Titanic (1943 film)

Titanic was a 1943 Nazi propaganda film made during World War II in Berlin by Tobis Productions for Ufa Films.

Brief history of the film's torbulent, dramatic history

"Titanic" was the most expensive German production up until that time and endured many production difficulties, including a clash of ego, creative differences and general war-time frustrations. All of it resulted with Joseph Goebbles arresting the film's director, Herbert Selpin, for treason and ordering him to be hung in his cell the very next day. The unfinished film, the production of which was spiraling wildly out control was in the end completed by Werner Klingler. The premiere wa supposed by in early 1943, but the theatre that housed the answer print was bombed the night before the big premiere event. The film went on to have a lackluster premiere in Paris around Christmas of that very same year, but in the end, Goebbles banned all together, citing that the German people, at that point going through nightly bomb raids by the Americans and the Brittish, were less than enthusiastic about seeing a film that portraed mass death and panid. "Titanic" was re-discovered in 1949, but wsas quickly banned in most western & capitalist countries. However, it was a huge success with the Soviet audience, who greatly related to the film's severe anti-capitalist statement. After the fifties, the film went back into obscurity, but a censored, low quality VHS saw release in Germany in the early nineties. Finally, in 2005, "Titanic" was completely restored and, for the first time, the uncensored version was released in a special edition DVD by Kino Video.

Brief plot synopsis

The film itself focuses on the fictional, heroic German First Officer Peterson on the ill-fated voyage of the British ocean liner RMS Titanic in 1912. He begs the ship's rich and snobbish owners to slow down the ship's speed, but they refuse and the Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks. The rich are shown as sleazy cowards, while Officer Peterson is shown as a brave and kind, who manages to rescue many passengers, convince his lover to get into the boat and in the end saves a young girl, who was obviously left to die in her cabin by an uncaring, callous Brittish capitalist mother. The film makes the allegory of the Titanic's loss specifically about British avarice and greed rather than, as most Titanic retellings do, about general human arrogance and presumption. However, it does include all the "classic" trappings of a Titanic film. The numerous subplots include greed, arrogance, star-crossed lovers, young love, old flames meeting again on the doomed ship and has the typical melodramatic scene where a wife refuses to leave her husband on the doomed liner. The film is especially notable for its alleged influence on James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster.

Allegations about A Night to Remember

The 1943 film actually had very good special effects for the time, so much so that it was alleged that some of them were spliced into the 1958 film A Night to Remember. This "fact," however, is greately overrated. The only shots used by the 1958 film are four brief inserts. Two are of the ship sailing in calm waters during the day (a very noticable goof, since the model used in the 1943 version is very different from the one used in the 1958 one;) the other two were brief clips of a flooding walkway in the engine room. No shots of the actual sinking was used in A Night to Remember.

Allegations about the 1997 Titanic

Several commentators have observed archly their conviction that James Cameron must have been very familiar with the 1943 Nazi propaganda film when writing and filming his own Titanic. Several story aspects are in both films but not in any other Titanic version: e.g., the salt of the earth non-British Hero orders his girlfriend into the lifeboat, she hesitantly complies and watches her love disappear behind the railing as the lifeboat is lowered (though she doesn't jump out in the 1943 film;) a young, dashing man coaches the girl he loves that she should not marry the man she does not love just because her parents ordered her so; a stolen jewelry subplot; a man is accused of a jewel theft (including a blue diamond) he did not commit; a main character gets locked up in a flooding cabin as the other character (male in this version) rescues him with an axe; etc. Additionally many of the scene compositions and camera angles are uncannily similar.