Somente Deus por Testemunha

I'm glad this fine piece of film-making from forty years ago is still readily available on video for all those who want an alternative view to James Cameron's gross, overhyped special effects extravaganza from 1997. Cameron spent more on making "Titanic" than the White Star Line spent (adjusted for inflation) on building the original liner and her two sisters, the "Olympic" and Britannic". The British producers of "A Night to Remember" spent in total on their film about as much as Cameron did on hairstyles for "Titanic", yet tell the story much better.

The style is semi-documentary from a book by Walter Lord, an American journalist who had actually travelled as a child on the "Olympic." Hence time and place are evoked seamlessly even if the representation of the ship using small models and back projection does not match Cameron's 9/10ths scale replica. Filming is in black and white, wholly appropriate as most of the action is at night, and there's not a bad performance from any of the large cast, several of whom went on to greater things.

All the story is there - the elegant huge new liner with passengers and crew neatly divided by class, the reckless overconfidence (21 knots into an icefield when several other ships had radioed they had stopped nearby,) the ignored ice warnings, the strange behaviour of the Captain of the nearby "Californian," the general heroism of the "Titanic's" officers and crew, and the lovers, young and old, who would not be parted.

Anyone who came out of Cameron's film feeling vaguely cheated (as I did) should see this movie for a much better presentation of the story, and a vastly better script. Not that that would have been hard - Cameron was a mug to write "Titanic" himself - his talents lie elsewhere, in appealing to the chimpanzee (primal fear) in all of us. The current interest in a shipping disaster which occurred 86 years ago does suggest it has a broader cultural significance than our desire to experience vicarious danger at the movies. "A Night to Remember" at least give some basis for thoughtful reflection.

Three years ago I wrote comments on the 1997 James Cameron film "Titanic" for this database. Either because of the number of Oscars collected by this film, or its fantastic production cost of some two hundred million dollars, I felt ashamed when reporting that I found it to be a most uncomfortable combination of a historical documentary and an entirely fictional romance. I found it hard to understand why such a major film should have been split between two such disparate styles of presentation. Although I had recognised that several scenes in Cameron's "Titanic" appeared to have been directly copied from the excellent 1979 TV film "S.O.S. Titanic", I did not feel this was adequate to explain the strongly documentary flavour of so many other sequences. All was explained very recently when, thanks to TCM, I had an opportunity to see "A Night to Remember" for the first time. This is an almost completely documentary 1958 film based on a very thoroughly researched and near definitive book of the same name that was prepared from the testimony given at the official enquiries in the U.K. and the U.S.A., and written by Dr. Walter Lord.. Much of Cameron's film was also documentary and appears to have been directly based on this much earlier film, the remainder was a romantic drama that was essentially incompatible. Cameron probably decided on this approach because ANTR, with no well known stars in the cast, failed to achieve the same success in the U.S.A. as in the U.K. I can now understand that featuring the romance in the way which Cameron did was probably intended to enable his film to create a greater degree of viewer involvement with the unfortunate passengers on the liner and so help to avoid this problem. Unfortunately in my view the documentary and the fictional parts of his film never melded.

These comments on the more recent film are necessary before I can meaningfully report my impressions when watching ANTR Although filmed in monochrome and created with a much more modest budget, ANTR is a film that I will find it very hard to forget. Characterisation of both the passengers and crew seemed to me to be spot on, there were none of the occasional caricatures which jarred so severely in the later film. The drama of the events was left to speak for itself and this created a much more powerful film. The three aspects of the Titanic disaster which have gripped public interest so strongly for almost a century are the sudden impact on a community of 2,000 ordinary people from all stations in life as they gradually realize that they probably only have another hour to live, the impact of the rigid class structures of the period on the way in which this situation was handled both by the passengers concerned and by those in authority, and the enormous number of "what if?" questions that the disaster raised (such as what effect pressure to win the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing may have had on the seamanship shown by the officers). All three of these aspects are fully featured in the film, but often in quite subtle ways, and none is given excessive weight. The camera-work and attention to details of presentation, such as the creaking and groaning from the tortured ship, are truly outstanding. Special effects in the 1997 film are admittedly much superior (after all $200 million must buy something!), but those in ANTR are quite advanced for its time and are more than adequate to prevent any serious jarring notes from arising as the film is viewed. Ultimately a film has to be judged primarily by the credibility of the acting and direction, not from the special effects, and I certainly support the view of the majority of IMDb users that these raise ANTR to the status of an exceptionally fine, if not almost unique, movie. A documentary presentation of a major marine disaster which is realistic enough to closely involve most of its viewers will never be everybody's choice of film to watch; but for those who wish to see it, this film will provide an exceptionally rich viewing experience.

Including the very first movie that dealt with the Titanic disaster, SAVED FROM THE TITANIC (1912) starring Dorothy Gibson, an actual survivor who wore the same outfit in the movie that she had on that fateful night just a few months earlier, there have been TEN movies made covering the sinking, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, based on Walter Lords' ultimate reference work of the same name, was the 6th. The film has no equal! For those who are interested, the other nine ARE chronologically:

TITANIC (1915) TITANIC: DISASTER IN THE ATLANTIC (1929) TITANIC (1943) TITANIC (1953) A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958) SOS TITANIC (1979) TITANIC (1984) TITANIC (1996) TITANIC (1997)

