Classic Film Review: A Night To Remember (1958)

Like many in recent weeks, I've been saturated with fiction and fact surrounding the sinking of the Titanic as we hit the centenary. I reviewed Julian Fellowes's mini-series last week (not entirely positively) and I've also re-watched two other adaptations of the story. I'd never seen A Night To Remember though, despite it being widely regarded as the most factual adaptation out there. Certainly, it came across that way.

Stripped down to the bare details about the sinking, there are a few characters highlighted but the focus is well and truly on the events of the sinking - as they were then known. The person who has the most to do is Second Officer Charles Lightholler (played by Kenneth More) and he serves as an anchor (pardon the pun) throughout. The film has the feel of a thoroughly British one - this comes through with almost every scene - and portrays the sinking in a very British stiff-upper-lip manner. That doesn't mean it lacks drama, however, because the events of 1912 are dramatic enough not to need elaboration. But the drama is based on the sheer horror of over 1500 people dying at sea, not on the fates of one or two characters.

Of course, the effects of the sinking are not as good as the 1997 film but the claustrophobic scenario of being on a sinking ship remains. There are some good artistic touches throughout - the drunk who manages to survive being one of them - and the realism is there. Some of the dialogue is clunky and perhaps too much time is spent on the 'ship that never answered' across the water. However, since that was always one of the most intriguing aspects of the Titanic disaster for me, I didn't mind it so much. The scenes on the Carpathia as they sped to the rescue were excellent and intertwined well. Equally, the focus on the engine room and the Marconi room were woven into the narrative and gave the best example I've seen of the cross-section of class and crew.

The lack of fictional sub-plots do make this one difficult to cling onto at times. Still, it's worth a watch to see the story done without melodrama and sentimentality.

Television Review: Titanic

Like most people, I imagined that Julian Fellowes's crack at the most famous shipping disaster in history would be excellent. After the success of Downton Abbey in the same era, I didn't think it could go too wrong. However, Downton Abbey and Titanic are two very different animals and, while I came to enjoy three out of four episodes of the latter, I do have some opinions on why it wasn't entirely fantastic.

Firstly, while I understand that non-linearity was one way of making the Titanic story fresh and new, I have to say that hitting the iceberg four times took the spectacle out of it. I would've been happy with the rather remarkable moment when John Batley (Toby Jones) looked up and saw it towering over him. That was perhaps one of the most memorable moments of the entire series for me. While the non-linearity allowed for personalities to be gradually unveiled, and gave more of an opportunity in a single episode to explore just a few characters, it irritated me a little. I can't even say for definite why, just that it seemed to hinder the storytelling from my perspective rather than enhancing it.

Secondly, I came to the conclusion that episode one set things off on a bad note. I felt it focused too much on personalities that Fellowes enjoys writing about but who had very little substance to them. For instance, Lord Manton (Linus Roache) only became interesting when he asserted himself in the third and fourth episodes. His extra-marital dalliance was a neat little secret but badly used in my view, again this could be related to the non-linearity. The rigidity of first-class and the class differences is possibly what drew Fellowes to the Titanic story but I'm not sure he focused on the right people from the off. The characters that most interested me had their full stories told in later episodes. These were John and Muriel Batley (Maria Doyle Kennedy), Mabel Watson (Lyndsey Marshal) and Barnes (Lee Ross) and perhaps Jim Maloney (Peter McDonald), though without his wife in tow.

Thirdly, it relied too much on speedy romances. Paolo Sandrini (Glen Blackhall) proposing to Annie Desmond (Jenna-Louise Coleman) before the ship even hit the iceberg was a little mad, however intoxicating she was. Equally, in first-class, the romance between Georgiana Grex (Perdita Weeks) and Harry Widener (Noah Reid) was fairly unsubstantiated. And don't even get me started on the odd instant-attraction in steerage between Mary Maloney (Ruth Bradley) and Peter Lubov (Dragos Bucur)! One lesson from Downton Abbey is that Fellowes excels at lengthier love stories, these things need time to build. That's why Matthew and Mary are as popular as Anna and Bates: their stories both have a heart. What came across on Titanic is that Fellowes knew he had limited time to tell heartfelt stories and they suffered for it. The two that didn't? The marriage between John and Muriel Batley and the unspoken respect/love between Mabel and Barnes and both of these involved people who had long-standing relationships. Truly, I was moved to emotion by the conclusion of those two entanglements and no others.

I'm not trying to suggest there was nothing good about Titanic. It certainly picked up after the first episode and kept me guessing until the end about who the survivors would be. And I was in tears at the end of it. There was some excellent acting, some good writing (excluding the doom-mongering that you expect from a piece about the Titanic and also excluding the bad romances) and I think almost every character was put in peril only to be rescued from it. However, I feel the 'snapshot of life' was a bit cruel to the viewer: what happened next to the survivors? Actually, I'd better not ask that because I fear I'm better off not knowing.