Overview
Directed by Hammer horror director Roy Ward Baker, this is another version of the tale of the doomed maiden voyage of the Titanic, told in a semi-documentary style through the eyes of the ship's second officer, Herbert Lightoller, whose duties provided him with a unique perspective of the everyday goings-on aboard the huge ocean liner. An excellent cast (selected for their resemblances to photos of the real passengers) conveys the courage, greed, fear, hope and despair of the real-life passengers. Based on the novel by Walter Lord.
Awards:
Main Cast & Crew:
Roy Ward Baker - Director
Kenneth More
David McCallum
Honor Blackman
Jill Dixon
Laurence Naismith
Frank Lawton
Alec McCowan
George Rose
Ronald Allen
Details
- Format: DVD (Criterion Collection)
- Run Time: 121
- Color Format: B&W
- UPC: 715515094313
- Genre: Drama
- Rating: Not Rated
- Release Date: March 2012
Movie Reviews
Synopsis:
A highly detailed, documentary-style dramatization of the infamous maiden voyage of the Titanic. From the attendant excitement of the ship's departure, the narrative proceeds inexorably to the vessel's sudden collision with an iceberg in the frozen waters of the North Atlantic, then painfully recounts the mad scramble for survival that followed. We witness its maiden voyage across the Atlantic and watch as the British liner with 2200 people on board is gashed along 300 feet of its hull by an iceberg. As it starts to sink, the new invention of radio is used to try and summon help, although this is disastrously ignored by the closest vessel. With lifeboat places for only 1200 people, it is not only women and children first, but also First Class before Steerage. Over 1,300 passengers and crew members perished in the tragedy.
Based on Walter Lord's book of the same name.
Reviews:
"...A movie to see again and again..." -- 4 out of 4 stars - 05/05/1995 USA Today, p.3D
"Baker's film wasn't the first to dramatize the lives aboard the ill-fated White Star liner...but it is the best, due to its chilling minute-by-minute reenactment of the steamer's final hours....The film is powerful..." -- Grade: A - 04/06/2012 Entertainment Weekly
4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] lucid reconstruction, which forsakes fictional embellishments in favour of documentary credibility and cold, hard facts." - 05/01/2012 Total Film
