Titanic Historical Commentary - a scene by scene look at the film

I'd like to do an extensive film commentary, and whether I can take this to the places I want it to go will remain to be seen, but for films like Titanic and JFK, doing a scene by scene analysis and delving into the non-fiction side as well as the fictional sounds really interesting to me. We all know pretty much what happened when Titanic sank on April 14th-15th 1912, but because there were no audio or visual recordings possible at that time, we are dependent on people's memory and testimony - sometimes given weeks or months after the disaster occurred. It creates a really interesting effect - take a step back, and everything is clear. We know exactly what happened. The ship side-swiped an iceberg at 11:40pm ship time, sent out distress signals (the first hard pieces of evidence which are set in stone), fires rockets, quickly gathers as many passengers as possible into lifeboats with the time constraints the crew have, and completely sinks by around 2:20am, two hours and forty minutes after the drama started. But what happens when we try to take a closer look?

When we take a closer look, Titanic is a bountiful source of endless mysteries - the mood shifted as those still onboard realised the ship was going to sink, and the more time that passed, and closer to the end we got, the less information of value we have - those with a chance to tell us were rowing as far from the ensuing disaster as they could. Without a machine that can see through time, solving these mysteries is nearly impossible - but the questions that come up amongst scholars are surprising, and these ones exist side-by-side with death, horror, tragedy and high drama - making them seem darker and more interesting. 654 adult passengers survived - each one with their own story (nearly all of them contradicting each other in some way), many of which can be traced back to the lifeboat they managed to board. In some cases the stories have been told many times, but more often there are voices that haven't merited the same attention - it's interesting to look at the film closely to see the added details James Cameron felt should be included, but which occur as background to his story involving Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose Dewitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) - two fictional characters amongst others.

In regards to that story - some love it and some hate it. I've had a lifelong fascination with the steamship R.M.S. Titanic, and I've seen the film a few times, along with other films which depict the events of that night. I'll talk about what I like and don't like about it as I go through the commentary, which will be pretty detailed and scene by scene if not shot by shot. Cameron films are not where we're going to see nuance, surprising character detail, interesting complexity or anything like that. In a James Cameron film there's a certain bluntness and straightforward simplicity when it comes to character - so any intricate or delicate balance is thrown out in favour of broad stereotype and loud, brutally announced narrative moments. Cameron is a details man when it comes to effects, art design, action and set decoration - but character and story will often come second and third to the spectacle he's trying to produce. We'll see a lot of that in Titanic, but thankfully, as someone interested in the details behind the fictional story he's created, he focuses on what I'm focused on in this particular movie.


My father was obsessed with this one historical event - and he was obsessed with the ship. It was his hunger for more and more information that set me upon a path that has led to pretty much the same. For years in the early 80s, the dream was to find Titanic and bring it back to the surface - somehow reclaiming her, and undoing a moment in time we wish we could redress. Every time I see her advancing on that wall of ice, I want her to get by unharmed this time. She never does. In 1980, the Clive Cussler book Raise the Titanic was adapted for the big screen. It was a terrible movie. It was a big budget film which flopped, and really deserved to flop. That moment when the ship is brought back to the surface though - wow. That's quite a moment. What I didn't know at the time was that, even if the ship had of still been in one piece, the idea of raising it from the depths of the Atlantic was ridiculous. It's 12,500 feet down, and the ship weighed tens of thousands of tons. When salvagers managed to raise a 20 ton piece of the ship's hull, it took a monumental effort. The state the ship is in now, any chance to raise either half would result in it's disintegration. In any case - it's a moot point, as the ship is dug in deep and in pieces. Even raising it piece by piece would take many decades and untold millions or billions of dollars.

In the years before it was found (and there were serious questions about whether it could be found, or if it ever would be) I watched all the various films we had on the disaster. A Night to Remember was clearly the best, and is still a classic today, released as part of the Criterion Collection. There were those lesser films, Titanic (1953) and S.O.S. Titanic - a 1979 Made for TV production which substituted the R.M.S. Queen Mary for Titanic, though those of us who knew the ship well were unimpressed. None of them show the ship breaking in half, because up to the time the shipwreck was found, nobody thought it had. Even though roughly half of the survivors recounted it breaking in two, they were disbelieved over those who stated that it sank whole. Excuses were given for those thinking it had - they'd heard the boilers or other items shaking loose and crashing through the ship, and they'd seen the stern suddenly rise, making it look like the ship had broken. It seemed impossible - that Titanic could have been ripped apart. She was too strong.

In 1985 it was suddenly announced that Robert Ballard, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, on a deep sea diving expedition, had found her. Photographs of the wreck came through slowly but surely. At first any view was incredible, but as time went on and equipment improved we caught more and more incredible sights. We learned that the ship had broken in two at the surface, just as those witnesses had claimed. We learned that there was a field of debris stretching for miles. We learned that the bow had plowed into the mud at the sea bottom so hard that it had buried itself deep - forever hiding the iceberg damage. Conflicting theories abounded - and it payed not to take too much notice. At one stage we were told that it wasn't the iceberg that sank her - that there was an explosion after the iceberg struck which doomed the ship. It was all wrong. Hypothesis after hypothesis based on the evidence gathered around the wreck. I just wish they'd dig up all that mud and expose the damage the iceberg did. Ultrasound surveying revealed that there wasn't a huge gash, which is proposed in all the literature published before the wreck was found. If you look at the proposed gash, you'll see that the ship would have sunk in minutes if it were true. Plates buckled, and water roared in. The damage was enough.

In the mid-90s we started hearing about James Cameron's film - and what we were hearing wasn't good. The movie's production had turned into a money-hungry monster that was going to sink the famous director. Production delays and effects were dragging things out, and the blasphemous words Heaven's Gate were being bandied about. I hadn't heard of such disastrous tidings since Superman IV was in production - you'd hardly think that this was going to be one of the most successful films of all time. The press had this one earmarked for failure. All of that kind of faded once we started seeing scenes from the film - the most realistic depiction of the ship and what happened that night. Cameron obviously cared about this subject matter a great deal - which is something I didn't know at the time. The sheer visual impressiveness reverberated for a couple of years once released - the ship itself more of a star than DiCaprio, although he came out of the film with a massive career boost and an adoring legion of teenage girl admirers. My father had seen the film twice at the movies before I even had a chance to go.

That brings us up to date - but we should always remember that 1,500 people died that night. This wasn't a fire at a fireworks factory where nobody gets hurt so we can all enjoy the show. A little reverence should be paid, and I find to do that it's best to think of the disaster on more human terms. This wasn't a grand story - a stage contained in iron with propellers attached - it was a conveyance carrying passengers like you or I, living their lives onboard in as ordinary a way as you can imagine. Some people picked at their food, some people chastised their children and some people tried not to put weight on their foot, for there were blisters on their toes. They were real people - most of them terrified to be suddenly confronted with dying. They weren't taking part in some gussied up opera, they were just making their way. They'd rather not be a part of history in this way - they'd rather live their lives all the way through, and leave history to somebody else. To them Titanic was just another ship - there was novelty, because everything was brand new, but that's as far as the romance went. They had their lives to live, problems to confront, and they did their best to survive...

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I remember when all movies had opening credits. It felt natural to me, because it always happened and in my childhood years I wasn't even aware that most really old movies had all of their credits at the start - allowing an abrupt end : "The End", that's it. All over. It wasn't until the 90s, mostly, that I started seeing experiments - films that would just flash us the film's title, and forgo any credits. Later on, I'd notice in films like The Ring that the film in question wouldn't even give us the title. It would just...start. Titanic gives us "Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox present" and then "A Lightstorm Entertainment production" then the title - "TITANIC" Then it gets straight to business - but in that opening minute and 20 seconds it manages to do what it can to put us in a reverent mood - even if it gets a little tricky to those of us who aren't really aware of what's what.

James Horner's score comes in when the screen is still black - a few simple deep, deep, bass tones - so you know this is very serious. It imparts some kind of tragedy of unholy size. Then, the kind of angelic choral singing - this was sometimes done by an artist known as Sissel, sometimes it was done using computers. What we're hearing when we see the faded sepia-toned images of Titanic is "Hymn to the Sea" sung by Sissel. It has a kind of Irish feel to it, for me, which I've always connected to the fact that Titanic was an Irish ship - but that's just what I feel. When I hear that music I think of Ireland and Irish music. It all fits. Depending on my mood it can sound a little too much, but that's James Cameron for you. He won't be subtle. He'll crush you. Nevertheless, the music gets a pass from me - it sounds right, and it sounds sorrowful and melancholy. It also matches the shots we're seeing - but those shots are simply shots from the movie.

I've always guessed that when some people see the sepia tone of the film, how there's a lot of noise and it's faded they think, "Oh wow - those must be real shots of the Titanic." Those of us that have seen a lot of films over all eras will instantly pick up that this in no way resembles 1912 footage - and then later will see the same footage in the movie, this time presented normally. I don't know if people get fooled or not - but anyway, there's no footage in known existence of Titanic leaving Southampton port. It wasn't as big a deal as Olympic's first voyage, whose footage is usually shown and kind of left vague to try and make people think it's Titanic. When Olympic was built it was kind of like that era's Apollo 11 compared to Titanic's Apollo 12. The first ship of that size and class got a lot of attention on it's maiden voyage. Despite Titanic being slightly larger - a few feet or so - it wasn't a big deal anymore, because it was the second near-identical sister ship. So we have very little real footage of Titanic, and Olympic's footage is often passed off as Titanic - to this day.

Much can be seen in this 1911 footage of Olympic (famous departure at 3:50 onwards):

Titanic's title then appears over empty ocean - the lifeless sea which has taken the lives it wanted, and everything fades to black. We see two submersibles descend, and get a great shot where we see them above us, and follow them directly as they pass our viewpoint and descend further into the murky black depths below. I really like that shot.

4000 tons every square metre. Just try to imagine 40 tons, which is a great deal of force, and then try to imagine 4000 tons. The area of the Atlantic that Titanic sits on, the bottom, decaying, is an extremely inhospitable place for humans to be. It's damn cold - and that pressure will bring anything but the sturdiest vehicles we can build with all our technological prowess undone. In 2023 the Titan submersible, built privately by Stockton Rush imploded on it's way to the wreck - and these implosions occur so rapidly (less than 20 milliseconds) that the human brain has no time to register what's happening. Our minds simply don't operate at that kinds of speed. It's what has made the wreck so inaccessible, hard to find, and such a Mount Everest - so much so it attracts adventure seekers. It's hard-to-get-to watery grave is also one of the things which makes photographs and video of the wreck a wonder to behold.

