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Titanic Movie Review: Acting and Emotions

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Published: Oct 2, 2020

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Movie "Titanic": a Brief Review Essay

Works cited:.

• Addams, J. (1902). Democracy and social ethics. Macmillan.
• Addams, J. (1910). Twenty years at Hull-House: With autobiographical notes. Macmillan.
• Addams, J. (1915). The Long Road of Woman’s Memory. The Atlantic Monthly, 116(4), 534-544.
• Addams, J. (1915). Women and public housekeeping. The Macmillan Company.
• Addams, J. (1919). Peace and bread in time of war. The Macmillan Company.
• Bryan, M. (2006). Jane Addams and the dream of American democracy: A life. University of Chicago Press.
• Knight, L. (2016). Jane Addams: Spirit in action. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Lasch-Quinn, E. (1993). Black neighbors, white immigrants: Race and community action in the making of America's immigrant church. Oxford University Press.
• Nash, M. (2013). Jane Addams: A biography. University of Illinois Press.
• Trolander, J. A. (1987). Professionalism and social change: From the settlement house movement to neighborhood centers, 1886-1950. Columbia University Press.

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Like a great iron Sphinx on the ocean floor, the Titanic faces still toward the West, interrupted forever on its only voyage. We see it in the opening shots of “Titanic,” encrusted with the silt of 85 years; a remote-controlled TV camera snakes its way inside, down corridors and through doorways, showing us staterooms built for millionaires and inherited by crustaceans.

These shots strike precisely the right note; the ship calls from its grave for its story to be told, and if the story is made of showbiz and hype, smoke and mirrors--well, so was the Titanic. She was “the largest moving work of man in all history,” a character boasts, neatly dismissing the Pyramids and the Great Wall. There is a shot of her, early in the film, sweeping majestically beneath the camera from bow to stern, nearly 900 feet long and “unsinkable,” it was claimed, until an iceberg made an irrefutable reply.

James Cameron's 194-minute, $200 million film of the tragic voyage is in the tradition of the great Hollywood epics. It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted and spellbinding. If its story stays well within the traditional formulas for such pictures, well, you don't choose the most expensive film ever made as your opportunity to reinvent the wheel.

We know before the movie begins that certain things must happen. We must see the Titanic sail and sink, and be convinced we are looking at a real ship. There must be a human story--probably a romance--involving a few of the passengers. There must be vignettes involving some of the rest and a subplot involving the arrogance and pride of the ship's builders--and perhaps also their courage and dignity. And there must be a reenactment of the ship's terrible death throes; it took two and a half hours to sink, so that everyone aboard had time to know what was happening, and to consider their actions.

All of those elements are present in Cameron's “Titanic,” weighted and balanced like ballast, so that the film always seems in proportion. The ship was made out of models (large and small), visual effects and computer animation. You know intellectually that you're not looking at a real ocean liner--but the illusion is convincing and seamless. The special effects don't call inappropriate attention to themselves but get the job done.

The human story involves an 17-year-old woman named Rose DeWitt Bukater ( Kate Winslet ) who is sailing to what she sees as her own personal doom: She has been forced by her penniless mother to become engaged to marry a rich, supercilious snob named Cal Hockley ( Billy Zane ), and so bitterly does she hate this prospect that she tries to kill herself by jumping from the ship. She is saved by Jack Dawson ( Leonardo DiCaprio ), a brash kid from steerage, and of course they will fall in love during the brief time left to them.

The screenplay tells their story in a way that unobtrusively shows off the ship. Jack is invited to join Rose's party at dinner in the first class dining room, and later, fleeing from Cal's manservant, Lovejoy ( David Warner ), they find themselves first in the awesome engine room, with pistons as tall as churches, and then at a rousing Irish dance in the crowded steerage. (At one point Rose gives Lovejoy the finger; did young ladies do that in 1912?) Their exploration is intercut with scenes from the command deck, where the captain ( Bernard Hill ) consults with Andrews ( Victor Garber ), the ship's designer and Ismay ( Jonathan Hyde ), the White Star Line's managing director.

Ismay wants the ship to break the trans-Atlantic speed record. He is warned that icebergs may have floated into the hazardous northern crossing but is scornful of danger. The Titanic can easily break the speed record but is too massive to turn quickly at high speed; there is an agonizing sequence that almost seems to play in slow motion, as the ship strains and shudders to turn away from an iceberg in its path--and fails.

