Titanic (1997 film)

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Titanic
File:Titanic poster.jpg Original theatrical poster for Titanic
Directed by	James Cameron
Written by	James Cameron
Produced by	Rae Sanchini
Starring	Leonardo DiCaprio Frances Fisher Kathy Bates Danny Nucci Bill Paxton Gloria Stuart
Cinematography	Russell Carpenter
Edited by	Conrad Buff IV James Cameron Richard A. Harris
Music by	James Horner
Distributed by	20th Century Fox (non-United States) Paramount Pictures
Release dates	October 31, 1997 (premiere at Tokyo IFF) December 19, 1997 December 19 1997 January 23 1998
Running time	194 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$200,000,000
Box office	US$1,845,034,188 (worldwide)

Titanic is a romantic drama film written, directed and co-produced by James Cameron. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater respectively, members of different social strata who fall in love aboard the ill-fated 1912 maiden voyage of RMS Titanic. The film co-stars Billy Zane as Rose's fiancé, Caledon Hockley, Kathy Bates as Margaret "Molly" Brown, Frances Fisher as Rose's mother, Ruth, and Danny Nucci as Jack's best friend, Fabrizio De Rossi. Bill Paxton plays Brock Lovett, the leader of a treasure hunting expedition, while Gloria Stuart has the role of the elderly Rose (renamed Calvert), who narrates the story in 1996.

Because Titanic was not completed in mid-1997, problems rose in Hollywood and there was discussion of trimming its length, but director Cameron fought to release it without additional editing. It was released to North America in theatres by Paramount Pictures (worldwide by 20th Century Fox) on December 19 1997, and while it performed well in its first weekend, it was not until the new year that the film would reach its highest ticket sales. It holds the record for the highest-grossing film of all time, generating over US$1.8 billion worldwide. In 1998 it was nominated for fourteen Academy Awards and won eleven, including the title of 1997's Best Picture. With Ben-Hur (1959) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Titanic holds the record for the most Academy Award wins.

Production

A brand-new studio was built for the making of this film, at Popotla, near Rosarito Beach in Mexico, just 40 kM south of the international border. A giant tower crane was used for aerial tracking shots of the 90% scale model of Titanic that was built in the ocean. When this epic disaster film was not finished in time for its scheduled July 1997 release, shockwaves were sent through Hollywood; executives started wondering if a situation similar to that of Heaven's Gate would occur. The releasing studios 20th Century Fox (which handled the film's distribution outside the U.S.) and Paramount Pictures (which handled the U.S. distribution) panicked. With a budget of $200.1 million, Titanic became the costliest film of all time by mid-1997. When director James Cameron delivered the film to Paramount, it ran over three hours and speculation arose whether he would work in Hollywood again. Cameron defended his production and threatened most executives that they were not going to shorten the film's length. Cameron admitted that he felt as though Titanic would be unsuccessful.

Titanic was released across North America on December 19 1997. In its first weekend it grossed $28 million in ticket sales, but it was not until the new year that the film had reached $100 million. Titanic was number-one at the box office for four months and became the top-grossing film of all time. It generated $1.8 billion in worldwide ticket sales. In 1998 Cameron was awarded the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Filming occurred from 16 September1996 to 23 March1997

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler The year is 1996, and a treasure hunter, Brock Lovett, and his team explore the wreck of the RMS Titanic in their submersible. A safe is brought to the surface and is opened. It contains not the fabled treasure the adventurers had hoped for, but only papers. One of them is a pencil portrait dated April 14, 1912, and signed "JD". It shows a beautiful young woman reclining nude with casual modesty on a couch. On a necklace around her is the treasure they seek: the diamond known as "The Heart of the Ocean".

File:031028e-p.jpg

Gloria Stuart as 101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater.

Rose DeWitt Bukater, known as Rose Dawson Calvert, an elderly but still vital woman of almost 101 years, watches a CNN report of the treasure hunt and sees the nude portrait. She phones the treasure hunter Brock Lovett and informs him that she knows about the diamond, the Heart of the Ocean, and also the identity of the beautiful young woman in the portrait: "Oh, yes. The woman in the picture is me." Rose, accompanied by her granddaughter Lizzy Calvert, flies out to the salvage ship used by Lovett and his crew, known as the Keldysh, at the recovery site and proceeds to tell the treasure hunters of her experiences on the Titanic.

Rose, 17 years old on April 10, 1912, boards the ship with the upper-class passengers and her mother, society matron Ruth DeWitt Bukater, and her fiancé, industrialist Caledon Hockley. While Rose merely considers Caledon as a friend but not a suitable husband, her uncaring mother pushes for the marriage for financial security, to maintain their current lavish lifestyle and bolster the social cachet among the Philadelphia elite. Meanwhile, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson and his best friend Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets to the ship in a poker game.

