A Night to Remember .... not "Titanic"

Citadel, you are being awfully harsh on Titanic. I think Titanic came out pretty good. I really liked Billy Zane's character. I'm glad they didn't just remake A Night To Remember. That would of been a waste of time, for sure.

I have to side with you on Gladiator and The Fall Of The Roman Empire. I like a lot of things about Gladiator but and I mean but, the ending is simply preposterous.... What Holeywood, beachboy committee dreamed that BS up?

 

I think the while the 1958 Night to Remember is more historically accurate, I think the 1953 film Titanic is a better film, dramatically. I did the mastering for Fox on that title back in the 1990s.

Very powerful story, very sad. As I remember, the kid elects to stays with his father on the boat, which I thought was heartbreaking.

I also was one of the people who did a lot of work on the home video versions of Jim Cameron's Titanic in the late 1990s. I had to see the film at least 20 times, and while it's got some real corny, tear-jerker moments, there's no question it's an exceptionally well-made film. Cameron's version was the first to point out the vast difference in status between the wealthy and poor passengers, and how the latter suffered when they were stuck in the lower decks as the ship sank.

 

Sorry to have to disagree but all that differences were already shown in "A Night To Remember".
For instance, there' are a subplot that involves a group of third class passengers that find all doors to the upper decks locked and when they finally get to the top all the lifeboats had already left.
The film purposefully tried to show as accurately as possible all that went wrong.

 

Sorry, that's how I feel about it. Honestly, I expected something different, more close to the actual events.
I'm glad that you enjoyed "Titanic". I couldn't, it's just not my kind of film. To each his/her own.

 

Really? I saw it a few years ago and thought it was awful. Thin story and characters, no real drama, and pretty dull IMO:

http://www.dvdmg.com/titanic1953.shtml

 

Cameron should have filmed 50 different Titanic movies at the same time. We'd have something to look forward to. Titanic 2 staring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan! Now that would be a movie!

 

Quote Walt Disney's "Titey"
LMFAO sooo true, I'm quite sure thats almost exactly what disney would do with that story. A good example is the debacle known as The Hunchback Of Notre Dame.

 

There were two very short scenes in Titanic that I considered especially moving: The older couple who chose to die together holding each other upon their bed and the young mother who was putting her children to bed. I believe that Cameron effectively used these two scenes to compare and contrast the human tragedy that occurred to both the very young (innocent and trusting their mother to take care of them) and older passengers (choosing to die with dignity with their loved one).

 

I agree, A Night to Remember is a great film. I was also surprised how good Titanic with Webb and Stanwyk was. Cameron's Titanic is my least favorite of the three, but it's still very good.

 

Just viewed this over the weekend (thanks Netflix). Very impressive film: very lean with great special FX.

I noticed a few bits of this film that wound up (more or less) copied to the latter-day "Titanic"...specifically the guy who snuck onto the boat with the women and children, and had a sheepish look on his face before the crewman said to lower away...and also a scene in the grand ballroom where the ship's designer was standing (or leaning) in front of the clock on the mantlepiece, contemplating his (and his ship's) fate.

Thanks for the recommendation.

 

I mentioned this in my review:

"One viewing of Night makes it clear that Cameron also had seen the film. Some scenes from Titanic seemed to come straight from the earlier movie. During my initial screening of Night, I saw at least five sequences that looked directly copied in the 1997 flick, with the most blatant being the sheepish lifeboat departure of Ismay; Cameron made the shot look almost identical to the one in Night.

The 1958 film also featured a couple of characters who may have been prototypes for Titanic’s Jack and Rose. This young newlywed pair only pop up in a few scenes, and honestly, I can’t even recall their names since they make such a brief appearance. In any case, they display some of the same attitudes seen in the stars of Titanic, and I don’t think the resemblance is a coincidence."

 

I've never seen it... Will have to check it out...

I'm very ignorant of films before 1970.

 

I caught this film for the first time, and loved it. It kept my interest all the way through, never left me feeling bored. I do see why people regard this as the greatest film about the Titanic ever made. Why this film was not on the BFI's top 100 list, I will never understand.

Also, pre-Goldfinger Honor Blackman is beautiful in this.

 

A couple of more things:

1) I've never seen the American 20th Century Fox Production of the 1953 Titanic film (Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner, Clifton Webb), but I heard that one is good too.

2) I haven't seen more of their films yet, but from what I could tell, Rank Organisation was the most prestigious film studio in Britain. Just like how MGM was the most prestigious film studio in Hollywood.

 

Both "A Night To Remember" and "Titanic" are excellent films. Unfortunately, today, with the facts
regarding the actual sinking now known, mainly thanks to James Cameron's extensive (with others) analysis
of the actual wreck, we now, for example, know the ship split in half and sank in two sections. They had no way
of course of knowing that in the 50's, so it tends to date the films somewhat. Even Cameron's film has a few
factual errors that he didn't find out about until several years later after continued study of the wreck field.
So I guess the earlier films can be forgiven and just enjoyed for what they tried to do.

 

Timing.

We now know had the ship simply hit the berg head-on, it would not have sunk.

 

I just saw A Night to Remember a couple of weeks ago on a cable channel. It is one of those movies I always watch when it is on.

 

Question: In the American 1953 version, do any of the performers imitate British accents?

 

I don't know why there are people who go out of their way to hate "Titanic" with such a misguided passion. I think much of the hate comes from male "anti-romance" bias. Also, "Titanic" should not have been a remake of "A Night To Remember". "A Night To Remember" covered its respective territory well. It accomplished what it set out to do. "Titanic" set out what it was supposed to do. People feel instead of Jack and Rose they should have essentially pulled names out of a hat and told the real life tale of someone on the ship. What those people fail to realize is how Jack and Rose represents so many passengers. Who cares if they weren't "real". I truly feel the film was more effective and worked better as an emotional narrative working with a clean canvas rather than trying to make someone else's story fit the film. Revolving the story around specific real life people doesn't always make it better. In this case it wouldn't as they'd need to stay within the constraints of the real life story. I feel too many missed the plot or chose to miss it. All these so-called flaws aren't. Some people can get emotionally invested in a film about a real life event unless it was a biopic or documentary. How sad since the way "Titanic" was presented was way more about human emotion than the credit it is given. I feel some have no emotional bone in their body to not have felt anything for them.

Jack and Rose came across as 90s teens trapped in 1912? What a load of crap.

 

Not quite:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McMaster_Murdoch#Portrayals

 

Some of the surviors reported that the ship broke in two. Others said that it went down in one piece. The latter group's story was accepted. How could the great ship break in two? It was the unsinkable, unbreakable Titanic.

The bonus features on this DVD are quite good and compliment the Criterion.

 

The Murdoch controversy - We've been down this path before. Nothing more than outright character assassination of a dead man by someone who more than knew better. This, along along with the ridiculously trite, "poor little rich girl falls for boy from wrong side of the tracks" storyline is more than enough reason this one should be permanently consigned to the dustbin.