We understand exactly what is happening at that moment because of an ingenious story technique by Cameron, who frames and explains the entire voyage in a modern story. The opening shots of the real Titanic, we are told, are obtained during an expedition led by Brock Lovett ( Bill Paxton ), an undersea explorer. He seeks precious jewels but finds a nude drawing of a young girl. Meanwhile, an ancient woman sees the drawing on TV and recognizes herself. This is Rose (Gloria Stuart), still alive at 101. She visits Paxton and shares her memories (“I can still smell the fresh paint”). And he shows her video scenes from his explorations, including a computer simulation of the Titanic's last hours--which doubles as a briefing for the audience. By the time the ship sinks, we already know what is happening and why, and the story can focus on the characters while we effortlessly follow the stages of the Titanic's sinking.

Movies like this are not merely difficult to make at all, but almost impossible to make well. The technical difficulties are so daunting that it's a wonder when the filmmakers are also able to bring the drama and history into proportion. I found myself convinced by both the story and the saga. The setup of the love story is fairly routine, but the payoff--how everyone behaves as the ship is sinking--is wonderfully written, as passengers are forced to make impossible choices. Even the villain, played by Zane, reveals a human element at a crucial moment (despite everything, damn it all, he does love the girl).

The image from the Titanic that has haunted me, ever since I first read the story of the great ship, involves the moments right after it sank. The night sea was quiet enough so that cries for help carried easily across the water to the lifeboats, which drew prudently away. Still dressed up in the latest fashions, hundreds froze and drowned. What an extraordinary position to find yourself in after spending all that money for a ticket on an unsinkable ship.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Titanic (1997)

Rated PG-13 For Shipwreck Scenes, Mild Language and Sexuality

194 minutes

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson

Kate Winslet as Rose Dewitt Bukater

Bill Paxton as Brock Lovett

Kathy Bates as Molly Brown

Billy Zane as Cal Hockley

Written and Directed by

• James Cameron

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“Titanic” by James Cameron Movie Analysis Essay (Movie Review)

Given the fact that the semiotic significance of a particular movie cannot be discussed outside of the conventions of an affiliated socio-cultural discourse, reflected by the contained themes and motifs, it is fully explainable why it now represents a common practice among critics to refer to cinematographic pieces, as such that often advocate the socially constructed behavioral norms.

Moreover, because Western societies never ceased being stratified along a number of different cultural, social and ethnic lines, there is nothing particularly odd about the fact that many Hollywood films (especially the historical ones) are being concerned with exploring the motif of a socially upheld inequality among people, reflective of the specifics of their gender and class affiliation.

The validity of this statement can be well explored in regards to the 1997 film Titanic , directed by James Cameron. After all, in this particular film, the director had made a deliberate point in exposing the existential stances, on the part of Titanic’s passengers, as such that corresponded perfectly well with the concerned people’s social perception of selves.

For example, there is a memorable scene in this film, where Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) ends up dining with first class passengers on the ship’s upper deck– quite contrary to the fact that, by virtue of being a third class passenger, he was not allowed to even approach close to these people.

This, however, should not be perceived as an indication of the first class passengers’ ‘open-mindedness’ – by having Jack invited, they simply wanted to entertain themselves. This is because they expected Jack to prove himself being a rather unsophisticated individual, which in turn would help them to continue enjoying their privileged status, as such that has been dialectically predetermined.

This, however, was not meant to happen, because while conversing with the moralistically minded ‘rich and powerful’, Jack was able to subtly expose their self-presumed ‘superiority’ being rather incidental, “Jack: I’ve got everything I need right here with me… Just the other night I was sleeping under a bridge, and now here I am on the grandest ship in the world having champagne with you fine people” (01.00.32).

Therefore, there is indeed a good reason in referring to Cameron’s film, as such that promotes a thoroughly humanistic idea that the measure of people’s actual worth has very little to do with what happened the extent of their material well-being.

The same can be said about how this film reflects upon male-chauvinistic prejudices towards women, which appear to have been shared by not only the film’s many male but also female characters. For example, there is another notable scene in the movie, where Rose’s (Kate Winslet) mother Ruth (Frances Fisher) tries to convince her daughter that she had no other option but to agree marrying Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), despite the fact that there was no even a slightest hint of love between these two characters.

According to Ruth, even though that forcing Rose to marry Cal stood in striking contradiction to her daughter’s desire, Rose had no good reason to complain about the situation, because it is fully natural for women to be willing to give in to the external circumstances, “Of course it’s unfair… We’re women. Our choices are never easy (01.11.00).

It is needless to mention, of course, that such Ruth’s point of view has been predetermined by what used be the realities of her patriarchal upbringing. Apparently, ever since her early years, Ruth was endowed with the belief that there was not anything unnatural about women being continually victimized by men.