Rose is so unhappy about her forced engagement and her endlessly shallow life that she attempts to commit suicide by jumping off the ship's stern. Jack sees her and tries to intervene. The ship's crew find the two sprawled over the deck; at first they think this is a rape, but Rose explains to them that it was an accident. Caledon thanks Jack by reluctantly inviting him to dine with their party the following evening in the first-class dining saloon. In the meantime, Jack and Rose strike up a tentative friendship as he shares stories of his adventures in traveling and she expresses her own hopes, and he shows her his sketchbook of artwork. Their bond deepens when they leave the first-class formal dinner party for a much livelier gathering in third-class room with Fabrizio and Tommy Ryan, a man Jack and Fabrizio befriended earlier.

Jack is falling in love with Rose, but he finds it hard to speak to her alone and in private, since Caledon and Ruth have paid the first class guards to keep Jack from entering the area. Eventually, on April 14, with Fabrizio and Tommy's help, Jack is able to sneak onto the upper class deck and steal a jacket. He is able to confront Rose alone, but she is inclined to ignore their growing affection because of her engagement and social standings. Eventually, she decides to offer her heart to Jack and asks him to sketch her wearing nothing but the Heart of the Ocean diamond. Unfortunately, Rose foolishly writes a taunting note for Caledon and puts it in the diamond's safe along with the drawing and the diamond itself. Soon, Spicer Lovejoy, Caledon's valet, finds them and chases them down to the cargo hold. They lose him after entering the boiler room and later consummate their relationship in one of the motor cars in the ship's cargo hold.

In the meantime, Captain Edward J. Smith has seemingly been ignoring many warnings about upcoming ice fields in the ship's path, and the Titanic maintains the high speed suggested by White Star Line managing director J. Bruce Ismay even as the ship heads into the night. At 11:40 PM, the two lookouts see an iceberg directly in the Titanic's path. Despite the efforts of the crew and engineers, the ship strikes the iceberg and water begins to flood the compartments past their "unsinkable" capacity and causes the ship to begin sinking.

After finding Rose's taunting note in the diamond safe, Caledon discovers the relationship between Jack and Rose and frames Jack for stealing his diamond when they try to warn him about the sinking ship. Caledon orders the master-at-arms to handcuff and trap Jack in a room. Even though she has a chance to escape the sinking ship with her mother on a lifeboat, Rose runs away from Caledon — and her chance of accessing a lifeboat — to find Jack. Harland and Wolff managing director and builder of Titanic Thomas Andrews tells her how to reach the room Jack is trapped in, and when she reaches it, Jack tells her to go and get help. She finds two men in the area, but both are unhelpful. Finally, she grabs the fire axe and frees Jack by cutting the chains, while the bow of the ship slowly goes underwater.

Jack and Rose try desperately to make their way back above decks to escape the rapidly sinking ship. They then try to get to a stairwell, but they encounter a locked gate and a crowd of steerage passengers attempting to enter the second-class level, at the refusal of a steward. Jack and Rose leave the crowd, and work their way to a smaller gate, where they are reunited with Fabrizio and Tommy. The gate is locked and one of the ship's crew refuses to let them through. Jack and his friends use a bench to break through to the upper level. Finally, the group makes it up to the boat deck where Caledon is searching for Rose and the diamond.

File:031028k-p.jpg

The Titanic as it slowly sinks.

On deck, the ship's officers are not letting any men on the lifeboats, and Rose refuses to get into a lifeboat without Jack. As Fabrizio and Tommy go off to check the other side, Jack and Caledon, who has been spending all night trying to find Rose and board a lifeboat, temporarily team up to convince Rose to get into the lifeboat, which she does.

While they were trying to convince her, Caledon gave his coat to Rose to keep her warm, forgetting that he had put the diamond in the pocket. As the lifeboat lowers away Rose realizes that she can't separate herself from Jack, and she jumps back on the ship, and she and Jack reunite on the Grand Staircase, with Caledon and Lovejoy nearby. Infuriated beyond belief, Caledon takes Lovejoy's pistol and chases Jack and Rose down the staircase, shooting at them. Caledon runs out of ammunition when Jack and Rose reach the dining room, which is quickly flooding. He chooses not to continue pursuing them when he notices the water level. In a deleted scene, he sends Lovejoy to retrieve the diamond, promising to give it to him if he can get it and runs to get a lifeboat. Lovejoy obeys, and goes into the dining room with his loaded gun, searching for them as the water level quickly rises. Jack and Rose hide behind a table as Lovejoy searches the room. Finally, he finds Rose, but Jack jumps out and attacks him, smashing his head into a window and injuring him. He then punches him in the stomach and they leave him behind. Lovejoy gets up and fires his gun at them, but they are able to escape and lose him.