After the great shot showing 2 submersibles descending into the dark - disappearing, we cut immediately to two submersibles gliding along the sea floor. I'm not sure if these shots are real - but many of the shots we're about to see are. They were made by Jim Cameron when he visited the wreck in 1995, before pre-production even commenced on Titanic, and it was with these shots - just their presentation - that he got approval from Peter Chernin and 20th Century Fox to go ahead with the project before a screenplay had even been written. Chernin would go on to become chairman and CEO of the Fox Group from 1996 to 2009. I love the upcoming real shots simply because they are the real deal - and a whole lot better than any mock-up of the wreck would have been. Those with familiarity with the wreck would have been able to spot the difference immediately.

When we transition to inside one of the submersibles we hear the voice of Bill Paxton - he's playing the part of Brock Lovett in Titanic, and in a very James Cameron way we'll learn more about his character very soon. Paxton had a bit-part in Cameron's The Terminator, and would be called on again to appear in Aliens and True Lies. He's saying that the sub's within 13 metres of the wreck - and that we should see it. The bottom of the Atlantic is far enough away from sunlight that there's absolutely zero natural light - and the lights on the sub can only penetrate so far, probably on the verge of what Lovett has just said - "13 metres". We get a nice radar readout on the sub which shows the wreck layout. Then a shot of the approaching bow. An incredible sight. Then a shot of Brock looking out one of the tiny portholes on the submersible. I don't know about you - but I'd love to go down and see the wreck of the Titanic in person (after recent events, there's no way I'd go though) - however, if all I can look through is that tiny porthole, it would be something of a restricted sight-seeing trip. We get another shot of Titanic's bow, getting larger before we cut back to Brock asking the person piloting the sub to take her up over the bow rail.

The person piloting the sub, who we cut to in a lovely bit of unnoticeable film editing (Conrad Buff IV, James Cameron and Richard A. Harris edited Titanic - which ended up winning the Best Editing Oscar at the 1998 Academy Awards) is the famous Dr. Anatoly Sagalevich, explorer and all-around incredible guy. He plays Anatoly Milkailavich (basically himself) and will get a famous line later in the film, probably because he'd developed such a friendship with the great film director. Then we cut to the real footage that Cameron put together on the pre-Titanic expedition he went on - the sub, with all it's lights blaring, ascending over the bow of the Titanic wreck. A great shot. Then we see the bow again from 1st person perspective. Anatoly fiddling with knobs. A shot of the submersible rising above the bow, this time from a perspective which is below and behind it. Then another great shot - this time from the other direction, looking at the bow from behind it with the sub approaching us. Then another truly beautiful shot from above, with the entire bow section lit up from the sub's lights as we watch the two submersibles travel along the bow section. When we cut to a closer shot we can tell that this is the real wreck - looking ancient due to the silt and decay that has been eating away at it for around a century.

While the subs are doing this, we can hear the various mechanical submarine sounds as they glide - and it's immediately apparent that this film also has some truly wonderful sound effects coming our way throughout. Often they're hard to describe. Titanic won an Oscar for Best Sound Effects Editing (Tom Bellfort and Christopher Boyes) and Best Sound (Gary Rydstrom, Tom Johnson, Gary Summers and Mark Ulano.) Throughout this sequence, they'll just about earn their Oscars in Titanic's first 10 minutes - all of the various aspects relating to sound are on fine display, and this is another aspect of the film I really enjoy.

We now cut to a perspective we haven't seen before. One that's basically through a video camera's view-port. "REC" is flashing in the upper right-hand corner. Lovett says, in a very theatrical way, "Seeing her come out of the darkness like a ghost ship still gets me every time." We cut away to see he's actually holding the camera and recording himself. "To see the sad ruins of the great ship still there, where she landed at two-thirty in the morning of April fifteenth nineteen-twelve - after her long fall, from the world above." As he approaches the end of that sentence he starts talking slowly in an exaggerated way, like a person in awe. His other companion starts cracking up with laughter, and says "You are so full of shit boss!" We cut to a bearded man, and it reveals Lewis Abernathy, playing Lewis Bodine in Titanic. Abernathy is a bit of a jack of all trades - his filmography isn't very large, but he's had a hand in writing along with handling special effects in other films. His role in Titanic is by far the largest he's ever had. Lewis Bodine is a big heavy-set man with ginger coloured hair - and much of it.


We cut back to Brock, smiling at Bodine's comment, then back to a real shot of the subs travelling towards the bridge area of the wreck. Throughout all of this, the score gets very serious - bass hums that intonate something very grave, spectral and large. We cut to vision of the wreck's cranes, covered in rusticles. Rusticles are created by the bacteria which are eating away at the iron on the ship - one day, all of this will be gone. We glide by the side of the promenade deck on Titanic, seeing the various windows and portholes which give it a strange, very out-of-place feel. No need for them now, other than as access points for those who are curious as to what's inside. We cut again to the subs from a distance - one going over the top of the wreck, and one travelling by it's side. We hear Brock again - "Dive six. Here we are again on the deck of Titanic. Two and a half miles down. 3821 metres." We intercut between views of the sub by the side of the wreck, and Brock holding the camera. "The pressure outside is three-and-a-half tons per square inch." We see Anatoly. "These windows are nine inches thick, and if they go, it's sayonara in two microseconds." Brock is holding the camera to his face. He looks deadly serious, but is acting.

Suddenly, everything in the sub shifts - and we see Brock's real face. He says "Alright, enough of that bullshit," and throws the camera on the floor. Obviously to be saying this stuff at such a tragic place as this is out of the ordinary, but Cameron wants us to know that these guys care nothing about Titanic. They are here for something other than recording the wreck. I'd say that even if people were looking for treasure, they'd learn what it means to be solemn when they see the wreck of Titanic - but this is a film, and the audience needs to know who these characters are. We get a shot of the sub descending towards the officer's quarters, with the eerie open windows, some of which have glass still in them - remarkable considering the violence of the ship's sinking. These are still real shots of the wreck. The subs glide and make their sounds. Brock puts a jumper on. "Just put her down on the roof of the officer's quarters like yesterday." Anatoly replies "Sure." Throughout we cut back and forth between the subs hovering over the wreck, and the interior of the sub.

One of the subs settles on the roof of the officer's quarters. This has always struck me in two ways. Firstly - how do these explorers know that roof isn't about to cave in? I guess that these subs are so finely balanced in a buoyancy kind of way that the weight of them on the wreck hardly registers - although all of the subs that have sat there throughout all these years have made quite a mark and indentation. That leads me to the second thing - for all the complaining about people salvaging items from the debris field, nobody mentions how sacrilegious it seems to just park a sub's butt right on top of Titanic. Clank! Leaving a mark on what's meant to be a holy tomb. I don't mind though - because it's allowed many a mini-sub to go down what used to be the main staircase and explore the interior of the wreck, like Brock is about to do. (Brock really feels like a fake name for a movie like this - common in fiction, uncommon in real life.) Through radio conversation, one sub tells the other that they're at the grand staircase. We get a shot of the interior of the other sub with three extraneous members of the cast, as they announce that they're launching their mini-sub.


These little subs, which can enter the wreck and record stuff inside Titanic, are great. Whomever designed them is a genius. A red miniature sub can be seen leaving the bigger sub - this one called "Duncan" - it travels along the deck, then down the side in real footage. The same footage Cameron showed to the suits at 20th Century Fox. The three extraneous extras, one wearing a VR headset, control Duncan remotely. Brock instructs him to enter the first class gangway doors, to work "D" deck reception area and dining saloon. In the book which chronicles Cameron's exploration of the wreck, "Ghosts of the Abyss", you see what that area looks like today. We see Duncan approach the opening in the hull, then we switch to a veiw from inside Titanic, as Duncan approaches a door with a decorative iron grill in it. Then we see from the VR headset's perspective, which is Duncan's perspective. Then we cut again to Duncan travelling through the doorway, where one door of what were once two is absent.

Brock's little sub is called "Snoop Dog" - and as he announces that it's "on the move" we see it descending down the gaping hole which was once crowned with a beautiful oval glass dome. It's going down the grand staircase, which today has completely gone - either destroyed during the sinking or eaten away in the century since. Most experts believe it separated from the ship during the sinking. As the sub sinks into the wreck, the daunting score deepens and gets louder. James Horner also won an Oscar for his work on this film. Lewis is the one who has the VR headset on in Brock's sub, and Brock instructs him to go down to "B" deck. In real footage, we see from the sub's perspective the internal structure of the ship, with chandeliers now dangling from their wires. Lewis pilots the sub into "B" deck. We see the sub enter from inside, by gaping windows and another forlorn hanging chandelier.

Now we get to some shots which are not real, as light seems to bring items on the silt-covered floor of the deck to life, then fades to darkness. First a ladies shoe, then a pair of glasses, then a doll's face. As this happens the score becomes haunting and sad, with "Hymn to the Sea" striking up again. A great little moment in the film.

As Lewis controls the little submarine it approaches a narrow doorway that it has to really squeeze itself through, bumping into the side at one point. Brock becomes a little unnerved, and Lewis asks him to "chill" as Brock keeps asking him to "watch it!" The remains of some furniture rest inside, amongst the silt. (A lot of this is no longer real footage.) From the subs POV we see one of the strange, hardy kind of fish which somehow exists down here - glowing in the sub's light - and we also approach a fireplace, which has the remains of a clock on it's mantlepiece. Cameron would uncover nearly the exact same thing in a subsequent dive down to Titanic long after he made this film - except for the fact that the clock on the mantlepiece glowed a very gold-leafed shine, and the clock seemed to be in pristine condition. When we cut to the sub's "eyes" it looks like a vision from 2001 : A Space Odyssey. Some kind of crab is crawling along at the foot of the fireplace. Amazing that these creatures live down in this completely unhospitable depth, in the complete darkness.


In the meantime, the other sub is passing "the piano" - which is completely fake. If a piano has ever been discovered on Titanic, I would have seen it by now. (Please somebody, send me pictures to prove me wrong.) As the POV passes the piano, we hear odd piano notes being struck as an aural compliment to what we're seeing.