Nevertheless, it would be quite inappropriate to suggest that the philosophical appeal of Cameron’s film is being solely concerned with the fact that, while working on it, the director strived to expose the counterproductive essence of the early 20 th century’s class-related and gender-related conventions.

This is because, along with advancing the idea that there can be no rationale-based reasons for people to be discriminated against, on the basis of what happened to be the particulars of their biologically/socially defined self-identity, this film also helps viewers to adopt a thoroughly scientific outlook on the representatives of Homo Sapiens species.

That is, contrary to what it being assumed by the religious /moralistic individuals, the watching of Cameron’s film leaves very few doubts, as to the fact that people are essentially primates, who rely predominantly on the workings of their unconscious psyche, when it comes to addressing the life’s most acute challenges.

The validity of this suggestion can be well illustrated in regards to the film’s final scenes, in which fashionably dressed gentlemen from the upper deck, try to make their way to the lifeboats, while trampling the bodies of women and children. Because earlier in the film, these men having been shown to treat the same women in a particularly gallant manner, viewers’ exposure to the ‘sinking’ scenes naturally predisposes them to think that the extent of people’s affiliation with the values of a ‘civilized living’ can be best defined rather negligible.

This is because, as it was shown in the Titanic , people’s foremost existential agenda in being solely concerned with the ensuring of their physical survival. Once, they are being put in a life-threatening situation, the considerations of religion, morality and behavioral etiquette, on their part, instantaneously disappear into the thin air, while prompting them to act in a manner, fully consistent with what these people really are, in the biological sense of this word – hairless apes.

Therefore, it is quite impossible to agree with Allan Johnson, who promote the idea that the very notion of competitiveness should be regarded ‘inappropriate’, because it reminds emotionally sensitive individuals the politically incorrect truth that there is a ‘monkey’, residing deep inside of them, “I don’t play Monopoly anymore, mostly because I don’t like the way I behave when I do. When I used to play Monopoly, I’d try to win, even against my own children, and I couldn’t resist feeling good when I did (we’re supposed to feel good) even if I also felt guilty about it” (17).

It appears that, while coming up with this statement, Johnson remained unaware of the simple fact that one’s ability to compete with others for the limited resources, defines his or her chances of attaining a social prominence. Therefore, prompting people to refrain from behaving in accordance with the basic laws of nature, which endorse competition, cannot result in anything but in reducing the extent of their existential fitness.

Therefore, it will only be logical, on our part, to conclude this paper by reinstating once again that the measure of just about film’s educational/philosophical worth should not only be assessed in regards to how this film helps viewers to realize the counterproductive essence of socially upheld prejudices (such as the assumption of women’s ‘inferiority’).

In order for a particular movie to be considered enlightening, it also needs to encourage viewers to come to terms with what can be considered the discursive significance of their biological constitution – even if this is being accomplished at the expense of revealing the conceptual fallaciousness of politically correct dogmas. Because the themes and motifs, explored in Cameron’s movie, appear fully consistent with these two provisions, there is indeed a good reason to refer to this particular film thoroughly progressive.

Works Cited

Johnson, Allan. The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice and Promise . Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. Print.

Titanic . Ex. Prod. James Cameron. Los Angeles, CA.: 20th Century Fox. 1997. DVD.

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IvyPanda. (2022, August 6). "Titanic" by James Cameron Movie Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/review-of-film-titanic-by-james-cameron/

""Titanic" by James Cameron Movie Analysis." IvyPanda , 6 Aug. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/review-of-film-titanic-by-james-cameron/.

IvyPanda . (2022) '"Titanic" by James Cameron Movie Analysis'. 6 August.

IvyPanda . 2022. ""Titanic" by James Cameron Movie Analysis." August 6, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/review-of-film-titanic-by-james-cameron/.

1. IvyPanda . ""Titanic" by James Cameron Movie Analysis." August 6, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/review-of-film-titanic-by-james-cameron/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . ""Titanic" by James Cameron Movie Analysis." August 6, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/review-of-film-titanic-by-james-cameron/.

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FILM REVIEW

FILM REVIEW; A Spectacle As Sweeping As the Sea

By Janet Maslin

• Dec. 19, 1997

The long-awaited advent of the most expensive movie ever made, the reportedly $200 million ''Titanic,'' brings history to mind, and not just the legendary seafaring disaster of April 15, 1912. Think back also, exactly 58 years ago today, to the Dec. 19 New York premiere of another grand, transporting love story set against a backdrop of prideful excess, cataclysmic upheaval and character-defining trial by fire.

