TITANIC
US, 1953, 97 minutes, Black and White.
Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner, Audrey Dalton, Thelma Ritter, Brian Aherne, Richard Basehart,, Alan Joslyn, Edmund Purdom.
Directed by Jean Negulesco.
Titanic is a fictional account of the ill-fated maiden voyage of the ship in 1912. Technical conversations and details, however, are authentic. A more accurate account of the disaster was given in the British film, A Night to Remember with Kenneth More.
Titanic, while it spends a good deal of its time on the sinking, is a smaller version of The Ship of Fools' story and relies on the human interest of a number of characters. Central are the Sturgis family, expatriate Americans, rich, ambitious and arrogant. Robert Wagner represents Midwestern youth, Thelma Ritter is the tough, moneyed type of matron and Richard Basehart is an unfrocked priest. Although the film is not long and the characters are fairly conventional, the scenes of their interaction are acted well and do hold the interest. Thus, Titanic merits discussion about its characters and its disaster.
1. Are the Sturgis family a sympathetic group? Do you agree with the ambitions of the father for his children? Is the mother right in seeing her daughter as an arrogant prig and not wanting her spoilt?
2. Why did the Sturgis marriage fail? How did the impending disaster make the couple examine their consciences and make them realise that so much love was lost and opportunity wasted?
3. Julia's 'transgression', she says, was not so much of a mortal sin but an unpardonable breach of etiquette for her husband. What did she mean?
4. Do you agree with Richard Sturgis' behaviour towards Norman when he discovered the truth of his paternity? What should he have done? Why did he change his attitude before the ship sank?
5. Why did the screenplay writers introduce Robert Wagner's character? Did he play any dramatic role in the film besides cut the rope and fall into the water to be rescued?
6. What did you think of the episode of the unfrocked priest? Was he convincing? Did his explanation of relying on drink to sustain him in the difficulties of his slum parish seem plausible? Did he redeem himself? What was the point of the camera's showing the captain writing on the back of his cablegram to his family?
7. What impressions of life in 1912 did you get from the first class area, the Basques on the lower decks, the workers in the engine room?
8. Were the collision and sinking scenes well done? The rise of the iceberg before the credits meant audience awareness of continual menace and there were constant reminders of this.
9. Norman quietly gave up his place in the lifeboat. What would you have done?
10. Who was to blame for the disaster? For the fact that only 719 people got away in 35 lifeboats when there were about 2200 persons aboard?