The REASON that A NIGHT TO REMEMBER excels, is that it is a straight up docudrama of the event. Historical accuracy (lets forget the "split,"... although actually "suggested" by a few eye-witnesses at the time, it was believed the ship had foundered intact) was observed, the main characters were vastly better portrayed than in later films and the "scale" of the disaster far more keenly felt, for all James Cameron's $180 million! Kenneth More made an unimprovable-upon Captain Lightoller and Laurence Naismith simply WAS Captain Smith. (The less said about Bernard Hill's loopy characterization in Cameron's epic, the better!) Those who wish to compare multi million dollar digitization to that which was available in 1958 need to get REAL and for all that money, and exciting as Cameron's was - it just didn't either LOOK or feel anything more than, well...a massive film-set! The 1958 version went to the heart of the tragedy...and took the viewer with them. A NIGHT TO REMEMBER will remain a tribute...THE tribute to that night of madness. Little things, David McCallum fighting for his life-vest, Michael Goodliffe as Thomas Andrews - dignity personified waiting for his last moments, the drunken cook - they were all worth more than $100 million dollars worth of fx! You can't BUY credibility. This could never have been an American tale - it didn't work with the 1953 Barbara Stanwyck version and it didn't ring true for Cameron (good though it was as a movie rather than as the tragedy!) Did anyone notice dear old "Q" (Desmond Llewelyn) below decks and old Brit-turned-Aussie favorite Stuart Wagstaff, as a steward in Steerage?

I am nothing short of amazed by what the filmmakers pulled off. Before I saw this movie, I tried to write a script that would encompass the whole story of the Titanic. I had stacks of Titanic books scattered around me, a huge map of the Titanic spread out in front of me, and I was overwhelmed by the sheer mountain of anecdotes and facts and technical details and contradictions in survivors' accounts. Reconstructing the event seemed impossible, and finally I abandoned the project by the time I got to about 1:30. Then I saw A Night to Remember, and wouldn't you know, it was exactly what I was trying to do! Kenneth More's portrayal of Lightoller is perfect. Laurence Naismith is heartbreaking as Captain Smith. The factual, historical, and technical detail is so thorough that this may be the most meticulous historical movie ever made -- certainly that I have ever seen. Somehow the stark black-and-white cinematrography is more realistically convincing than James Cameron's full-color treatment, in which things are inexplicably blue. The thing that disappointed me the most about Cameron's film was the lack of reverence for the historical characters. Lightoller, my personal hero, came off as an cowardly twit, Captain Smith as an incompetent fool, Ismay as the force of all evil in the universe, and Benjamin Guggenheim's change into evening ware as an excuse to get drunk! A Night to Remember had that reverence that was so sorely lacking in Cameron's film. Lightoller is portrayed as the hero that he was. Captain Smith is a fine captain who is understandably ovewhelmed by the magnitude of the tragedy facing him. Ismay is irritating, but tries to help out and be a responsible president -- and when he jumps into the lifeboat, well, would any of us do different? And Guggenheim's final stand brings tears to the eyes. The drama of the Carpathia is as exciting as any fictional Hollywood action film. This is the only Titanic movie that addresses the problem of the Californian, and though Lordites will object to the rather anti-Lord portrayal of the events, the facts speak for themselves. If you want to be picky, you can complain that the movie doesn't go into the politics behind building the Olympic and Titanic, or the near-collision with the New York, or lots of the little personal stories, but let's be fair: the movie has two hours to tell the story of, as Walter Lord put it, "the death of a small town." It's simply not possible for a movie, or even a really thick book, to cover everything. I don't think it's possible for a better movie to be made about the Titanic than A Night to Remember.

The Titanic was to be the greatest ship ever made, a veritable city on the sea moving between England and New York. Made in Belfast, the ship travels to England before its maiden voyage, which it makes loaded with over 2,100 people ranging from the richest gentlemen in first class down to those in stowage seeking a new life in America. However, a series of errors and oversights result in the Titanic striking an iceberg and ripping a gash along the side below the water level. As the "unsinkable" ship starts to fill with water the shortcomings of having only 1200 lifeboat spaces sinks in.

It has become very fashionable now to hate James Cameron's Titanic and it is the norm now, not only to prefer this film but to actively hate the 97 film in any review of other versions! I'm not a fan of the rather bloating modern film but I will refrain from making this review about that film and will focus on the one I've just seen. The first thing you notice here is how quickly the film moves and, after only a very brief introduction to the characters we are underway and hitting the ice. Shorn of romantic subplots and heart-tugging sweeping scores this is a very good approach and it simply lets the facts of the event and the real horror speak for themselves. In the remake we were supposed to get our emotional attachment to one or two characters based on their love for one another; here the film respects our humanity enough to know that we will be touched by the sheer number who died and the manner of their death. This works much better and it is genuinely eerie to see that large ship slip below the surface to a barrage of screams from unseen thousands – that the effects are not as good doesn't matter because they are good enough and the emotional impact more than covers for them.

This is not to say that the film lacks characters because you do tend to care for everyone and the film did very well in delivering little things without getting in the way of the rather documentary style form. The horror of the death is as well told as the horror of those watching it occur from the lifeboats; I liked the guilt of the designer and the guilt of the men who climbed into the lifeboats etc, these little touches work much better than inserting large fictional sections. With this sort of performance the actors do well – all realistic with none really upstaging the film with ham. Moore is a good lead and only at the end is his delivery a bit flat – but that is more the fault of a wordy conclusion. The rest of the cast do very well with realistic performances of fear even if they are being directed into generic class groups – simple but, with the delivery of the material, it works.

Overall, to me this is the best telling of the Titanic disaster that I have seen. The factual approach is consistently interesting and, without our attentions being directed to one or two people, the emotional impact is greater than I expected and I was quite chilled by the whole thing. For those irritated and put off by the sweeping sentimentality of the modern version, this film is the one for you.