Jack and Rose try to make their way to the boat deck again, during which they unsuccessfully attempt to rescue a young boy in a flooding hallway. They then get stuck behind another locked gate. A steward tries to open it, but he drops the keys and runs away. Jack grabs them and opens the gate himself seconds before they would both drown.

Meanwhile, the forward promenade deck is being flooded and the last two lifeboats are being readied for lowering. Caledon has bribed his way into the last lifeboat, with Tommy and Fabrizio trying to get into the boat themselves. First officer William McMaster Murdoch, the officer in charge of launching the boat, is in a panic as he threatens to shoot any man who tries to get into the boat, allowing only women and children to get in. When Caledon tries to get in, he throws the bribe money back at him. The crowd pushes Tommy toward the boat and he is shot by Murdoch. When he realizes that he just killed an innocent man, he looks around in shock before committing suicide by shooting himself in the head.

File:Titanicpic1.JPG

The Titanic's bow end plunges underwater.

Caledon enters the lifeboat by pretending to look after an abandoned child. While it is being filled, the water reaches the boat deck, and the boat floats off. The ship's band starts playing their final song, Nearer, My God, to Thee, as Captain Smith goes into the flooding wheelhouse to await his fate, Thomas Andrews awaits his in the smoking room, families give up hope and go back to the cabin to await theirs. Meanwhile, the water begins to take the boat deck as the officers struggle to cut the last boats free. The Grand Staircase begins to flood as Benjamin Guggenheim looks on in horror. The captain is then shown one last time as the wheelhouse is flooded.

Back at the now flooded bow end of the ship, Caledon strictly denies entry to the boat to anyone once it is full, fighting people off with an oar. While trying to get to the boat, Fabrizio is killed by the falling smokestack. Knowing that they have no other hope, the remaining 1,500 passengers on the ship run towards the stern as the Titanic enters its final stages of sinking.

Jack and Rose finally make their way to the top deck, but find that the lifeboats are gone. With no other options, they decide to head aft and stay on the ship for as long as possible before it sinks completely. Meanwhile, the Grand Staircase has descended into the ocean, and the glass dome, succumbing to the water pressure, implodes and floods the entire room, killing everyone in it. When Jack and Rose make it to the back of the stern, the deck is becoming harder to walk on because of the tilt of the ship. Some of the other 1,500 terrified passengers and crew take their chances and jump off the sinking ship, trying to swim to the lifeboats, but most of them do not make it and end up dying in the freezing water.

Eventually, the ship's tilt is so steep that anybody not holding onto anything slides down the deck into the water. The stern of the ship continues to rise higher and higher. In the electrical room, the breakers short circuit and the power in the ship goes out. Seconds later, the weight causes the ship to break in two. The two sections are still attached at the keel, however, and the bow, which by now is completely flooded, goes under and pulls the stern upright so it is at a 90 degree angle. Jack and Rose have made it to the very aft deck railing, at the "top" of the stern and ready themselves for the final plunge. Eventually, the ship begins its final descent and everyone is washed into the cold, icy waters of the North Atlantic.

Jack and Rose stick together after being separated by the force created by the sinking of the steel ship, and wait with the hundreds of other passengers thrashing helplessly in the water, some shouting desperately for those in the lifeboats to row back to rescue them.

File:Dicaprio winslet titanic.jpg

Rose pleads for Jack to wake up but begins to realize that he is dead.

Jack offers Rose a small wooden plank to float on which is not big enough for the both of them. Jack also asks Rose to swear that she will do all in her power to survive this disaster and lead a fulfilling life. Later, as the lifeboats return, Rose is heartbroken to realize that her beloved Jack has succumbed to hypothermia and died. Momentarily she lays her head down, willing herself to die with him and avoiding the lifeboat, but suddenly remembers her promise. So she drops Jack's hand that she had been holding, allowing him to sink into the sea. She tries to gain attention from the lifeboat by shouting but her voice is too hoarse. So she takes a whistle and blows in it, gaining the attention from the lifeboat so they can rescue her.

The survivors in the lifeboats wait for hours until the RMS Carpathia, the closest ship to answer and heed the Titanic's radio distress signals, arrives to save them. Upon arrival at New York City, Rose discovers that she still has the Heart of the Ocean tucked into the pocket of Caledon's coat.

As an old woman in 1996, Rose now goes onto the deck of the Keldysh and we see she had the Heart of the Ocean with her all this time. Unseen by Brock Lovett or anyone else, she quietly throws the jewel into the cold, dark Atlantic Ocean where Jack died.

Back in Rose's room, the viewers sees pictures of her life's achievements, including a photograph of her riding a horse at the Santa Monica Pier, just as she and Jack had planned to do together. There is also a roller coaster in the background of this picture, another reference to the plans that she and Jack made. Rose lies in a bed nearby as the shot pans across her tranquil, sleeping face into darkness.