Brock becomes excited as Snoop Dog's POV comes across another doorway. "That's it!" he exclaims. "That's the bedroom door." Lewis says he sees it, and we cut to the interior of the room - the remains of a bed clearly outlined in the mini-sub's light. "We're in!" I often worry when I see Titanic expeditions, about the wire that connects a mini-sub to the big sub getting tangled. They always have to be connected in the umbilical way - wireless control is impossible down here. "We're in baby! We're there!" What are these guys looking for? "That's Hockley's bed. That's where the son-of-a-bitch slept" says Brock. There was no Hockley though - he's a fictional character for this film - and I'm not sure how much of the footage at this stage is real, if any. When we see a bathtub and toilet, Lewis quips "Looks like somebody left the water running!" Titanic's first joke. It's not bad. Brock suddenly stiffens - "Go back to the right." Lewis does, as we see the mini-sub swivel from just above it. He tells Lewis to get closer to a wardrobe door with something underneath it. "You smelling something boss?" he asks. Brock tells him he wants to see what's under it.

It's at this stage that Lewis goes "Give me my hands, man!" - and we see that his mini-sub is equipped with complex arms and hand-like graspers which can manipulate objects. I guess these subs might have that equipment - there must be some way all of the salvaged items from the debris field have been brought to the surface to be preserved. I've never seen any real ones in action though. Lewis controls the arms and graspers using a complex sub-interior set of twistable rods with his hands. It's a neat little arrangement. Licking his lips, and following Brock's commands, he gets a hold on a wardrobe door and flips it. I seriously reckon that wardrobe door would collapse into little bits if it were tried in real life. There's the added fact that silt, sand, bits of door, and bits of everything would create an impenetrable field of dust which would take hours to settle again. He drops it. A safe is revealed. Brock smiles. Lewis says "Oh baby baby, are you seeing this boss?" Brock says "It's payday boys!" Inside the safe is the film's McGuffin - or is it?

All of that highlights just how good the cinematography, editing, score, and sound are in this film.

Tune in next time where I repeatedly ask, "HOW THE HELL DID THEY GET THAT SAFE OUT OF THE SHIP??"

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The sudden burst of bright light is matched by a crescendo of musical accompaniment when we suddenly cut from the submersible to the surface - it's a really brilliant and exciting moment. It's at least going to wake anybody up who has fallen asleep during Titanic's first 10 minutes. The score really takes a hard right into "adventurous" territory. Sounds much like the Jurassic Park score does - James Horner does a great job. In fact, for the next three shots the Oscar-winning editing, cinematography and score combine to enliven what's going on. We swoop over the water towards a ship - the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh (or just Keldysh) which has been on Titanic expeditions in real life, and is a real research vessel. It will be used for this film as well, bringing a lot of authenticity to these segments of the movie.


While we're enjoying these great fly-by shots over the bright ocean and Keldysh, we see that the safe the characters had found on Titanic is being hoisted onto the ship. It's in a netted-rope kind of sack, pulled by a cable. We shift focus to the deck of the Keldysh, and Lewis is there high-fiving a member of the retrieval team and shouting "Ka-ching!" Brock comes along and says to the other guy "We did it Bob!" Bob is played by Nicholas Cascone, a television actor with varied small guest spots on many varied shows over the years. Okay, lets lay this out now, so far :

Lewis has disrespected the site by laughing, and telling Brock he's "Full of shit."
Brock has disrespected the site by saying "Enough of this shit," while describing the tragedy.
Brock says "It's payday boys!" when he finds the safe.
Lewis goes "Ka-ching!" when the safe makes it to the surface.

Cameron is not known for his subtlety, and this is a great example. Each one of those moments is a little crude and artless, and instead of being left to infer and understand what's going on naturally we're told directly. We're appraised of what's going on, explicitly, four different times so we know that these guys don't respect Titanic as a gravesite and pay no heed to the fact that the event which sunk her was a tragedy. He resorts to having his characters use words like "payday" and "ka-ching" to show how they're in it for the money and nothing else. It's this dumbing down that kind of irks people who would prefer more character realism - and there's a lot of this kind of stuff in Titanic. It's one part of the film that I'm critical of.

One other thing also - how in the hell did those guys get that safe through the various rooms and corridors of the ship? How did they drag that safe out and put it in that net/sack, so it could be lifted to the surface? I've pondered and pondered. It's a difficult object - but there is a handle that can be hooked onto, and perhaps air bags could reduce it's weight and make it buoyant enough to pull through the corridors. I don't consider this a plot hole in the film - just a point of interest. I don't think any objects have been recovered from inside the wreck, but I do remember a TV show hosted by Telly Savalas, where he opened a safe retrieved from somewhere amongst the carnage down there. It was a big disappointment - there was only a small bag with some pretty uninteresting coins inside it instead of the undreamed of treasures hoped for or the unlikely ships log. If I remember correctly, Savalas seemed kind of strange hosting that show. Like he'd been drinking or something.


Onboard the safe is lowered to the deck as brown, soil-saturated water splashes all over. The team is in celebration mode. Lewis is shouting "Who's the best baby!" and won't let up until Brock says "You are," whereupon Lewis kisses him. Some extra produces a buzz saw and gets to work desecrating the safe immediately. Lewis pops a champagne bottle and starts sprinkling everyone. Brock gets a big cigar out and shoves it in his mouth. "Ok, crack her open!" The safe's door is pulled off with a hook and chain. Mud and gumps of what look like bank notes spill out. Brock leans down, the sun brilliantly spilling onto his face, and starts to reach around inside like he's having a lucky dip. In a shot that would seriously disturb any archaeologist, preservationist or someone with a scientific and/or historical bent, he just starts mushing all of the paper around, pretty much squeezing and destroying it before it's even been dipped into that "preservation liquid" or finely separated and saved. Just mush that history Brock. Don't mind the coming generations.

Behind Brock, in a reverse shot, a guy that looks exactly like George Costanza from Seinfeld is recording him with a big camera. Brock keeps slopping more history onto the floor with disgust and contempt. He pulls out a folder (which we all know is Jack's art portfolio thing) which might be the ship's much yearned for logbook for all he knows, but he throws it on the floor with scorn like it's a piece of rubbish. He destroys the last remnants of paper - at least he's thorough - and then keeps feeling around into every single crevice. He has a look on his face like he's just stepped on his daughter's pet hamster. A real "aww jeez" look. He lets out a little tiny "shit". Anatoly M. Sagalevitch, like the absolute champ he is, says his famous "No diamond?" (No Oscar?) Lewis says "You know boss, the same thing happened to Geraldo and his career never recovered." Nice humour at such a disappointing moment, and one that I have to cover.

"The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults" was a two-hour television spectacular that failed in the most humiliating of fashions. It was hosted by Geraldo Rivera and featured the opening up of a walled-up underground room at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago once owned by Al Capone - you can imagine how it was hyped up, and what incredible items of interest might be stored in such a place. Treasure? Weapons? Dead bodies? Secret film? What would Capone wall-off, and keep out of the hands of both police and rival gangsters? Apparently, absolutely nothing. When the "vault" was finally opened it was completely empty save for some debris and empty bottles. The whole build up was for nothing, and it was a staggering televised embarrassment. Geraldo told his crew, "Seems like we struck out," went to the bar next door, and got staggeringly drunk to try and blot the whole incident from his mind - then he retreated to his hotel room, putting a "do not disturb" sign on his door.

Impressive undertaking considering Titanic isn't even in your top 10.

Honestly, though, I'd rather see a scene-by-scene analysis of Harold and Maude or Phantom of the Paradise.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

I hear you - lets just say this run-through will help me find what works and what doesn't for me, so I can develop my 'commentary voice' and be ready to do a great job on whatever really great film I might decide to do in the future.

After Lewis mentions Geraldo we look at Brock through the video camera's POV - he looks annoyed, and tells the George Costanza lookalike fellow to "turn the camera off" - he's probably only stubbornly kept going because of the fact that recording stuff is his one job.

We immediately cut to a lab on the ship. We see the folder Brock threw on the ground in disgust earlier as it's being transferred from one cleaning tank to the next - and I imagine there are solutions in each tank which preserve and maintain what's on the pages of the various paper artifacts recovered from the wreck. If I hadn't of seen this done many times before, I never would have believed that letters, money and certificates etc would survive being on the ocean floor for a 100 years. There's a whole host of documents that have been saved - probably by being inside leather folders and wallets. Some materials at that depth aren't a food source for any kind of creature, and it's these that look as new as the day they were made when they're retrieved and dusted off.


As that's going on, Bob talks to our number one man, a phone in his hand - "Brock, the partners would like to know how it's going." They both have looks on their faces that are saying "Aww jeez man, this is messed up." Almost like kids when they're in trouble. Brock tries to do his best to talk with confidence. "Hey, Dave, Barry, hi. Look, it wasn't in the safe. But hey, hey. Don't worry about it. There's still plenty of places it could be. Hell yes! The floor debris in the suite, the mothers room..." As he's speaking, a scientist is spraying an old piece of paper or a document with solution - doing it with an implement that looks like one of those sucking contraptions we get shoved in our mouths at the dentists. Those ones that keep getting stuck on your lip. "...the purser's safe on C deck..." Bob interrupts to be a smartass - "Jimmy Hoffa's briefcase," he says, and it's something I've never noticed until now. Brock continues - "...a dozen other places."

By this stage the paper being sprayed with solution is starting to reveal what the document being preserved is - a drawing. It's a drawing of a naked lady reclining in a pose. She's wearing a big, diamond-encrusted necklace. Brock is still spinning hopes to the moneymen - "Guys, look, you're just going to have to trust my instincts. I know we're close. We've just got to go through a little process of elimination." His weathered face changes though, when he spots a monitor which is showing an image of the drawing having the muck sprayed off of it. Bob sees Brock's face, and in turn he looks very surprised. Everybody is acting. "Hang on a second!' Brock says. He goes straight to the tray. "Let me see that," he says while he hands the phone back to Bob. Bob tells the financiers "Ah, we may have something here guys." Brock lifts the drawing out of the tray to get a good look at it. "Where's the photograph of the necklace," he asks. Bob tells the faceless people on the phone that "We'll call you right back." There's much motion, grabbing of stuff and excitement. He holds a photograph up to the drawing, and we cut to a nice shot of both side by side. They're obviously the same necklace.

