
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