In Nacht und Eis

When the luxury liner Titanic sank on April 14, 1912, on her maiden voyage, a German film company, Continental-Kunstfilm, immediately planned to produce a film dramatization of the event. The results were "In Night and Ice (In Nacht und Eis)". Filming was done in July, and by August 1912, the movie was released to the public. It is the oldest existing movie made on the sinking of the Titanic, where at least 24 films have been on the event.

Since there was little existing film on the actual Titanic, the producers of "In Night and Ice" took liberties to substitute what appears to be actual footage of the Titanic. They spliced in some cruiser embarkation film of (possibly) the German ocean liner SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, which was docked in Hamburg, Germany. The dramatization of the sinking was shot inside a glasshouse studio inside the movie's headquarters. Scenes of the ship's bridge, the telegraph office, staterooms, boiler rooms and dining rooms were built on movable skids to reflect the wave action of the liner.

Headed by first-time Romanian director Mime Misu, "In Night And Ice" was considered lost for several decades until 1998 when a German film archivist read a newspaper account on the missing movie. He came forward with the film he owned, which subsequently has been restored.

The first movie ever made on the Titanic sinking was "Saved From The Titanic," produced just 29 days after the event. Film actress Dorothy Gibson, rescued from the Titanic, co-wrote and acted in the now lost movie. She climbed on the first lifeboat to leave the floundering boat and was picked up by the RMS Carpathia five hours later.

Gibson starred in movies for a couple of years before embarking on the Titanic. She was employed by U. S. branch of Paris' Eclair Studios. Her rise to success was so fast Gibson became the second highest paid silent movie star behind Mary Pickford during that time.

She took a six-week vacation in Italy with her mother before returning to Ft. Lee, N. J. to make more movies. Once arriving in New York, Gibson was convinced by her agent to write and star in Titanic's first movie. During filming, Gibson was so traumatized by reliving her experiences soon after the sinking she ended up having a nervous breakdown. She would never act in film again.

All the existing prints of "Saved From The Titanic" were burned in a 1914 fire at the Eclair Studios. Film historians consider this as one of the greatest losses in movie--and Titanic lore--history.

This German film was one of the first attempts to film the sinking of the Titanic. From a historical standpoint, that fact makes it interesting. But the film itself is not that entertaining. It's only about 35 minutes long, but there is one stretch which seems like an eternity as we just see people socializing in the dining room. Part of the problem is that the title cards are in German, and the version I watched had Portuguese subtitles. One semester of college German was not enough to get me through this, but then again, you really didn't need the title cards to describe what was going on. A larger problem is that there are no characters to "latch on to." The ship's captain might have evoked some sympathy, but he ridiculously overacts.

The film opens with what appears to be actual footage of people boarding a ship, and many of the scenes do take place aboard a ship. However, the miniature models are not convincing, but let's be honest ... the director did not have James Cameron's budget.

The film does have an interesting backstory. It was made on Berlin backlot by director Mime Misu, just two months after the Titanic sank. Presumed lost, it was discovered in 1998 after some publicity surrounding the release of Cameron's Titanic in late 1997. A 74-year-old retired film collector named Horst Lange remembered he had obtained a copy some twenty years earlier, paying around $120 for it. Lange said "it is an impressive film for June 1912. But there are mistakes in it. For instance, the captain and officers are showing wearing Germany navy uniforms." To provide the sinking effect, the set was tipped by hand using ropes and pulleys.

Newspapers erroneously reported the discovery as the first film ever made about the Titanic. But according to film historian Frank Thompson, the Éclair Moving Picture Co. Of Fort Lee, New Jersey, released a short entitled "Saved From The Titanic" just one month after the sinking. (This film is presumed lost, despite someone on Youtube trying to foist off an old documentary as this film.) The film starred actress/model Dorothy Gibson, who had survived the sinking.

This German film, whose title translates as In Night And Ice, was one of the first attempts to film the sinking of the Titanic. From a historical standpoint, that fact makes it interesting. But the film itself is not that entertaining. It's only about 42 minutes long, but there is one stretch which seems like an eternity as we just see people socializing in the dining room. You don't need the title cards to describe what was going on. A larger problem is that there are no characters to "latch on to." The ship's captain might have evoked some sympathy, but he ridiculously overacts. Although there is the irony of the captain yelling to the passengers "Be British!" in a German film two years before WWI breaks out. Plus I'm sure the Irish passengers were not impressed by this instruction. But I digress.

