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Titanic (1953)

Rate: 5
Viewed: 5/22

Titan53
5/22: Before there was James Cameron's Best Picture winner and before there were Walter Lord's book and the subsequent film A Night to Remember, there was the 1953 version of Titanic which is the worst of them all.

It's so dull that I'm surprised this dated melodrama won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. I suppose the lines are well-written, but who cares about the bickering couple?!? Just sink the toy ship in the bathtub already. Unbelievably, it doesn't happen for an hour. By the time the sinking happens, the movie is almost over.

The cast is mostly fine, and it's an all-star at that: Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb, Robert Wagner, Audrey Dalton, Thelma Ritter, and Richard Basehart. But it's been a melodrama after melodrama after melodrama. In a way, James Cameron may have been inspired by some of them for the central focus of his film against the backdrop of the Titanic.

I can point out the countless historical inaccuracies, but it'll be a waste of time. Instead, I'm going to touch one that bothered me a lot. The ship is shown hit by iceberg on the starboard. After that, the hull is severely ripped underwater on the port. What in the world...? The inference is that there was iceberg on both sides. How did the filmmakers decide on this? It's ridiculous like the insane ending when everybody calmly got together to sing while the ship was ready to go under.

All in all, the 1953 version of Titanic belongs on the bottom of the ocean along with the actual ship.