Then the shot continues in a pan to the bottom right hand corner of the drawing. It has been dated - April 14th, 1912, J.D. The night Titanic sank. This raises all kinds of questions as to where the necklace might be. If the woman was wearing it that night, and she was presumed dead without a body having been recovered, it might be sitting anywhere on the ocean floor.

We cut to a shot of Bill Paxton's well-tanned, unshaven face and the camera does a very slight zoom towards it. In what is about to be a very nice link to another shot, he says "I'll be *********." He says it in just the right way.

Another shift in location - this a rare intrusion into somebody's house. We pan across various picture frames and if you're quick you'll spot Kate Winslet in a few. An actress posing...a safari...on an elephant...outside a shack...in India. We hear a voice on the television - "Treasure hunter Brock Lovett is best known for finding Spanish gold..." - the house almost looks as if a hoarder lives there. There are artifacts crammed everywhere. A lady in her mid-to-late 30s is walking with a plate and cup, saying "It's okay, I'll feed you in a minute," to a lively small dog, and in the meantime we keep hearing the television - "Now he has chartered Russian subs to reach the most famous shipwreck of all, the Titanic." People often put the prefix "the" before Titanic, like you would "the" queen or "the" president. It's funny. I mean, when we talk about Elvis we don't call him "the Elvis". I guess it's just a subversion of language that's crept into our vernacular.

In the meantime we zoom and dolly past a goldfish bowl and see that behind it there's a view out onto the veranda, where an old lady is doing some pottery. The television won't relent - "He is with us live via satellite" and it reminds me that once, Titanic expeditions were a big deal, often covered in news broadcasts and on television. I remember one that tried to hook people in by giving a live feed right from the wreck site - so that we could see Titanic broadcast live into our living rooms, "...from the research ship Keldysh in the North Atlantic. Hello, Brock." The camera zooms in to the lady's wrinkled hands on the wet pottery she's spinning. We hear Brock, shouting above the din onboard the ship - "Hello, Tracy! Of course, everyone knows the familiar stories of Titanic. You know, the nobility of the band playing to the very end and all that." Yeah Brock. And all that stuff. Then he tantalizes us, "But what I'm interested in are the untold stories. The secrets locked deep inside the hull of Titanic."

With that statement, he captures the interest of the old lady - she lifts her head. She's Gloria Stuart, 76-years-old, but with heavy make-up on to make her look 100. Stuart's fame went right back to the early days of horror, starring in The Old Dark House in 1932, and The Invisible Man in 1933. She was born July 4, 1910, and therefore she was 21 months old when Titanic sank. During the 40s she dabbled in art, and would focus on this career change until the 1970s, when she reappeared in films such as My Favorite Year to dance with Peter O'Toole in one scant scene, and in Wildcats with Goldie Hawn. Her role in Titanic was a huge bookend to her varied life, and she'd manage to add an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress to her varied achievements through it. She also won a Screen Actors Guild Ralph Morgan Award for her role in this film, along with other awards. A fine moment for her.


So yes - if I'd survived the sinking of Titanic, my ears would prick whenever the subject came up on television. Especially if I'd kept it a secret, and some treasure hunter was poking around in there. Brock is making good use of his air-time, he continues - "And we're out here using robot technology to go further into the wreck than anybody has ever done before." The reporter, Tracy I assume, fires her broadside, saying, "Your expedition is at the center of a storm of controversy over salvage rights and even ethics." The camera, in the meantime, has been snaking through the house from the perspective of the old lady, turning a corner until the television finally comes into view. We see Tracy and Brock onscreen together in squares, with a blue background. Tracy continues, "Many are calling you a graverobber." This is a familiar argument. Brock fires back, "Well, nobody ever called the recovery of the artifacts..." the middle-aged lady interrupts, because the old lady is staggering through the house towards the television. "What is it?" Her face hits the camera lights.

This younger lady is Suzy Amis, someone who has dabbled in modeling, environmentalism, plant-based diet promotion and of course acting. She married the director, James Cameron, in 2000 and the two have remained betrothed ever since. She never need worry about money now. This role is most definitely her biggest, but she did also appear in The Usual Suspects. In Titanic she plays Lizzy Calvert, the granddaughter of the old lady who hasn't been identified yet. "Turn that up dear," the old lady says, walking into the house with her cane. She's really using her intuition. Brock continues - "I have museum-trained experts sent out here making sure that these relics are preserved and catalogued properly." The whole TV screen is now dedicated to Brock on the Keldysh. "Take a look at this drawing that we found just today. A piece of paper that's been underwater for 84 years." We see the drawing on the television screen. Then we return to the lady's face - it looks like she can't quite comprehend what she's seeing. Brock continues, "And my team are able to preserve it intact." We return to the drawing. "Should this have remained unseen at the bottom of the ocean for eternity when we can see and enjoy it now?" He has a point you know.

Now we're back on Gloria Stuart's face, amazed. "I'll be *********," she says.


I had a good laugh when I saw which words were censored here. It makes what Brock and the old lady say seem much, much worse than what it actually is.

Some establishing shots are really nice, but due to time constraints I think Cameron had to limit their duration. There's one of the Keldysh here at dusk, after Gloria Stuart has said "Well I'll be God-damned." It lasts a couple of seconds - enough time to establish that we're back here, but not long enough to admire it's aesthetics. Brock is standing underneath a submersible that's being readied for launch. There's a voice offscreen - "Brock!" Bob appears, "There's a satellite call for you." Brock's annoyed - "Bobby, we're launching. You see these submersibles going in the water?" Bob insists, and while poking his finger at him says "Trust me, buddy. You want to take this call!" Brock still isn't convinced - "This better be good," he says. Bob motions for him to follow.

Both characters walk over to a satellite phone while Lewis and at least 7 extras work at launching the submersible in the background. Bob says, "Now, you gotta speak up. She's kind of old." At this point, if Brock doesn't get what this is all about he's an idiot. As soon as Bob mentions "old" it ought to click. This might not be Rose, but it has to be someone involved with the events back then. Brock, however, is now angry, and let's fly with a sarcastic "Great!" - as if this old person has just called to wish him all the best. He puts the phone to his ear, and starts talking - "This is Brock Lovett. How can I help you Mrs...?" He realises he doesn't know who he's speaking to, and leans over to Bob to get her name. He obliges - "Calvert. Rose Calvert." Now, knowing the person in the picture is Rose DeWitt Bukater, he really ought to be putting the puzzle together. By the way - I love the name "DeWitt", and think there is no cooler last or middle name out there. "Mrs Calvert," Brock says, still testy and not at all cognizant of what's what.

We cut back to the house - something I forgot to mention about it is the golden light it always seems to be bathed in. The old lady is sitting at her table, with Suzy Amis/Lizzy sitting off to the side. The old lady drops her bomb. "I was just wondering if you had found the "Heart of the Ocean" yet, Mr. Lovett." She knows he hasn't.


[Rose's house is described in the screenplay - : "Description of house - 'A small rustic house. It is full of ceramics, figurines, folk art, the walls crammed with drawings and paintings, things collected over a lifetime. A glassed-in studio attached to the house. Outside it is a quiet morning in Ojai, California.'"]

We cut back to the Keldysh. Brock looks like he's been shot. He looks like he's been caught. Bob's nodding at him. "Told you you wanted to take the call." Brock recovers his composure. "All right, you have my attention, Rose." Interesting that he uses her first name already. "Can you tell us who the woman in the picture is?" He's really an idiot.

We cut back to Rose's golden home, the pink flowers in the background adding a really lively touch. Rose looks like she's enjoying being able to disturb Brock's peace of mind with her words. The camera starts zooming in to her face. "Oh, yes. The woman in the picture is me." Bang! One of my favourite moments in the film - and it knows to immediately underscore the moment by quickly and loudly cutting away from the conversation.

There's a really brilliant shot inserted here, and it works hand in hand with the score really upping the adventure aspect of what's happening - loud and exciting. One of the best moments in the film not related to real historical events. We see just the bright sea - daytime - and then helicopter blades enter the shot at the bottom of the screen. We're floating above a chopper, and we're watching it enter the shot from behind us. After the whole helicopter has entered the shot we cut to another, different shot which shows it's side. We can see through one of it's windows that Rose is sitting in it, with her dog, which looks like a Pomeranian. Rose looks uncomfortable, and actually looks like my mother during the last years of her life. Lizzy is sat next to her, wearing sunglasses. Then we go back to observing the helicopter from behind, with it taking up the whole frame, but we're still able to recognize the Keldysh in the background. These are really great shots.


Now we cut straight back to the deck of the Keldysh, where Lewis and Brock are in mid-argument. Lewis is yelling, "She's a god-damn liar!" They use the expression 'god-damn' a lot in this. "Some nutcase seeking money or publicity." We follow the two around the deck and the hanging submersibles. "God only knows why. Like that Russian babe, Anesthesia." A little joke here, at the expense of the Lewis character. Hard to notice though. Bob pipes in to let them know - "They're inbound!" We cut back to that great shot of the helicopter, with both it and the Keldysh side by side in the frame, now the same relative size. When we go back to the Keldysh deck and argument, Lewis is now providing the audience with exposition - "Rose DeWitt Bukater died on the Titanic when she was 17, right?" Brock agrees "That's right." So Lewis continues, "If she had lived, she'd be over 100 by now." Brock fires back "101 next month," which he's obviously learned from Rose or another source. We see the helicopter approaching in the background. "Okay, so she's a very old god-damned liar!"

We cut to the two ascending some stairs which lead to the helicopter pad on the Keldysh. Lewis still hasn't given up arguing, or giving us exposition. "Look, I've already done the background on this woman, all the way back to the 20s, when she was working as an actress. An actress! There's your first clue, Sherlock." I really don't know why being an actress in the 20s would lead one to assume she's conning Brock though - is it because she can act the part? I'm shrugging. Funnily enough, Lewis is nearly describing Gloria Stuart, who started her career in movies in 1932. "Her name was Rose Dawson back then. Then she marries this guy named Calvert, they move to Cedar Rapids, and she punches out a couple of kids. Now Calvert's dead, and from what I hear, Cedar Rapids is dead." Ouch! I wonder how that went down in Cedar Rapids. Brock has the winning card in the argument, because of this one thing he explains : "And everybody who knows about the diamond is supposed to be dead or on this boat, but she knows!" Most of the argument was caught with a shot POV towards the front of the men, moving backwards as the two (with Bob behind) walk the length of the Keldysh - it cuts to behind at the last second - the way it's edited, you don't really notice.