The film opens with what appears to be actual footage of people boarding a ship, and many of the scenes do take place aboard a ship. However, the miniature models are not convincing, but let's be honest ... the director did not have James Cameron's budget. One German reviewer wrote that the collision between the ship and the iceberg "looks a little as if a toy bouncing on the waves rams a couple of ice cubes."

The film does have an interesting backstory. It was made on a Berlin backlot by director Mime Misu, just two months after the Titanic sank. Presumed lost, it was discovered in 1998 after some publicity surrounding the release of Cameron's Titanic in late 1997. A 74-year-old retired film collector named Horst Lange remembered he had obtained a copy some twenty years earlier, paying around $120 for it. Lange said "it is an impressive film for June 1912. But there are mistakes in it. For instance, the captain and officers are showing wearing German navy uniforms." To provide the sinking effect, the set was tipped by hand using ropes and pulleys.

Newspapers erroneously reported the discovery as the first film ever made about the Titanic. But according to film historian Frank Thompson, the Éclair Moving Picture Co. Of Fort Lee, New Jersey, released a short entitled Saved From The Titanic just one month after the sinking. (This film is presumed lost, despite someone on youtube trying to foist off an old documentary as this film.) That slightly earlier film starred actress/model Dorothy Gibson, who had survived the sinking.

This isn't actually the first "Titanic" dramatisation ever made - the unfortunate actress Dorothy Gibson, who had the misfortune to travel on board the liner, was apparently rushed into a hasty reconstruction almost without being given time to change out of the clothes she had been shipwrecked in - but it is the oldest now surviving. And considered as a drama, it has most of the features that tend to make films of this era heavy going today - title cards that narrate what is about to happen before the cast proceed to act it out for the viewer, windmilling gestures in place of reaction shots (moreover, the director clearly had very little idea what occurred on the bridge of a ship beyond sweeping the horizon with binoculars), and some very primitive special effects.

What makes it interesting is the fact that it was, in fact, made at the era of the disaster, and hence preserves details that other films laboriously reconstruct: in 1912 they *knew* how a trans-Atlantic liner boarded her passengers and loaded her luggage, and what the cast would be wearing - because they were simply their everyday clothes. There are some fascinating pieces of (naturally) German archive footage spliced into the opening of the film, as well, including a shot of a full-rigged ship supposedly approaching the "Titanic". And the contrast between the early exterior shots, apparently using a real ship faked up to resemble the "Titanic" more closely, and the obvious model-work required to represent the iceberg is instructive.

Ironically I found this film to be of most interest before the iceberg came into view, at which point - as a story - it becomes rather ineffective.

The story behind this movie is more interesting than the movie itself, but that's okay, seeing as it's only about 42 minutes long, it's very straightforward, and it's also 110 years old. It's pretty easy to cut it at least some slack, for those reasons.

Apparently, this was made and released the same year the Titanic sunk, and that's exactly what it depicts: the lead up to the Titanic's fateful collision, the chaos it caused, and the rescue of those who survived. Being made so close to a tragic event, this could arguably be the first exploitation movie, too.

I feel like maybe it needed a little time before telling the story in such a direct way, but then again, who knows what people wanted back in the 1910s, or whether this film was seen as exploitative or educational back then. We can't ask anyone who was around when this came out, either; they're all gone.

Of course, the special effects used to depict the collision are kind of bad, but cutting to all the different parts of the ship one by one, all showing their reaction to the collision was effective. And even if there's little by way of story or characters (title cards tell you whether each character survived or perished as they're introduced), the brief runtime makes that more forgivable.

Overall, it's not a very good movie, but it's fascinating from a historical perspective, and considering its position as an early docudrama/possible exploitation film. Also interesting is how it was believed to be a lost film until a print was discovered some 86 years after its release (and the restored version on YouTube looks really good). It's another thing that makes this film more interesting to read about than watch.