A Night to Remember

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #7: Roy Bak­er’s A Night to Remem­ber.

208e.jpg This is a film where I’m going to talk near­ly as much about the Cri­te­ri­on DVD as much as the film itself. Or maybe not. But it bears men­tion­ing that the com­men­tary on this release comes from two Titan­ic experts and dis­cuss­es the actu­al events in com­par­i­son to the Wal­ter Lord book and the film adap­ta­tion of that book. This is the type of high qual­i­ty and nov­el film expe­ri­ence that only Cri­te­ri­on could sup­ply. A movie based on a book based on one of the most mem­o­rable events of 20th cen­tu­ry ana­lyzed by two experts of the actu­al event.

Dra­mat­ic reen­act­ments don’t do a whole lot for me, but A Night to Remem­ber sup­plies enough snarky social com­men­tary on pre-World Wars Britain that the film only drags slight­ly. We watch the boat sink in approx­i­mate real time, and it tor­tur­ous­ly takes for­ev­er. I mean, we know what hap­pens. The boat sinks, most of the peo­ple die. Roy Bak­er makes the film inter­est­ing by using it as hind­sight fore­shad­ow­ing of the end of Britain’s gold­en age, though none of the Brits seem to real­ize that this is the case. Class dis­tinc­tions are still sup­pos­ed­ly quite marked in present day Britain, but I find it unlike­ly that they are even close to being as seg­re­gat­ed as they were in 1912. I could be wrong, how­ev­er, since as a dra­mat­ic reen­act­ment it is like­ly Bak­er extrap­o­lat­ed the gap. The tragedy is empha­sized again and again by the prox­im­i­ty of the Cal­i­forn­ian and the sim­ple missed com­mu­ni­ca­tions and brief fits of pique that ulti­mate­ly result in the deaths of 1500 folks.

Bak­er para­dox­i­cal­ly seems to yearn for the feel­ing of con­fi­dence that suf­fused the pas­sen­gers at the start of the voy­age and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly shred the arro­gance of many of the aris­toc­ra­cy who refuse com­mon sense in favor of their appear­ance and com­fort. The steer­age pas­sen­gers become inno­cent vic­tims and the sur­vivors unwor­thy in this par­a­digm. The busy­body financier of the voy­age escapes on a lifeboat like the rat he resem­bles, and the brave-faced fatal­ist good­byes num­ber in the dozens. Most of the sailors are gal­lant, and a cook who gets drunk when he real­izes all is lost [and brings a bit of lev­i­ty to the film] ulti­mate­ly saves some­one’s life and is res­cued him­self. The cul­mi­na­tion of all this blame-throw­ing is a gen­er­al resent­ment for the rich pas­sen­gers, pity for the vic­tims, grudg­ing respect for the sailors and a strong feel­ing that “this should nev­er have hap­pened” which is admirable near­ly 100 years after the ill-fat­ed voy­age. Most ill-will is direct­ed toward the pas­sive British­ers and this is high­light­ed by the gauche but spunky and warm-heart­ed token Amer­i­can pas­sen­ger; she’d be in steer­age if her hus­band had­n’t struck it rich in Cal­i­for­nia.

The spe­cial effects, most­ly mod­els and clever edit­ing, are rel­a­tive­ly well done and effec­tive. The only real crit­i­cism I have is that I wish Bak­er would have killed every­one a half hour soon­er.

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Cri­te­ri­on Essay by Michael Sragow.
The Titan­ic Archive.
The Cri­te­ri­on Con­trap­tion’s review.

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