Now we cut again to a shot of the helicopter landing on the Keldysh. A second cut, and we now have Brock, Lewis, Bob and an extra getting a blast from the rotors. An insert of the helicopter's tires touching down is seen. Then one with extras unloading suitcases and putting them on the deck, with Lewis and Bob in the background. A bit of comedy - there's nine suitcases - with one of them being a huge trunk. "She doesn't exactly travel light does she?" Lewis yells to Bob. We cut away to a shot of Rose being lifted out of the helicopter in her wheelchair. It takes Brock, Lizzy and four extras to do that job, with someone yelling "Hurry up, give him a hand." Probably Brock, because it doesn't seem like Cameron likes giving extras many lines. While she's being lowered, he's speaking to her already. "Mrs. Calvert. I'm Brock Lovett. Welcome to the Keldysh!" She nods to acknowledge him. He continues barking orders - "Okay, let's get her inside there!" Lizzy jumps out and he welcomes her - "Hi Miss Calvert!" and she answers "Hi!" He adds "Welcome to the Keldysh!" (Someone says "Thanks" - I think it's meant to be her, but her lips don't move.) I think there was probably meant to be a bit of romance between these two, but the film and this framing current-day story ran so long they left it out. A voice comes from within the helicopter - "Hey!" to get Brock's attention, and then someone passes a goldfish bowl with the fishes still in it to him. He stands with it, nonplussed.



We now transition to the inside of the Keldysh - the room old Rose gets. Goldfish. She's fussing with her pictures - and oh boy, she's one spoiled lady. Lizzy obviously fusses, but here comes Brock and Lewis - Brock asking "Are your staterooms alright?" Lewis is waving behind him - which is odd considering his attitude and what he's about to do. Rose says they're very nice, and asks if he's met her granddaughter Lizzy (I swear, there was meant to be a romance.) "She takes care of me," Rose explains. Lizzy explains that they were already introduced topside, "remember nana?", and we see Lewis behind Brock roll his eyes, suggesting this demented old lady is now just a burden. Rose informs them that she has to have her pictures when she travels. Which is kind of weird. Then, Brock says "Can I get you anything? Anything at all?" That's nice, and helps make up for the lack of respect shown so far. Rose wants to see her picture.

I look at Rose's room to try and discern if it's really a room on the Keldysh. The view out the windows isn't of the open sea, but instead a railing and some other structure. It's a small room, and all I can see are suitcases, pictures, a dog, people and crates. It's madness in there.


I kind of snagged myself on the fact that my close examination of the film has become so detailed, and it's surprising how long it actually takes until we're on Titanic.

There's a clever shot next, from inside the dish with the picture and formula in - so we see wavy water and Rose's face looking in. How did they do that I wonder? So much effort for such a brief moment. We see the picture. Rose's eyes - widening. They close. Then we go back in time for very brief moments. Snippets of the picture being drawn. The golden hue of a stateroom on Titanic. Leonardo DiCaprio's eyes. He has a chicken pox scar. Rose's closed eyes.

Now we hear Brock speaking. "Louis XVI wore a fabulous stone that was called the Blue Diamond of the Crown which disappeared in 1792." Is this true? Was there a Blue Diamond of the Crown that went missing? Yes, it's true, but the mystery has been solved and the result is a bit of a let-down. In 2005 it was conclusively proved that the Blue Diamond, which was stolen is actually the famous Hope Diamond, that has been recut twice during the ensuing two centuries. It had reappeared and gone missing again in the interim - one very adventurous diamond, passing from person to person. Brock says the diamond went missing "...about the same time old Louis lost everything from the neck up." Here we cross over into movie fantasy land - "The theory goes that the crown diamond was chopped too. Recut into a heart-like shape that became known as The Heart of the Ocean." We see that same black and white photo of the Heart of the Ocean necklace when Brock holds it up. "Today it would be worth more than the Hope Diamond."

What nobody knew was the fact that the Blue Diamond of the Crown turned out to be the Hope Diamond.

I've been hearing about that ship all my life, read several books on it and seen several of the movies about it, including the diving into the wreck voyages. Being somewhat of a history geek, I have less interest in the grisly details than I do in the metaphoric aspect of the disaster. It's 1912, and while the signs are there for anybody who's paying attention, we all know now that the European world is about to begin the descent into the horrors of WW I and the Russian Revolution. The Titanic is the last great moment of that era of hubristic technology and shipbuilding expertise. It's also, arguably, the peak moment of British classism. The arrogant hubris is magnified by the fact that the ship was not sunk by a German U Boat as it might have been 2 years later, but that it sailed right into an iceberg in known, hazardous waters.

Once Europe goes down the toilet a couple years later in the trenches, returns to economic problems, Bolshevism, troubles in Ireland, horrifying German inflation, the Great Depression and then the rise of the Nazis and the Italian facists, followed by WW II and the Holocaust, all in about 40 years, the idea of the huge ship and all of its well dressed passengers being the showcase of civilization seems almost comically absurd. The Titanic seems a lot like a lost piece of delusional nostalgia that went horribly wrong.

It's still claiming victims as we saw recently. When will the next movie be made?

I last left us with word of the Blue Diamond of the Crown, which disappeared in 1792. Compared to the Hope Diamond here, it was later found out to be the Hope Diamond.

Old Rose speaks up - "It was a dreadful heavy thing." Damn worthless diamond that was worth more than the Hope Diamond. "I only wore it this once," she says. Not a fan of that diamond at all.

Now Rose's granddaughter speaks up, surprising me with "You really think this is you, Nana?" as they look at the old drawing. Now - c'mon. I mean, if you think your Nana is having "one of her moments" and is pretending or confused, would you really go with her into the middle of the Atlantic ocean, travelling by taxi, train, bus, plane and helicopter out to a cold and windy research vessel with what looks like all your worldly possessions? It would be more likely you'd give her one of those "I'm concerned about you" looks and demand she go to bed." I guess Lizzy is just bored and will do anything to get out of the house.

"It is me, dear!" says Old Rose with the same look of astonishment I had. "Wasn't I a dish?" she unfortunately adds, giving me another uncomfortable feeling about the dialogue in this scene. Is Old Rose using 1920s talk to describe her old self? I mean, she did live through all the decades up until the 90s - she didn't arrive in this film fresh out of a time machine. If I were her grandson, I'd be looking at her earnestly and asking her never to use the word "dish" again, even in reference to plates and crockery. I'd also feel very uncomfortable looking at that drawing. It's the 1912 equivalent of your nude pictures being leaked online.


Brock is having a ball though, as we cut to him (his face again bathed in sunlight, I laughed at that as I observed it) grinning and chuckling. "I tracked it down through insurance records," he says with his loose lips. He obviously trusts these strange people already. "An old claim that was settled under terms of absolute secrecy." We switch to a shot where we see Brock, Old Rose, Lizzy, Lewis and Bob - and Brock kneels down in his best 'Game Show' pose as he posits : "Can you tell me who the claimant was, Rose?" It would be tempting to mess with him and answer "Captain Smith?" but she plays it straight and says "I should imagine someone named Hockley."

The film cuts to Bob, looking incredibly excited as we hear Brock, "Nathan Hockley, that's right." We're moving forward with the plot while still giving exposition, which is very well done. We cut to Brock as he continues, "Pittsburgh steel tycoon. The claim was for a diamond necklace his son Caledon bought his fiancée. You." He nods, to underscore the fact he believes her. We cut to her. She closes her eyes, as if moving though memories that are slightly uncomfortable. "A week before he sailed on Titanic." We reverse shot so we see Brock's face. "And it was filed right after the sinking. So the diamond had to have gone down with the ship," he says with a bewildering lack of awareness. He seems to be forgetting that Rose isn't dead as previously thought, and is instead sat facing him. Who owns it if she's kept it all these years? The insurance company? Old Rose? The Hockley estate? He must be hoping to hear something different, real bad.

So Lizzy leans over to look at the drawing. The look on Old Rose's face is priceless, and a dead giveaway. "April 14, 1912" she says. Now Lewis gets a line - "Which means if your grandmother is who she says she is, she was wearing the diamond the day the Titanic sank." Now we cut again to Brock's face, still bathed in sunlight. He's looking very earnestly into Old Rose's eyes, "And that makes you my new best friend," he says with a grin. So ends a somewhat awkward scene. It did well to impart so much crucial information to us story-wise, but this tip-toeing around a 100-year-old lady, her naked 17-year-old image and a quarter-billion-dollar diamond also has some awkward dialogue and us tip-toeing around some problems with logic.

Now we switch to a scene where Old Rose is looking at artifacts. Titanic artifacts are priceless. If you had only one, it would be akin to winning the lottery. It's what makes them so tempting for treasure hunters, but you can't ignore the fact that they're also precious for the coming generations - to actually be able to see real relics is amazing. Brock, as usual, is taking charge, saying "These are some of the things we recovered from your stateroom," to Old Rose. She picks up a mirror, and Gloria Stuart does a first-rate piece of acting - looking astonished here - great stuff, and the first time so far I've really been impressed by a performance. "This was mine," she says in breathless amazement. She takes in a short breath and holds it, "How extraordinary!" she says to Lizzy.


This is a moment I've really thought about over the years. To be brought something like this through time - lets say an object that was some kind of favourite thing of mine when I was 17-years-old. Would I remember it still, when I'm 100? Probably. There are things I'd recognize now, and if I'm at the half way point, I think I'd remember them till the day I die. It would indeed be extraordinary to see something like that again. Something you thought lost forever. Rose continues to examine her mirror, "And it looks the same as it did last time I saw it." We cut to a shot from her POV, and we see her face in the mirror. "Hmm," she says, seemingly unsatisfied, and in one of the best comedic lines and biggest laughs of the film, she adds, "The reflection has changed a bit," as she gives the mirror back. She picks up some jade hair slides that look impressive and expensive - damaged by a near century under the ocean and the ship's sinking. When we cut to her face again, she's looking visibly upset.

