In Nacht und Eis

The sinking of the Titanic was a shocking event in 1912 and four months later, this movie about the event was made. The characters shown are unnamed, but described; there's little doubt that the audience knew their names.

The choices of whom to show may seem peculiar to the modern audience: the captain, the officer who spots the ice berg, the telegrapher who stuck to his key, some waiters and the black gang; the passengers we get to see are first class passengers. If there is anyone from the lower classes, they are incidental.

Is this a feature film? The copy I saw was 35 minutes in length, and handsomely tinted. For a modern audience, that would be a long short subject, but in 1912 it definitely was. Because the mechanics and the acts of the movie are the interest of this film, the acting and characters are undefined.

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.

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.

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.

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.