Titanic (1943 film)
Encyclopedia : T : TI : TIT : 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
The film was shot on board the "JJ Cap Arcona," a passenger cruise ship which itself was sunk in the last weeks of WWII with a heavy loss of life. The scenes with the lifeboats were filmed on the Baltic Sea and some of the interior scenes were shot in Tobis Studios.Titanic was the most expensive German production up until that time and endured many production difficulties, including a clash of egos, massive creative differences and general war-time frustrations. All of this resulted in Joseph Goebbels arresting the film's director, Herbert Selpin, for treason and ordering him to be hanged in his cell the very next day. The unfinished film, the production of which spiraled wildly out control, was in the end completed by Werner Klingler.
The premiere was supposed to be in early 1943, but the theatre that housed the answer print was bombed the night before the big event. The film went on to have a lacklustre premiere in Paris around Christmas of that same year, but in the end, Goebbles banned it all together, stating that the German people, at that point going through almost nightly Allied bombing raids, were less than enthusiastic about seeing a film that portrayed mass death and panic. Titanic was re-discovered in 1949, but was quickly banned in most western & capitalist countries. However, it was a huge success with Soviet audiences, who greatly related to the film's severe anti-capitalist statement. After the fifties, the film went back into obscurity, sometimes showing up on German television. But in 1992, a censored, low quality VHS copy, was released in Germany. This version deleted the strongest propaganda scenes, which immensely watered down its controversial content. 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 and a handful of German passengers in steerage are shown as brave and kind. Peterson manages to rescue many passengers, convince his lover to get into a lifeboat (in a scene which was famously mimicked in the 1997 film) and saves a young girl, who was obviously left to die in her cabin by an uncaring, callous British capitalist mother. The film makes the allegory of the Titanic's loss specifically about British avarice rather than, as most Titanic retellings do, about general human arrogance and presumption. However, this film 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 greatly overstated. 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 noticeable goof, since the model used in the 1943 version is very different from the one used in 1958); the other two were brief clips of a flooding walkway in the engine room. No shots of the actual sinking were 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 a 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 male lead coaches the girl he loves that she should not marry the man for whom she feels nothing - just because her parents ordered her to do so; a stolen jewelry subplot; a character is accused of a jewel theft (including a blue diamond) he did not commit; a main character gets locked 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.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.