So as Old Rose sits, looking at the hair slide, Brock slides down to his knees beside her - really adding a bit of dramatic weight to the awesome line : "Are you ready to go back to Titanic?" All ominous - that wouldn't help her at all. But she nods. Just as well because a movie stuck on the Keldysh with these guys would be running out of steam by now.

So, now it's computer simulation time. Nobody on the Keldysh really needs it - but obviously Cameron thought that if people knew exactly how the ship sank that night, then nothing would need to be explained to them later in the film. I have the luxury to do that though - explain as we go along. Lewis gives a running commentary - "Okay, here we go," and we see from an underwater vantage point, a CGI ship grinding against the underwater iceberg, making a series of dents in the ship's iron plates. "She hits the berg on the starboard side, right? She kinds of bumps along, punching holes like Morse code..." and for some reason he makes a 'Morse-code' noise "-dit!-dit!-dit! along the side..." Now we see Titanic with invisible sides, better to show us how the water is flooding the compartments and rooms. "...below the water line. Then the forward compartments start to flood."

We get to the tragic part - "Now, as the water level rises, it spills over the watertight bulkheads, which unfortunately don't go any higher than E deck." Unfortunately. The fact that the designers didn't have these compartments go all the way up - it's just insane. E deck isn't very far up. There's no good reason for leaving this Achilles heel, and Thomas Andrew must have been asking himself "WHY?" over and over as his ship sank. There was plenty of space above the water line for large open spaces - and not much reason for such low bulkheads. I know, I've just said that twice - but it deserves repeating. Titanic, rather than being unsinkable, was actually quite vulnerable. "So now as the bow goes down, the stern rises up. Slow at first, then faster and faster, until finally she's got her whole ass sticking up in the air."

We cut to a close-up of an enthusiastic Lewis describing the sinking, for a moment. Just to underscore the lack of consideration for the lives lost, and the trauma felt. "And that's a big ass!" He says with relish. "We're talking twenty, thirty thousand tons. Okay?" The computer simulation shows the ship - above water and below - sticking her rear end out of the water. "And the hull's not designed to deal with that pressure. So what happens?" Lewis shows with his hands, at the same time the computer simulation does, and makes a raspberry sound "kchtt! She splits, right down to the keel." The simulation shows Titanic breaking in two. "And the stern, falls back level." We cut to a shot of Old Rose, looking apprehensive. Lewis continues, "As the bow sinks, it pulls the stern vertical, and then finally detaches. Now the stern section just kind of bobs there like a cork for a couple of minutes, floods and finally goes under about 2:20am - 2 hours and 40 minutes after the collision." Another insert of Old Rose's face, looking serious.

We cut back to Lewis and his simulation. Many of these shots have shown both him and the computer screen, Lewis explaining with his hands, and the screen showing a visually exact representation. If you look carefully, you can see Sagalevitch in the background. We're now seeing what happened beneath the surface - things no living person ever saw, but which can be summed up from the evidence available. "The bow section planes away, landing about a half a mile away, going 20, 30 knots when it hits the ocean floor." Then Lewis makes crashing noises, much like a child does. We see the bow section end up in it's familiar position. He never shows us, or explains to us, what happened to the stern section - and for some reason that has always bothered me. Now we cut to a short shot where this guy's whole face fills the screen - he's grinning in enthusiastic happiness. Subtle James Cameron at work once more. "Pretty cool, huh?"


So now we focus on Old Rose. Unlike Brock, her face is always shaded, cold, blue/grey and dour, and unlike Lewis she's serious. "Thank you for that fine forensic analysis, Mr. Bodine" People that old never speak like that, but anyway, "Of course the experience of it was...somewhat different." Stuart makes those last two words come out in a quaver that elicits the possibility she'll start to cry. It's very controlled though, and well done. She's outdoing everyone so far in the film. Brock says, in typical Cameron dramatic style - "Will you share it with us?" We cut to Lizzy, Old Rose, Bob, Brock, Sagalevitch and Lewis, all in a row - every character we've met so far. Then, as muffled radio chatter is fed through into our ears, Old Rose swivels her wheelchair around, standing up - there's a great edit here which keeps the fluidity going, she turns and looks up into the upper left-hand portion of the screen. looking like she's facing an old foe. We cut again, and she's walking past TV screens showing the underwater wreck. Nice stuff. She faces one of them. We see her face, full of wonder, fear, uncertainty....then we see from her point of view, walls inside the wreck...a doorway. Her face. Welling tears. Fear. Then an ornate iron and glass pattern in one of the doors. Underwater sediment flows in an invisible current...

Suddenly we flicker back to 1912. The doors as they were. Smiling crew opening it for whomever is walking through. We hear the Titanic band, and then we're back to the wreck. Ancient. Long dead. When we cut back to Old Rose her face really is now at it's breaking point. She sighs like in resigned defeat. She shakes her head no. "Oh!" she utters as she covers her face with her outstretched fingers. This has all been terrific. She sobs, and we see Lizzy approaching, partially hidden by Old Rose. We cut to another angle, and Lizzy is saying "I'm taking her to rest." Old Rose puts up a fight though. "No." Lizzy fights back "Come on, Nana" then Old Rose really puts her foot down, "NO!" and walks back to the gang, all watching her. Brock turns to Bob - "Give me the tape recorder," because who knows. Might be worth a few bucks. If she dies on the way back, we don't even need the release forms.


So Brock sits on his chair back to front - he has a way about kneeling or sitting, Brock does, and he says "Tell us, Rose," putting the tape recorder on a table nearby. We cut to Rose, backgrounded by TV sets all showing different parts of the Titanic wreck - mostly the bow section. "It's been 84 years..." she says, and then we hear Brock before cutting back to him, saying "It's okay. Just try to remember anything...anything at all" We then cut to a side on shot of Old Rose, springing her 'Wasn't finished' surprise. "Do you want to hear this or not, Mr. Lovett?" she asks. A shot of the whole gang minus Lewis next, and they're...all giving wildly differing expressions. We cut back to Old Rose. "It's been 84 years, and I can still smell the fresh paint." We're zooming into Old Rose's face. "The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in. Titanic was called the ship of dreams. And it was... It really was..." I'll leave the transition till next time. We're 20 minutes into the movie - and the story proper, both historical and fictional, is about to begin.

So, we're at the point where we transition from the narrative present-day to 1912, and we do so with the first of many great transitions we're treated to in this film. One of the best I've ever seen. We've had a few decent transitions so far, but these are special ones, and I'm numbering this "Great Transition No. 1" - as Gloria Stuart is saying "...and it was, it really was," we zoom over her shoulder into a monitor behind her which is focused on the Titanic wreck's bow. Suddenly, as we keep on zooming in, the bow transforms into that of the ship as it was when it was readying to depart Southampton in 1912 - and we see the rest of Titanic materializing behind it. The camera pans upward and rightward as the zoom slows, and we get a magnificent view of Titanic with crew working feverously on her. It's an incredible sight. The "Southampton" section of James Horner's score brings the bright day to life. We keep panning to the right, and see crowds beneath the gigantic ship, bustling and ready to board. It's a great shot.

You could be absolutely forgiven these days if you just assume this shot was created with CGI - it's what most filmmakers would do. It's not the case though - Cameron actually built a one-sided façade of the great ship, not quite 1:1 scale. You can watch it being built with time-lapse photography here :


The ship façade Cameron had erected was nearly the size of Titanic - close enough to pass off. He'd built the starboard side of the ship, but it was the port side that was needed for this "Southampton" sequence - so what did he do? He decided he'd reverse everything in post-production, which meant everything in these scenes needed to be mirror-image reversed. The writing on trucks and sailor's uniforms, signs, what people did - it all needed to be reversed and required a frustrating amount of concentration. Anyway - great shot. Our real introduction to the ship. The next shot is from the ground of the dock, we see the ship to the left of us and a green "Francis Ltd - Southampton" truck passes us by, along with pedestrians - once it has passed we pan left and see the enormous façade - people at the front leaning out of the ship and waving.

James Cameron was justifiably proud, and that's probably why another great, great shot is kind of awkwardly inserted here - this time from high up to the right, showing the ship on our left. We're nearly at boat-deck level, and the camera is both lifting and panning left to show off the fact there's a Renault car being crane-lifted into the ship's hold. The soundtrack intensifies and the sheer beauty of the shot overwhelms any notion of how it's inserted. The next shot keeps the continuity going as we see sailors directing the crane and passengers running around, waving and looking at their new surroundings. The camera's view is lifting so we get a good look at the front of the decks beneath the bridge. When we cut again a steward is yelling - "All third-class passengers with a forward berth this way please! This queue!" We're back on the solid ground of the dock, and in front of us are hundreds of people crammed together. We can still see the ship to our left. There's a man holding his infant child closest to us as the shot pulls back. "It's a big boat, huh?" he asks her, and she replies "Daddy, it's a ship!" He smartly replies "You're right."

The little girl is being played by Alexandrea Owens, now called Alex Owens-Sarno and, of course, an adult. Her journey as an actress is a little strange, considering the fact that after Titanic she never again appeared in a movie, or on any screen until 2017, in low budget stinker A Closer Walk With Thee. Quite a step down from Titanic. Her career has been active in the meantime, but she hasn't appeared in anything of note. The little girl's father is being played by Rocky Taylor. He's had small roles in films such as Tomorrow Never Dies (as a thug) and The World is Not Enough (as some random guy in a restaurant) but works mostly as a stunt man, having done work on nearly 200 projects, big, small and sometimes huge. We'll see these two characters throughout the film - they're Bert and Cora Cartmell. Were these two people really on Titanic? No, there were no passengers on the ship with those names. As a point of interest, the doll's face we saw earlier in the film is actually Cora's doll, which we'll see later.