Recall how that cultural landmark wowed audiences with its bravado, mad extravagance and state-of-the-art Hollywood showmanship, all fueled by one unstoppable filmmaker and his obsessive imagination. Just as David O. Selznick had Atlanta to burn, now James Cameron has a ship to sink, but he also has much more than calamity to explore in this gloriously retrograde new epic. Mr. Cameron's magnificent ''Titanic'' is the first spectacle in decades that honestly invites comparison to ''Gone With the Wind.''

What a rarity that makes it in today's world of meaningless gimmicks and short attention spans: a huge, thrilling three-and-a-quarter-hour experience that unerringly lures viewers into the beauty and heartbreak of its lost world. Astonishing technological advances are at work here, but only in the service of one spectacular illusion: that the ship is afloat again, and that the audience is intimately involved in its voyage.

What's more, Mr. Cameron succeeds magically in linking his film's young lovers, played enchantingly by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, with established details of the ''Titanic'' story. And let's not forget the offscreen drama: delayed release and outrageous costs made ''Titanic'' the joke of the summer. Now it's the movie of the year.

Though the tender moments in Mr. Cameron's earlier films have mostly involved Arnold Schwarzenegger, graceful storytelling from this one-man army of a filmmaker (a director, a producer, a writer and an editor) is the biggest of many surprises here. Swept away by the romance of his subject matter, Mr. Cameron rises to the occasion with a simple, captivating narrative style, one that cares little for subtlety but overflows with wonderful, well-chosen Hollywood hokum. In its own sobering way, the film is forward-looking, too, as its early brashness gives way to near-religious humility when the moments of reckoning arrive. Ultimately a haunting tale of human nature, with endless displays of callousness, gallantry or cowardice, it offers an unforgettable vision of millennium-ready unease in the sight of passengers adrift in icy seas on that last, moonless night.

That Mr. Cameron allowed flashlights into what should have been a pitch-black sequence is one of the rare times when ''Titanic'' willingly departs from established fact. Otherwise, with an attention to detail that goes well beyond fanatical, the film flawlessly recreates its monument to Gilded Age excess. Behind-the-scenes details here, which prove no less fascinating than Selznick's ''Gone With the Wind'' memos, include Mr. Cameron's having persuaded the original carpet manufacturer to make an 18,000-square-foot reproduction of its ''Titanic'' weave and his having insisted that every sign, uniform and logo for the Southampton sailing sequence also be created in mirror image, so that the camera could reverse the apparent direction of the nearly life-size model ship.

Sets match old photographs right down to the sculpture and woodwork; costumes incorporate fragments of vintage clothing; even the silver White Star Line ashtrays had to be right. A core group of 150 extras worked with an Edwardian etiquette coach throughout the filming, furthering the illusion that the privileged past had returned to life.

''Titanic'' is no museum piece, however. It's a film with tremendous momentum right from its deceptive, crass-looking start. The story opens in the present day, with a team of scientist-cowboys (led by Bill Paxton) hunting for lost treasure amid the Titanic wreckage. Though Mr. Cameron made his own journey to the ocean floor to film amazing glimpses of the ship, he treats these explorers as glib 90's hotshots, the kind of macho daredevils who could just as easily be found tracking twisters or dinosaurs in a summer action film.

''Oops, somebody left the water running,'' one of them wisecracks about the sunken ship.

Then the film begins, ever so teasingly, to open its window to the past. A 101-year-old woman (played spiritedly by Gloria Stuart, an 87-year-old beauty who appeared in ''Gold Diggers of 1935'') hears of the expedition and says it has links to her own history. It seems that she, Rose, was the model for a nude sketch found by the present-day fortune hunters in a Titanic safe. It is the only thing of value to be retrieved there. The money in the safe has turned to mud.

But where is the Heart of the Ocean, the egg-size blue diamond Rose wears in the drawing? Rose begins telling her story, and at long last 1912 is at hand. In an introductory sequence mounted on a colossal scale, Mr. Cameron shows the ship being boarded by its full economic range of passengers, from the haughty rich to the third-class passengers being checked for head lice.

Young Rose (Ms. Winslet) arrives at the dock in the show-stopping plumage of Deborah L. Scott's costume designs, and in the unfortunate company of Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), the tiresome snob whom she has agreed to marry, largely at the urging of her impecunious mother (Frances Fisher). The Rose-Cal story line, which is the weakest part of the film thanks to Cal's unwavering odiousness, plays like Edith Wharton Lite.

Meanwhile, in a nearby tavern, adorable Jack Dawson (Mr. DiCaprio) is winning a third-class Titanic ticket in a poker game. It won't be long before Jack is bounding happily into steerage, showing off the boyish adventurousness that makes him such a cure for what's ailing Rose. Aboard the ship of dreams, as the Titanic is often called here, Jack is one serious dreamboat.

