281 - A Night to Remember, United Kingdom, 1958. Dir. Roy Ward Baker.

Sunday, October 8, 2017

281 - A Night to Remember, United Kingdom, 1958.  Dir. Roy Ward Baker.

She's going to sink, Captain. . . . It's a mathematical certainty.

So says Thomas Anderson, managing director of Harland and Wolff Shipbuilders of Belfast, Ireland, to Edward J. Smith, Captain of the RMS Titanic.

How long will she last?, he responds.

She should live another hour and a half.

I don't think the Board of Trade Regulations visualized this situation.

Captain Smith is the highest paid captain on the ocean.  He has had a long and distinguished career.  He is now taking his final voyage.  After traveling to America and returning to England, he will retire.

When he learns the news, however, his face suggests that his heart sinks.  He understands the gravity of the situation.  He asserts that there is to be no panic, and he begins at once to save the lives of as many passengers as possible.

There are 2,200 people aboard and room in the lifeboats for 1,200.

The boats are to be loaded with the women and children.

A Night to Remember is one of many movies about the Titanic.  It is British.  It was preceded in Hollywood by Titanic, directed by Jean Negulesco in 1953, and starring Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner, and Thelma Ritter.

The first Titanic film was Saved from the Titanic--a 1912 silent short released 29 days after the disaster and starring Dorothy Gibson, an American actress who had been on board the ship and who was rescued.  Gibson had gone on vacation to Europe with her mother when her film company, Eclair, called her back to work on a film.  She and her mother took the Titanic home and stayed up late playing bridge.  Because she was awake, she heard the noise of the iceberg, enabling her mother and her to make it aboard the first lifeboat.  Upon her arrival in New York, her producer and lover encouraged her to write down her experience in a script.  He sent a film crew to a retired ship in New Jersey, and they spliced together newsreel footage of the Titanic, of the captain, and of other ships together with Gibson's acting and narrating.  She wore the same clothes that she had worn during the sinking and rescue.  The film was an immediate international success.  However, Gibson suffered a breakdown from the trauma of what had happened, and after making one more film she did not work again.

Later that year, Germany released In Nacht und Eis (In Night and Ice), a half-hour dramatization focusing on the members of the crew and especially the radio operators.

In all, there have been more than twenty movies about the sinking of the Titanic.

This one is considered by many to be the best.

It was based on the non-fiction work A Night to Remember (1955), written by Walter Lord from his research of interviewing survivors and reading their own memoirs and articles.

The film's director, Roy Ward Baker, also did extensive research to make the film, including interviewing survivors himself, asking their input on everything from wardrobe to furnishings to events as they occurred.  The results show in the film, as it appears authentic to the minutest detail, unlike many period films made in the 1950s, which look like period films made in the 1950s.

The film begins with the May 31, 1911, christening and launch of White Star Line's RMS Titanic in Belfast, Ireland, blending real footage of the launch of the Queen Elizabeth with studio shots featuring a lady, shipbuilder Thomas Andrews and White Star Line president J. Bruce Ismay.

"I name this ship Titanic.  May God bless her and all who sail her."

The film will then follow the story as experienced by Second Officer Charles Lightoller, whom the crew affectionately call "Lights."

Lightoller and his wife are aboard the London and North Western Railway.  (How many movies have we seen this year that begin on a train?)  He is reading the paper and he comes upon an advertisement for Vinolia Otto Toilet Soap.  They, like so many companies in 1912, are using the Titanic as part of their advertising campaign.

The film cuts to a real ad from the real Illustrated London News, April, 1912.

"The New White Star Liner, R.M.S. "TITANIC" is the largest vessel in the world.  It is not only in size but also in the luxury of her appointments that the "Titanic" takes first place among the big steamers of the world.  By the provision of VINOLIA OTTO TOILET SOAP for her first-class passengers the "Titanic" also leads as offering a higher standard of Toilet Luxury and comfort at sea."