After meeting these two we get a shot of the crowds, our POV elevated, as a very old-fashioned 1912 car comes towards us, beeping it's honky horn. Cameron and his crew have done a great job filling the scene with extras, horses and old vehicles. It's impressive. We get another shot, from behind Cora and her father, whereupon she turns around to see what all of the honking is about. The next shot is a closer one of the exquisite car, still coming towards us - it's not the only old car in this shot either, making me wonder at the astronomical price-tag this film had. The one we're facing front-on is also a Renault - the "1912 Renault Enclosed Limousine". Not the kind of limousine we're used to, but beautiful nonetheless. Taking time out to observe that really brings it home. The car stops, it's driver gets out, and then we cut to a shot of the car's side, and the limo driver opening the door. We cut to a shot from above the car, where a ladies' gloved hand sticks out from inside. The way this is done shows that it's obviously a very cultivated and learned motion. Her hand is taken by the driver's hand, which has a large black glove on it also. He helps her out. She's wearing a great big purple hat adorned with a wispy thin material. She suddenly looks up, and reveals who she is. All in one shot as the camera cranes down to nearly her level.


She's Rose Dewitt Bukater, played by Kate Winslet - and introduced via a really inventive shot by Cameron and cinematographer Russell Carpenter. It's matched by the score, which comes to it's third climax in the space of around a minute. Winslet was a fairly new young actress at the time, 20-years-old during production. Winslet had grown up in a family that was keen on acting, had 3 siblings who were getting into it, and attended Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead. She maintained a strong presence in theatrical life at school and had managed to score some parts on British television in commercials, TV-series Dark Season and Casualty along with mini-series Anglo Saxon Attitudes. She really made her mark in her theatrical debut in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures as teenaged murderess Juliet in 1994, seeing off nearly 200 contenders for the part. It was enough to win her regular work in good period productions such as Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility and Michael Winterbottom's Jude. Titanic would be a breakout film of massive proportions for her - leading to a career that included Oscar wins, BAFTA wins, Golden Globes, a Grammy and Prime Time Emmys.

The very next shot, after being introduced to the lovely visage of Kate Winslet, we see David Warner exiting the front right seat of the follow-up car we saw earlier. He's dressed in very business-like fashion, and he's playing Spicer Lovejoy - the lackey of our villain, who is yet to be introduced. In the same shot, he opens the rear door on the right side for Frances Fisher, who is playing Ruth Dewitt Bukater. She's dressed in frumpy fashion - what you'd expect on an older type of lady in this time period.

David Warner is one of the more classically trained actors in this production. Born on 29 July 1941, he was 55-years-old when he appeared in Titanic. Warner had trained at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art - where most of the truly great British actors had gone to learn their craft. After graduating in 1961, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and landed roles in various Shakespeare productions along with a number of other plays - debuting at the Royal Court Theatre in A Midsummer Night's Dream as Snout in 1962. From then on he rose through the ranks until, in 1964, he was playing Henry VI in the complete The Wars of the Roses series and Hamlet at the Aldwych Theatre in '65. He'd had various film and television roles up to that time, including the role of Blifil in Tom Jones (1963) but really stood out as the lead in Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment in 1966 opposite Vanessa Redgrave. He wasn't a massively famous movie star, but accumulated notable parts in films like The Omen (1976), Cross of Iron (1977), the miniseries Holocaust (1978), Time After Time (1979) and Time Bandits (1981) until he was a recognizable and well known performer. He'd already featured in a film about the sinking of Titanic in 1979 - the televised production S.O.S. Titanic.


Frances Fisher had also started out in theatre, but not in as prestigious a way as David Warner. She was born to American parents on May 11, 1952 in the U.K. and moved to various places around the world due to her father's job as an oil refinery construction superintendent. After finishing school in Texas she jetted off to New York City to become part of the Actors Studio on West 44th Street and then honed her craft at the Barter Theatre in in Abingdon, Virginia during the early 1970s. Fame came via television, becoming a regular on soap opera The Edge of Night from 1976 to 1981 as record executive Deborah Saxon - featuring in 247 episodes. Her fortunes in film and television fluctuated for the next decade or so, until meeting Clint Eastwood when the pair featured in 1989 film Pink Cadillac. An affair between the two ignited (they have a daughter - Francesca Eastwood), and Fisher would score a good role in the huge Clint Eastwood Best Picture winner Unforgiven. It would be her biggest role until another Best Picture featuring role, that as Ruth Dewitt Bukater in Titanic, rolled around. She was 44 when she appeared in this film.


The film isn't wasting much time with these shots - the very next one is a front-on of Billy Zane exiting a vehicle - I'm not even sure which car it is now. It seems like the party hired a veritable fleet of motorcars to take them to Southampton dock. Zane is wearing a neat suit with vest and tie, along with a bowler hat like most of the men. He has a smile of admiration for the ship on his face as he takes her in, eyes shifting around. He plays Cal Hockley, and James Cameron won't waste much of his screen-time in proving to us how dastardly and villainous he is. (Very vain, proud and awful is the order of the day, and all days, for him.)

Billy Zane's career was supercharged by Titanic, but he's not an actor you'll find on a lot of high profile projects. He was born in Chicago on February 24, 1966 and was 30-years-old when he appeared in this film. He attended the Harand Camp of the Theater Arts in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin after graduating high school and managed to scrape up a really small role in 1985 blockbuster Back to the Future as Match, one of Biff's smug friends and appeared the next year in the popular horror film Critters. Small roles in film and television followed, including his appearance in two Sheena Easton music videos, but his really big breakthrough came with a starring role as the crazy Hughie Warriner in 1989 Australian thriller Dead Calm, opposite Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill. He appeared in Back to the Future Part II and Memphis Belle in 1989 and 1990 respectively until a series of less well-remembered roles sidelined him from the public eye for a while. He played an actor and dandy in 1993 film Tombstone until landing something big with the lead role as Kit Walker/Phantom in blockbuster The Phantom in '96, which bombed, badly. His featuring in Titanic would remedy that failure, along with the many other roles that weren't doing so well. In years to come, The Phantom would start to develop a cult following.

And just like that - four of our main characters are quickly introduced. The next shot, after we first see Cal, is that of Rose standing by the beautiful car which brought her - she looks at the ship before her, and says "I don't see what all the fuss is about." As part of the same shot, she turns to look at Cal, standing behind her, and continues with, "It doesn't look any bigger than the Mauretania."

The RMS Mauretania would have looked very much like Titanic at the time, and it was also a gigantic passenger liner. It was 790 feet long (Titanic was 882 feet) and could accommodate around 2,100 passengers (Titanic could accommodate around 2,450 passengers) - but it's easy to see, by those figures, how both ships would look about the same. It was a Cunard ship that entered service in 1907, and until the Olympic was launched three years later it was the largest ship in the world (obviously Rose, Cal and the others had already travelled on it.) Unlike the Lusitania, Titanic and Britannic, the Mauretania saw out her lifetime without sinking and undertook her last voyage in 1934, before being scrapped in 1935.


Also - there wasn't as much fuss being made about Titanic as these people infer, since the class of ship was a bit old hat since the Olympic entered service the year before. Retroactive fuss is made for Titanic's maiden voyage because of what happened.

We cut to a shot facing Rose and Cal, with Cal replying "You can be blasé about some things, Rose, but not about Titanic. It's over 100 feet longer than Mauretania..." although Titanic was under 100 feet longer than Mauretania - 92 to be exact. There's a nice edit so we get closer to his face as he adds, "...and far more luxurious." Tiny bit of exposition about the ship snuck in there - her luxury. He helps Ruth out of the car in the same shot and says to her "Your daughter is far too difficult to impress Ruth." Yes, Ruth gets out of the car because I made a mistake earlier, thinking another character was her. Earlier, Spicer Lovejoy helped the maid, Trudy Bolt out of the car. Trudy has similar hair to Ruth - if I ever put this together I'll fix the error - but for now I'll introduce actress Amy Gaipa, who plays Trudy. It's a very small role, and I'm not sure if she gets any lines.

Titanic was Amy Gaipa's first feature film. She'd be a glorified extra in An Englishman in New York 12 years later, keeping a very tenuous toe in the business. That's the film where John Hurt plays Quentin Crisp. She'd appear in Simon Arthur film Silver Tongues a little after that, and has had very small roles in a few shorts and features from then on. She's basically an extra here - and features in one of Titanic's only unintentionally funny scenes late in the film. We'll get to that 18 years from now.

We cut back to an earlier shot, at more of a distance, facing our characters, as Ruth laughs and says "So this is the ship they say is unsinkable," looking at it. "It is unsinkable!" Cal confirms, "God himself could not sink this ship!"

The story about RMS being called unsinkable is a long and controversial one. Many of the survivors claim that this was being bandied around, and it included the saying that "God himself could not sink her." In later years Titanic scholars started debating whether or not this was ever true. They couldn't find one instance of it being said on paper - which would be incontrovertible evidence. Eventually this evidence was found in an old copy of Shipbuilders Magazine which predated the disaster, whereupon a writer extolling the virtues of the ship's watertight compartments said that they made the ship, "practically unsinkable." It's not much, but it is an instance of the term being used. The next time the term was known to be used was by White Star Line Vice President P.A.S. Franklin - when news that the Titanic had hit an iceberg and was said to be sinking, he told the press ” We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe the boat is unsinkable.” - by the time he was saying it, Titanic was already on the bottom of the Atlantic.

As Cal is trying to tell his group that Titanic is unsinkable, he's being interrupted by the porter with the large mustache we saw earlier. He's played by James Garrett, who has a career stretching back to 1960s television. His feature debut didn't come until 1979, when he appeared as Edwards in Time After Time. Although he kept busy with TV roles in the intervening years, Titanic was only the second time he played a character on the big screen. "What?" Cal eventually snaps. "Sir," the porter replies, "You have to check your baggage through the main terminal. It's round that way sir," he adds, with a slight head gesture. Cal digs around in his pocket and comes up with a few paper bills, shoving them in his hand while saying, "I put my faith in you good sir. Now see my man." I'm guessing that would be typical of the time, for extraordinarily wealthy people. When the porter sees how much money he's been given, his attitude becomes one of extreme helpfulness. "Yes sir! It's my pleasure sir! If I can do anything at all!" he happily adds before Lovejoy grabs him by the shoulder, with a firm "Yes right."

We cut now to a shot facing the opposite direction - the last shot went 16 seconds, which is a long time without an edit for this film. Lovejoy points out the onerous task the porter is about to have, as we dolly by the various trunks loaded onto the cars - "All the trunks from that car there. 12 from here. And the safe - to the parlor suite rooms B-52, 54, 56." At least he was well payed. These were the most expensive rooms on the ship - and in real life Bruce Ismay decided this was where he'd like to spend his trip on the Titanic's maiden voyage. There was a private, enclosed promenade attached to these rooms - a feature that RMS Olympic didn't have.


