Today is the one hundred and eleventh anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. And many films and mini serieses (what’s the plural of series anyway? You know I never thought about that until right this moment) have been made about it over the years, most with about as much accuracy as eh, come on, come up with a good nautical joke, come on! Most have about as much accuracy as a ship that turns to starboard when it’s supposed to turn to port. That one will have to do, okay!
Most of the Titanic films other than the “big two” as I’ve decided to call them, won’t be the main subject of this blogpost, but I’ll just give you a brief overview of what kind of things were on offer. There was the 1943 film “Titanic”, made by the Nazis, which basically was a telling of the Titanic story where all of the bad characters in it were Jews. Moving on swiftly!
There was the animated film, Titanic: The Legend Goes On from 2000, which features a rapping dog. Now you might be thinking, that sounds pretty accurate doesn’t it? But dear reader, you’d be wrong! Because while the Titanic sunk in 1912, the genre of hip-hop did not begin until the early 1970’s, in fact hip hop pioneers such as Grandmaster Flash and Africa Bambaataa weren’t even born in 1912! So I can understand why a rapping dog might seem like a normal, every day thing in 1912, but I assure you it wasn’t!
Now to one I saw just a few days ago, the Titanic miniseries from 2012, starring Jenna Louise Coleman, and probably other actors I’ve probably seen before but didn’t recognize because facial recognition. I was over optimistic about this one at first because it avoided the “Bruce Ismay deliberately made the ship drive really fast and that’s why it sank” trope. But that’s the only thing it gets right, in this, thing, Bruce Ismay is complicit in a plot to murder a group of Italians by locking them up so that they’ll drown. And Sixth Officer James Moody is also depicted as being complicit. The real story of James Moody is that he was the youngest officer on board the Titanic, aged 24, and on account of his age, he was pretty much guaranteed a space as a crewman on one of the lifeboats if he wanted it. But instead he chose to stay on the ship helping people, and this is where he died. But Moody being a big murderer is such a good drama, so we’ll go with that! Bring me that grave, I need to spit on it!
So, if I ever encounter a more obscure Titanic film or mini series that is super accurate, I will probably review it, but realistically, the only two that I think are in the running for the most accurate Titanic film are Roy Ward Baker’s A Night To Remember and James Cameron’s Titanic.
Now, if you were me even four months ago, you would be asking, how is Titanic an accurate film, it places an entirely fictional story on top of the Titanic disaster! And that’s why, and partly as a result of hype backlash, I went off Titanic for years, much preferring A Night To Remember. But when I rewatched both of these films, I realized the question of which is more accurate is more complicated than meets the eye. Titanic has fictional events and characters in it. But so does A Night To Remember. A Night To Remember actually opens with an event that didn’t happen, it depicts a ceremony where a bottle of champagne is broken against the hull of the Titanic. Now, while these kind of ceremonies did take place at the time, the White Star Line, which owned the Titanic, did not go in for the breaking champagne bottles. A Night To Remember even has a couple who’s story is vaguely similar to Jack and Rose, Mr and Mrs Clarke, with Mrs Clarke refusing to leave her husband to die alone on the Titanic. If having any fictional event or character brands the films inaccurate, we would have to consider neither of these films accurate, even though both of them are the most correct depictions of the sinking that I know of.
A Night To Remember, The First Real Attempt To Tell The Story Accurately
It’s amazing to think that with the Titanic sinking in 1912, nobody tried to do an accurate film of the Titanic until, 1958! So, if you wanted an accurate telling of the Titanic story, you would have to wait for almost fifty years! A Night To Remember is based on the 1955 book of the same name by Walter Lord, it was and still is considered one of the most accurate accounts of what happened on that night.
Titanic’s Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall was a technical advisor on the film, and blueprints of the Titanic were used to create authentic sets. And while part of the reason previous Titanic films were held back was budget, A Night To Remember was the most expensive film made in Britain at the time.
There’s a scene where a boat is being lowered, and when it has been lowered quite far down it’s realized that the boat doesn’t have enough crewmen. Lightoller calls for someone to man the boat, and yachtsman Arthur Peuchen volunteers. But to get to the boat, he must perilously climb down a rope, which he manages to do. This really happened.
There’s a scene I never understood in A Night To Remember until only recently. A scene where, as I figured at the time, a passenger attempts to jump into a launching lifeboat, but misses by about a meter. I didn’t know whether this was fictional or not, but I never understood it, it looked utterly bizarre.
But much later I understood the scene. It was a real character called Frederick Hoyt, and he wasn’t trying and failing to jump into the boat. Had he boarded, Lightoller would have stopped him, so he jumped into the water hoping the occupants of the lifeboat would pull him out of the water, which they did and he survived.
The depiction of Collapsible Boat B was excellent. When I first started learning about the Titanic when I was 12, this was and still is one of the most fascinating details about the sinking, about thirty men standing on top of an upside down lifeboat, with Lightoller instructing them on how to shift their weight on the boat because the water had become choppy. This occurred because when Collapsible B was being launched, the crew were simply out of time, and when it was accidentally flipped upside down while being moved towards the davits (the cranes used for launching lifeboats), there was simply no time to flip it back over and it floated off the ship upside down. Incidentally, this brings up one of the major myths about the Titanic, that the reason so many died was because there weren’t enough lifeboats. Collapsible B, and Collapsible A, could not be launched in time before the ship went down, there wouldn’t have been time to launch any more lifeboats.
