26 years after its release, James Cameron’s film remains one of the highest-grossing films in history.
On the night of April 15, 1912, the Titanic, the largest and one of the most comfortable passenger liners of its time, sank in the North Atlantic during its first voyage after colliding with an iceberg. Although the tragedy, which claimed the lives of over 1,500 people, is not the deadliest shipwreck, the sinking of the Titanic has haunted the minds of people around the world for more than a century. The popularity of this story was greatly contributed to by the film “Titanic”, released in American theaters on December 19, 1997.
Bitter truth and fiction
Director James Cameron shot Titanic from his own script at the intersection of genres, combining historical melodrama with a disaster film. The plot is based on the love story of a poor artist Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a high society girl, Rose Dewitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), who is burdened by the prospect of an arranged marriage. The young people meet on the Titanic and spend only a few days together before the ship hits an iceberg and sinks.
Viewers will learn about the events that took place on board the liner from April 10 to 15, 1912 from the lips of Rosa, who tells her story to treasure hunters in 1996. She managed to escape and live a long life, while Jack died along with the other passengers of the Titanic.
Cameron created the characters Jack and Rose – there were no passengers with such names on the Titanic, but many of the supporting actors play real people who were unlucky enough to be on board the liner on its maiden voyage. For example, the prototype for the character Molly Brown, played by Katie Bates, was an American socialite, one of the surviving first-class passengers of the Titanic, Margaret Brown, who later created the Titanic Survivors Foundation.
The captain of the Titanic, Edward John Smith, and the actor who played him, Bernard Hill. Other performers of the roles of crew members and famous passengers of the Titanic were also selected taking into account the portrait resemblance, which was enhanced by the make-up artists
The director tried to carefully recreate the chronology of the tragedy, but sometimes his desire for drama let him down. In particular, in the film, Captain’s mate William Murdoch (Evan Steward), who led the evacuation of passengers from the starboard side of the Titanic, kills Jack’s friend, who is trying to get into the boat, and then shoots himself in the temple. After the premiere of the film, Murdoch’s heirs expressed their dissatisfaction with this episode, because their ancestor fulfilled his duty to the last and, at the cost of his life, helped hundreds of Titanic passengers escape.
But the story about the ship’s orchestra, which played on the deck of the liner until the last minute, is not fiction; the musicians really performed various melodies during the evacuation and died along with the ship.
The beginning of a beautiful friendship
Many Hollywood stars were in contention for the leading roles in Titanic. Thus, among others, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise and Christian Bale were auditioned for the role of Jack, but James Cameron gave preference to 23-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio.
The competition among contenders for the leading female role was also serious. Gwyneth Paltrow or Claire Danes could have played Rose in the film, but the then little-known 21-year-old British actress Kate Winslet convinced Cameron that no one could do this role better than her. The director made the right decision in both cases: even a quarter of a century after the release of Titanic, audiences are furtively wiping away tears at the end of the film thanks to the outstanding performances of the leading actors. By the way, in real life DiCaprio and Winslet became good friends.
From the idea to its implementation – how many years did it take?
James Cameron has been fascinated by the history of shipwrecks for many years, in which the sinking of the Titanic occupies a special place. The idea of making a feature film based on the history of this tragedy came to the director after the release of the documentary film “Titanic” in 1992. The film, created in IMAX format, was based on underwater footage of the wreckage of the Titanic, which was carried out in 1991 by the Russian deep-sea submersibles Mir-1 and Mir-2 as part of an international expedition.
Even without being sure whether he would ultimately take the job, Cameron sketched out a preliminary version of the Titanic script and convinced the management of the 20th Century Fox film studio to approve both the project itself and a new expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic – the director dreamed of seeing them with his own eyes and declared the need for field filming at a depth of 3800 meters. To do this, James Cameron rented the Russian research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh and both Mir bathyscaphes. In September 1995, in just 19 days, the Mir-1 and Mir-2 devices each made 12 multi-hour joint dives to the Titanic lying at the bottom.
Then the film crew began preparing the sets and sites, and the first shots with the participation of the actors were filmed on board the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh on July 31, 1996 – according to the plot, the opening and final scenes of the Titanic unfold on the research vessel.
Filming ended on March 23, 1997, after which the team began editing and creating special effects. Titanic was supposed to be released on July 2, 1997, but Cameron announced in April that he needed more time. As a result, taking into account the planned release of other blockbusters, the release of Titanic was postponed until December 19, 1997, in order to avoid competition, although several premieres took place earlier. Thus, work on the film took a total of about two years.