Lovejoy and Cal sleep in one of the rooms, Ruth and Rose sleep in another (we assume that Trudy sleeps elsewhere) - but Cameron made a mistake in how the room was designed, going for the dark Regency style - it actually was very much lighter, and fitted out in the Louis XVI style.

We now get a quick shot of a hand with an open pocket-watch in it, then a shot pulled farther back, where we see it's Cal's hand holding the watch - and while that happens we hear a whistle blow. "Ladies...we better hurry," he says as he walks by the front of the first car and we dolly with him to the ladies. We then cut to even farther back, seeing extras, a white picket fence and generally great costumes and production design. I may have already said this - but Deborah L. Scott won an Oscar for her costume design in this film. We also see someone operating a movie camera - perhaps a piece of lost film. We pass everything else - the waving people and such, as we follow our characters through the crowd. We cut closer to Rose, as she looks back and inquires "My coat?" Trudy says "I have it miss." Her hat is huge and spectacular - as was the custom in the day, but later it'll be interesting to see if Cameron forgoes all the female characters wearing massive hats outside during the film.

A short insert is added here, with us still sweeping along, but briefly passing some third class passengers being inspected "All third-class passengers queue here for health inspection" is an added cry, and we see one inspector looking inside the mouth of a child. Disease and infestation were an unwelcome addition to the ship and the United States. Another inspector looks through a male passenger's hair and beard with a comb.

Now a really nice shot, because we're high off the ground looking at the solid gangplank which leads from the dock to the ship, watching side-on still as Ruth, Cal, Rose and Trudy walk up. Lovejoy is apparently a little out of shot. Then we cut to the interior of the Reception room on Titanic - a room Cameron has actually visited on his dives down to the wreck. We face outward as various first class passengers in very nice costumes come aboard - I can't say that enough. The costumes are beautiful. Stewards welcome them. "Welcome to Titanic." One woman has a couple of dogs (an Afghan Hound with a wooly friend only partly visible) on a leash - saying much about what first class passengers could do which third class definitely couldn't.


We cut to a shot actually on the gangplank, looking at Ruth, Cal and Rose head on in extremely bright sunlight, many extras are in the background on the dock - it's another really nice shot. We hear old Rose telling her story - "It was the ship of dreams...to everyone else. To me it was a slave ship, taking me back to America in chains. Outwardly, I was everything a well brought up girl should be," (we now revert back to a head on shot from in the reception room again), "Inside, I was screaming."

When old Rose says the word "screaming" we cut to a shot of the Titanic's whistles, blowing out steam and giving the ship a voice.

We transition to the inside of an English pub - a really nice shot of the ship through a pub window with "Wines and Spirits" written on it. As the shot pulls back, and pans slightly, we see four men drinking and playing poker. One of the men starts speaking Swedish in an angry manner to another - the other man speaks Swedish back, more defensively. This is Olaf and Sven, played by Bjørn Olsen and Dan Pettersson - neither actor doing much of anything you could call an on-screen career before or since this. A dark haired man with a cap on, who we only see from behind at the moment, turns to the fourth man at the table and says "Jack - you are pazzo [Italian for crazy]. You bet everything we have." We can see Jack side-on now, as the camera has panned and dollied over further to the left. It's Leonardo DiCaprio, cigarette dangling from his mouth, hair swept back. Titanic will turn this actor into a screen heartthrob for young teenage girls the world over. That can become a dangerous slippery slope for a serious actor. He leans closer to the dark haired man, Fabrizio (played by Danny Nucci) exhales smoke, and says "When you got nothing you got nothing to lose," - as if losing everything may just be cause for solemn celebration. I'd disagree with this justification.

Leonardo DiCaprio is one of those actors who started performing as soon as he could walk. Raised by bohemian parents in Los Angeles, California, his father's step-son, Adam Farrar, was the first to find work in television commercials. Leonardo looked up to Adam, and after the young DiCaprio wobbled his way through an appearance on Romper Room he had his first serious experience at 14 in a series of commercials for Matchbox toy cars. His mid-teens saw him in many more commercials for various products and getting a part in two episodes of The New Lassie in 1989. No posh acting school for him. He had a hunger and an agent, but was frustrated by how slow these beginning stages were - in 1990 only two small roles in TV-series The Outsiders and Santa Barbara. These type of offers continued into 1991, and eager to graduate the young up-and-comer grabbed at an offer to appear in a feature film - Critters 3 in 1991. It was a lesson for the teenage DiCaprio about trash, and how one eager for any role at all can lose respect. He had a small role in the first Poison Ivy film in 1992, and found a regular spot on Growing Pains - but Leonardo's life was about to change with the role he'd been impatiently waiting for. Robert De Niro handpicked him to star as Toby Wolff in This Boy's Life (1993) after seeing him audition - good enough to help him feature as the intellectually disabled younger brother of Johnny Depp's character in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) - a performance that would earn him a shock Academy Award nomination. By the time Titanic sailed into history he was known (The Basketball Diaries, The Quick and the Dead and Romeo + Juliet three highlights amongst various big movies he was in), but this film would cement him as a star.


We cut to Fabrizio, the second shot in the pub sequence - now we can see him more clearly. Slightly unshaven, but neat and clean. The two other men continue to speak Swedish, and Fabrizio's look pretty much delivers that "I'm not impressed with that" message to Jack's optimistic hubris. He looks down at his cards, now in a funk. We cut to the two Swedes, and now we're given subtitles to what they're saying. "You moron. I can't believe you bet our tickets." Pretty much a mirror image of Jack and Fabrizio. We cut to an insert of cards being picked up - and then to Leonardo DiCaprio face-on with a bright light shining on him. He is handsome - very much so, and very young. His self-rolled cigarette is hanging from his lips and he reminds me of Marlon Brando at this very moment. He looks to his right, "Sven?" We cut to Sven, who looks like the most miserable fellow on Earth at that moment. "Ett", he says. Swedish for "one". He's given and takes one card. DiCaprio takes one. He looks at his cards and his face becomes more focused and serious. We cut to Olaf. Then to the table, where a watch (part of the bet now) ticks (a great addition from the Foley because a ticking clock always adds tension to a scene), with a Swiss knife and two third class tickets from Southampton to New York on the Titanic.

Jack takes the cigarette from his mouth. "All right," he says "moment of truth. Somebody's life is about to change." He looks around. "Fabrizio?" We cut to the dark skinned friend of Jack, and he looks both very unhappy and a little angry. He puts his cards on the table, we cut again to Jack's face and he says "Niente." Nothing. But Jack looks curiously cheerful. "Niente," Fabrizio confirms. "Olaf?" We cut to a shot from further away, where we can see three of the four men at the table. "Nothing." Seems like nobody has anything. "Sven?" Sven puts down his cards, defiantly. "Uh-oh," Jack says "2 pair" - a good hand with a very good chance of winning. "I'm sorry, Fabrizio," he says - and given time and consideration - it's obvious he's playing. We cut to Fabrizio, who starts swearing at Jack in Italian. Jack leans down from the reverse angle, "I'm sorry" - he's having to shout now to be heard over Fabrizio's tirade, "...you're not gonna see your mom again for a long time..." reverse angle and then back "...'cause we're going to America. Full house boys!" He starts whooping it up like a crazy man, banging the table.

He might not look it, but Danny Nucci is 6 years older than Leonardo DiCaprio and had far more experience than his more famous co-star. Nucci was born in Italy to an Italian father and French Moroccan mother, and moved to the United States when he was seven. He'd started in television from the age of 16, featuring in the likes of Pryor's Place, Sara and Call to Glory and had a 'blink and you'll miss him' moment in feature film Explorers in 1985. By the time 1989 rolled around he'd been nominated for four Young Artist awards regarding his various roles in TV series. He racked up television credits at quite a rate for the rest of the 80s and early 90s, getting his breakthrough moment in 1993 survival drama Alive as Hugo Díaz. By the time Titanic had rolled around, Nucci had featured in films such as Crimson Tide, The Rock and Eraser along with a wealth of other feature and television roles.


Amongst the celebratory movement, banging and DiCaprio's unnaturally exuberant whooping, we cut to Olaf, who looks like he's tensing up and taking in the disaster this obviously is for him. Fabrizio gets in to the yelling spirit, we cut to Sven who looks like someone just kissed his girlfriend right in front of him. Fabrizio gets up and starts dancing with the tickets. Jack starts scooping the change off the table. Olaf takes a handful of Jack's coat, lifting him - we switch to a reverse shot of him spitting some Swedish curse words out. He balls up his hand into a fist, and then we reverse back to Jack who screws up his face anticipating a blow. There's something endearing about that and I really don't know why. When we cut to Olaf he punches Sven instead - which was the correct person to punch really. Sven falls to the floor. We then cut again to Jack and Fabrizio standing, and Jack starts laughing, which undoes all that good will I had after only 1 second. He's happy I guess, misfortune looks funny when you're celebrating something. He turns to Fabrizio and says "Come on!" We switch to another reverse shot, and now Jack has the tickets in his hands, waving them. "I'm going home!" He shouts. He shouts a lot in this movie. The two hug. We cut to the two Swedes fighting. "I'm going home!" - Jack's nearly crying with joy. "I go to America!" Fabrizio says, almost like a child. "No mate!" shouts a new voice. We cut to the Pubkeeper, who is being played by Shay Duffin. "Titanic go to America, in 5 minutes!" He motions to a clock on the wall behind him, and the clock comes into focus as he drifts out. "Shit Fabri!" - "Come on!" - "Here! - Here!" The two start panicking and shoveling coins into their hats.

Shay Duffin. Born in Dublin, he's had an interesting career as a character actor on the stage and on the screen, both big and small. He's best known for writing and acting the title role in the one-man play Brendan Behan: Confessions of An Irish Rebel - at least to those who are familiar with theater. Some interesting films he'd appeared in pre-Titanic are The White Buffalo, The Main Event, The Frisco Kid, Raging Bull, Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Leprechaun.


That's the pub sequence, introducing the last of our big main characters - the next we see Jack and Fabrizio they're running along the dock, trying not to miss their date with doom. Soon we'll finally be underway, actually on the ship. The movie is in it's 25th minute.