A bohemian artist (whose drawings were done by Mr. Cameron) who has spent the requisite time in Paris, he offers all the fun and flirtatiousness that Rose has been missing. This 20-year-old has also shown his share of worldly wisdom by the end of the story. It goes without saying that it's Jack, not Cal, who is the film's true gentleman. And that Mr. DiCaprio has made an inspired career move in so successfully meeting the biggest challenge for an actor of his generation: a traditional role.

Among the many miracles of ''Titanic'' is its way of creating a sweet, life-changing courtship between Jack and Rose in the course of only a few days. At the risk of turning into a women's picture, ''Titanic'' brings these two together through a dramatic meeting, an invitation for Jack at a formal first-class dinner, a dancing romp among steerage passengers and even enough intimate moments to give the love story heat. Splendid chemistry between the stars, along with much color from the supporting cast and careful foreshadowing from Mr. Cameron, keeps the romance buoyant even after the dread iceberg gets in its way.

Comfortable even in suggesting that the ship's lookouts missed the danger because they were busy watching lovestruck Jack and Rose, Mr. Cameron lets tragedy strike midway through the film. That way, the disaster can unfold in almost real time, with terrifying precision on a par with all the other details here.

Not for ''Titanic'' the shrill hysteria of ordinary disaster stories; this film is especially delicate in its slow way of letting the gravity of the situation become clear. Much scarier than any explosion-filled caper film is the simple assessment from the ship's master builder, played with great dignity by Victor Garber: ''In an hour or so, all this will be at the bottom of the Atlantic.''

As Mr. Cameron joked during production, about a film that pitilessly observes the different plights of the rich and the poor, ''We're holding just short of Marxist dogma.'' (A lavish ''Titanic'' coffee table book from HarperCollins is filled with fascinating data about the film, from the director's casual asides to accounts of the technological wizardry, like computerized hydraulics, that were devised for repeatedly sinking the ship.) By this point, the audience knows the ship so fully, from Cal and Rose's elaborate suite to the depths of the boiler room, that the film is on shockingly familiar territory as Rose searches every newly waterlogged area for Jack.

Very much to Mr. Cameron's credit is the lack of logistical confusion. Indeed, the film's modern-day characters even watch a computerized version of how the ship split and then rose vertically just before it plunged straight down, events that are later re-enacted with awesome power. Despite all this advance information and the revelation that Rose lives to be 101, ''Titanic'' still sustains an extraordinary degree of suspense.

Tiny, devastating touches -- how the same doll whose face rests on the ocean floor in 1996 is clutched in the arms of a pretty little girl who idolizes Jack, or a four-hanky coda seen in Rose's dream -- work as well as the film's big spectacle in giving the tragedy of ''Titanic'' its full dramatic impact. Though many of the story's minor characters are one-note (hardly the case with Kathy Bates's hearty Molly Brown or Bernard Hill's brave captain), the cumulative effect of their presence is anything but shallow.

Beyond its romance, ''Titanic'' offers an indelibly wrenching story of blind arrogance and its terrible consequences. It's the rare Hollywood adventure film that brings mythic images of tragedy -- the fall of Icarus, the ruin of Ozymandias -- so easily to mind.

The irony is that Mr. Cameron's ''Titanic'' is such a Titanic in its own right, a presumptuous reach for greatness against all reasonable odds. The film itself gambles everything on visual splendor and technological accomplishment, which is one reason its extravagance is fully justified on screen. But if Mr. Cameron's own brazenness echoes that seen in his story, remember the essential difference. This ''Titanic'' is too good to sink.

''Titanic'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes partial nudity, one brief sexual situation, mild profanity and the soul-shaking sight of a great ship going down.

Written and directed by James Cameron; director of photography, Russell Carpenter; edited by Conrad Buff, Mr. Cameron and Richard A. Harris; music by James Horner; production designer, Peter Lamont; costume designer, Deborah L. Scott; special visual effects, Digital Domain; produced by Mr. Cameron, Jon Landau and Rae Sanchini; released by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox. Running time: 197 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

WITH: Leonardo DiCaprio (Jack Dawson), Kate Winslet (Rose DeWitt Bukater), Gloria Stuart (Rose Dawson Calvert), Billy Zane (Cal Hockley), Kathy Bates (Molly Brown), Frances Fisher (Ruth DeWitt Bukater), Bernard Hill (Capt. E. J. Smith), Victor Garber (Thomas Andrews) and Bill Paxton (Brock Lovett).