I Wish A Night To Remember Didn’t Have a “Hero”
Okay, if you’ve read my previous blogpost on the Titanic,
this won’t be a surprise, but I do not like Charles Lightoller. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he was doing what he believed to be the right thing in his own mind, but his “women and children only” policy, cost many lives for no reason at all. But, because of film conventions at the time, that still exist today, it seemed the film had to have a “hero” for the audience to root for, and putting Lightoller in that role I think reduced the accuracy of the film. Now, Lightoller’s forcing of men out of half empty lifeboats is depicted, but it’s downplayed, more like a minor detail, and because he’s the “hero”, less time is given for other characters. A very memorable exchange between Fifth Officer Harold Lowe and Bruce Ismay, where Lowe in no uncertain terms told him to stop interfering with the lowering of the boats, is instead depicted as between Ismay and Lightoller! Lightoller is depicted as performing the duties of at least four officers at the same time! I would have loved to have seen more depictions of the other officers. What was Fourth Officer Boxhall up to? Third Officer Pitman, where were you? This film barely depicts them at all and is too interested in Lightoller!
There is even a bizarre scene at the end where Archibald Gracie goes on a weird speech about how great Lightoller is! Come on! Even if James Moody was depicted in this way, who I really think deserves to be remembered more than he is for his bravery and courage, I would still disagree, there is something nauseating about having the idea that somebody is a hero rammed down your throat without any room for any kind of nuance!
Titanic is a treasure trove for Titanic nerds
Lifeboat 7 almost tipping over during launch? It’s in there. Boat 15 almost crushing Boat 13 and they escape with seconds to spare? Yup, it’s in there. There is even a scene, and when I say “blink and you miss it”, I really mean that, I had to watch the scene four or five times before I saw it. The scene where Rose jumps out of the lifeboat to be with Jack again, you can just about, for a split second, see passenger Mauritz Håkan jumping into the boat, followed by Hugh Woolner. Titanic is heaven for Titanic nerds, because James Cameron is a Titanic nerd. He’s visited the wreck for crying out loud!
There’s even a scene that I thought was too unrealistic but it turned out was real. When Rose is in the freezing water, too weak to shout for help, she alerts Fifth Officer Harold Lowe by finding an officer’s whistle. I thought at first it was unrealistic that she didn’t have the strength to shout but did have the strength to blow a whistle. But it turned out, this actually happened to Charles Lightoller! When he had been on an upside down boat for hours along with several other men, none of them had the physical strength to shout for help, but with his officer’s whistle Lightoller was able to alert one of the other lifeboats that they needed help.
Where Titanic screws up, it screws up really badly
So, I’ve thought a lot about this, and I was worried I would have to finish this post without a definitive answer, just fob you all off with some utterly vague platitude as opposed to giving any real conclusion. They both get so much right, who’s to say which is more accurate? Well, what Titanic gets wrong, it gets offensively wrong. Let me explain.
In real life, First Officer William Murdoch ordered a “hard a port” order, swinging the stern away from the iceberg, meaning that the ship sank slowly, rather than quickly as it would have if the berg had breached the stern of the ship. The 705 people who escaped the Titanic alive may not have done so without this crucial order. (This much is depicted accurately in Titanic.)
William Murdoch also held to the principal of “women and children first”, as opposed to the bizarre and indefensible policy of “women and children only”, that Lightoller held to, so much fewer lives were sacrificed needlessly on Murdoch’s side (though neither officers knew the correct capacity that the boats can take, so both officers sent boats off under capacity.)
My annoyance with the depiction of Murdoch starts where fictional villain Cal Hockley describes Murdoch as being “more flexible”, as in more likely to take a bribe than Lightoller. Now, I couldn’t imagine either of these officers accepting a bribe, but it’s an amazing leap of logic to go from, “Murdoch didn’t sacrifice the lives of male passengers needlessly” to “Murdoch is open to bribery”. Murdoch is initially seen taking a bribe from Cal, although I’ll grant that later in the film he throws the money back at Cal. But it gets worse from there.
When the panic of the passengers is preventing the safe lowering of one of the boats, Murdoch desperately tries to keep order, and in a moment of panic, shoots two male passengers dead. Full of remorse, he then shoots himself. There is no evidence to support the idea that this happened, and for James Cameron to include this scene was unacceptable. James Cameron has apologized to the family of William Murdoch, and I believe he is sincere, but I can only evaluate the film for what was included in it, not by what its director regrets later.
A Night To Remember Is the Most Accurate Titanic Film Ever Made
So I’m judging A Night To Remember to be more accurate than Titanic. Now, I could write pages and pages on what both of these films get right (as you’ve just witnessed), but the inaccuracies in Titanic are not minor ones, they are offensive to the memory of William Murdoch, who gave his life trying to launch the lifeboats and save as many people as possible. To depict him as murdering two men, even if in a moment of panic as opposed to cold blooded murder, is completely unacceptable. I can’t think of any moment in A Night To Remember where a person on the Titanic was misrepresented so badly that the families of that person actually made complaints, so, for never disrespecting those who died on the Titanic for the sake of drama, it’s my opinion that A Night To Remember should be regarded as the most accurate Titanic film ever made. So what the devil are you still doing here, go and watch A Night To Remember. But do not watch the colourized version, good God do not watch the colourized version, AHHHH, IT BURNS!
Ponderings Of An Autist 