A Night to Remember: Criterion #7

Fifty years after its release, "A Night to Remember" can't help but have lost some of its impact. In telling the story of the sinking of the Titanic, the film is hindered by budgetary and special effects restrictions that make the whole enterprise frequently seem stage bound. Those coming of age in the 1990s are apt to think James Cameron got here first and it's impossible to watch Roy Ward Baker's take on the tragedy and not constantly compare the two films. Baker has more human, compelling characters, but for sheer spectacle Cameron edges out this quieter, very reserved, very British take on the disaster.

Director Roy Ward Baker's film is based on the book of the same title which was compiled from first hand accounts of the ship's surviving passengers and crew. Both Baker's film and Cameron's, in an effort to achieve veracity, depict many of the same incidents detailed in the book. This repetition makes Cameron's "Titanic" seem like a remake of the 1958 film which many still consider to be the definitive dramatic take on the subject. The two films are incredibly similar in their closing halves when the ship's musicians play on the deck of the ship while Molly Brown looks on from a nearby lifeboat as the ship's tail end slowly begins to rise high into the air. Unfortunately those who have encountered Cameron first won't be as surprised by the proceedings lessening the dramatic impact.

Baker's film, however, distinguishes itself with its very British point of view and its attention to detail. The first class passengers approach the impending disaster with great self-control and bearing. They are more apt to be perturbed than terrified. This is in part due to the fact that they believe the ship is unsinkable and the whole evacuation an unwarranted nuisance, but the film makes clear that their dignity and unflappability is a result of their class and nationality. It is the rabble in steerage--a mix of poor European immigrants and Irishmen--that react in panic. They are, in fact, closer to the rising water and not allowed up on deck until the first class passengers are tended to, but the film almost treats their tragedy as a noisy afterthought. The primary focus of the story is on how the moneyed British react to the growing doom.