Lightoller chuckles and a man and wife sitting across the aisle from them take offense, as though Lightoller has behaved with effrontery.  They defend the ship, as being an object of national pride.  Mrs. Lightoller reveals to them that he is to be the second in command, and they apologize.  The scene conveys the strong feelings among the citizenry at the time.

Two men take inventory of the provisions being place on board, showing us how immense the ship is.

Three different groups of people set off from their homes on their way to the ship, a slice of life of the ship's passengers.

Lady Duff Gordon is one of them.  She is the first British fashion designer to achieve international acclaim.  She goes by the name "Lucile" or "Lucy."  She has introduced the ideas of professional fashion models and fashion shows, and she has developed slit skirts and low necklines.  She and hr husband will be rescued in a lifeboat.  In the film she is called Lady Richard.

The second pair is a newlywed couple from Liskeard in Cornwall, John and Sarah Elizabeth Chapman, on their way to a new life in Spokane.  During the sinking, as she is about to board the lifeboat, she decides to stay with her husband.  In real life she said, "Goodbye, Mrs. Richards.  If John can't go, I won't go either," and she stayed with him.  They died together.  His body was later recovered with their marriage certificate on him.  The film portrays this incident romantically.  In the film they are called Mr. and Mrs. Clarke. 

The third group are the Irish immigrants, a mother and daughter traveling in steerage.

We will board the ship.  We will follow the passengers from each of the three classes, and we will follow the crew.

The lives.  The ways of life.  The cultures.  The relationships.  The work.  The doing of duty.

We will see Molly Brown.

We will follow the efforts of the radio operators as they try to signal the California, just ten miles away and within sight.  Nothing they do, including the sending up of rockets and the use of the new Morse Code code SOS, succeeds in communicating to the other ship that they are the Titanic and that they are in distress.  The crew of the California merely think them to be another ship who is waiting out the ice and sending up rockets.

We will witness heroism and cowardice, love and fear, hope and despair.

Will Lightoller survive?  Who will?  Who will not?

In the end Captain Rosan will report that they found only one body of the 1,500 missing.  The rest have been swept out with the current.

The filmmakers tells us that changes have come about from this disaster that will make future voyages safer.

"I name this ship Titanic.  May God bless her and all who sail her."

*                              *                              *                              *                              *

"The newspapers say she's a veritable floating city.  Symbol of progress of man's final victory over nature and the elements."

"I know you've had no chance for a boat drill, but you're all seamen and you've got brains.  Now is the time to use them."

The final passenger list
332 first class
276 second class
708 steerage
2,208 total with crew

705 are rescued.  The rest are lost.

*                              *                              *                              *                              *

The film observes the spiritual lives of the people.

After the band disbands, they regroup for one more song, the 19th-century hymn "Nearer My God to Thee" by Sarah Flower Adams.

Nearer my God to thee, / Nearer to thee

There let the way appear / Steps unto heaven
All that thou sends to me / In mercy given
Angels to beckon me / Nearer my God to thee
Nearer to thee

Then with my waking thoughts / Bright with thy praise

Out of my stony griefs / Bethel I'll raise

So by my woes to be / Nearer my God to thee

Nearer to thee

Later a group prays the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father who art in Heaven

Hallowed be thy name

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth . . .

[multiple languages praying along]

. . . the power and the glory forever and ever

In real life a girl in a lifeboat said to her mother, "I know it'll be okay, Mother.  I said a prayer.  I've asked God to help us, and he will."

On board the rescue ship, the Carpathia, the minister prays,

Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we, thine unworthy servants, do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving kindness to us and to all men particularly to those who desire now to offer up their praises and thanksgivings for thy late services vouchsafed unto them.  We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, but, above all, for thine inestimable love and redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.  And we beseech thee give us that due sense of all thy mercies that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful and that we show forth thy praise not only with our lips but in our lives by giving up ourselves to thy service and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honor and glory, world without end.  Amen.