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Review
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There are two good movies on the Titanic disaster: A Night
to Remember (1955) starring Kenneth More, Titanic (1953)
starring Barbara Stanwyk and Clifton Webb. Technology has
improved a lot since then, so many people were excited by
the news that James Cameron had created a new version of
the story, called Titanic (movie names are not subject to
the usual rules of copyright). The special effects are
indeed amazing. In fact, some of the shots are downright
stunning. You will probably want to go see it for that
reason alone. As for the rest of the movie: plot,
character, dialogue, cinematography---Titanic is an
unmitigated disaster. It is an insult to your intelligence.
It is a Hollywood movie dressed up in silk and satin like a
cheap tart. Now it is one thing to make a movie with
brilliant special effects and admit to yourself and the
public that it's all just an entertainment anyway, so don't
bore me with complaints about substance or meaning or
artistic integrity. It is quite another to shamelessly
steal and pillage from other people's work and then pass it
off as your own original achievement, and Cameron does this
repeatedly. The scenes in which Ismay enters the lifeboat,
and when the band resumes playing after the life boats have
left, and when Molly Brown tries to rally her lifeboat to
go back for survivors, are stolen, almost frame by frame,
from Roy Baker's brilliant and scrupulous A Night to
Remember from way back in 1955. The worst thing about it is
that these are the only interesting moments in the film,
aside from the special effects. As for the love story, how
long will Hollywood continue to pass off this hokum about
effete British snobs being out-romanced by down-to-earth
uneducated sweaty Americans. We are asked to believe that a
beautiful English upper-class girl of breeding and
intelligence would turn her back on all her wealth and
comforts and blindly follow a penniless boy with a knack
for drawing into a new life in America. Well, if all Brits
behaved the way her upper-class fiance behaved, yeah, it
would be believable, but her finance is a cardboard cut-out,
a bald-faced caricature. He even grabs a stray child in a
belated attempt to get himself into a lifeboat and you
almost expect him to toss her overboard once he's in.
Cameron might as well have given him a black top hat and a
moustache and had him tie Kate Winslet to the railway
tracks. Kate Winslet does the best she can with the part.
Leonard DeCaprio does his best Huck Finn imitation, and
Kathy Bates is decidedly restrained as Molly Brown, in a
role that cries out for Bette Midler. It is reported that
Cameron gave up part of his percentage to get Kathy Bates.
What? Why? Why didn't the idiot give up part of his
percentage for a writer instead? Then we might at least
have had a film. So go see it, by all means. The special
effects are dazzling and Kate Winslet is pretty. Enjoy the
spectacle. Then rent yourself A Night to Remember and ask
yourself why they don't make films like that anymore.
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