Underwater, the decaying Titanic looms out of the darkness and fades into view. Suddenly the eroded carcass of the deck morphs slowly into the original state. A steward opens the doors from the promenade deck to the Grand Staircase, where all those who had died on the ship smile in greeting at Rose. At the top of the staircase stands Jack, facing the clock just as he had earlier in the movie as he waited for Rose to come below decks with him. Jack turns and smiles at Rose, a young girl of 17 again, who smiles back as he helps her up the last few steps. They kiss as the crowd applauds, and the frame fades to the closing credits.

A promise kept?

One of the biggest controversies in the film questions whether old Rose died or was dreaming at the end of the film. However, there is no publicly solidified answer. Cameron is quoted in his commentary toward the end of the film refusing to give away the ending as a way of keeping the film open-ended and exciting for the viewer:

Now, of course, the big ambiguity here is, 'Is she alive, and dreaming?', or 'Is she dead, and on her way to Titanic heaven, here?' And of course, I'll never tell. I mean, I know what we intended at the time. But that doesn't mean I have to go blurting it out. So, I know you've gone and bought this, you know, expensive Special Collector's Edition DVD, and you were, you know, hoping for the answer. But, the answer is, has to be something that you supply personally, individually.

The lyrics of the film's theme song "My Heart Will Go On" begin with "Every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you", which could indicate that Rose is asleep and is dreaming of Jack in the final scene.

However, it would also be in keeping with the script if Rose's long life finally ends, warm in her bed, having lived a fulfilling life, per Jack's promise.

It is interesting to note that, as the movie ends, Rose is going 'into the light', back on the Titanic, where only previously-deceased characters await her (those who died on the Titanic; even her mother is excluded from this group, as she is presumed to have made it safely to shore.) This is the biggest indication that Rose dies in her sleep that night.

Also, the fact that on the Special Collector's Edition DVD, this particular scene is named "A Promise Kept" is a big indication that she does indeed die and meet Jack again in heaven. The transformation of the grave of the Titanic into its original state could also mean God has raised the Titanic so that those who died could be reunited in Heaven. As the young-again Rose walks into the grand staircase, she is greeted by her maid, Tommy, Fabrizio, Thomas Andrews, Captain Smith and many others who are awaiting her appearance, to which she walks up the stairs and is reunited with Jack. Their kissing and everyone applauding has the aura of a wedding, indicating that Jack and Rose have married in the afterlife. Template:Endspoiler

Reception

Box office

The film received steady attendance after opening in North America on December 19 1997. By Sunday that same weekend, theatres were beginning to sell out. The film debuted with $28,638,131. By the new year Titanic had increased in popularity and theatres continued selling out; unusually, it took fifteen weeks for its weekly gross to decline 50%, the most for any film in the 1990s. By March 1998 it was the first film to earn more than $1 billion worldwide. The movie stayed in theatres for over 6 months.

Titanic holds the record for the highest-grossing film of all time in the North American market with $600,788,188. The previous North American record of $460,998,000 was held by Star Wars (another 20th Century Fox film). Titanic also holds the record for the highest-grossing movie of all time in the worldwide box office with $1,835.3 million . The second place Return of the King is about $700 million short of Titanic's record. However, it will only place sixth, if the ticket price is adjusted for inflation, in North America. Gone with the Wind would be the number one movie on this ranking.

Critical Reception

The film garnered mostly positive reviews from critics. It has been a "Certified Fresh" film on Rotten Tomatoes with 85% overall approval from critics and 80% from users. The film also received a 74 out 100 metascore on Metacritic, classified as a generally favorable reviewed film. The metacritic users also awarded it with a 7.4/10 average rating.

Roger Ebert said "It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted and spellbinding." It was one of his top ten films of 1997.

James Berardinelli gave the film four stars out of four, placing it #2 of the year 1997 (behind The Sweet Hereafter). In his review he mentioned:

Cameron's flawless re-creation of the legendary ship has blurred the line between reality and illusion to such a degree that we can't be sure what's real and what isn't. To make this movie, it's as if Cameron built an all-new Titanic, let it sail, then sunk it... Titanic represents Cameron's most accomplished work to date. It's important not to let the running time hold you back -- those three-plus hours pass very quickly. Although this telling of the Titanic story is far from the first, it is the most memorable, and is deserving of Oscar nominations not only in the technical categories, but in the more substantive ones of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress.

Some reviewers felt that the story and dialogue were weak while the visuals were spectacular. Kenneth Turan's review in the LA Times was particularly scathing. Dismissing the emotive elements, he says "what really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only isn't it, it isn't even close." Barbara Shulgasser of San Francisco Examiner gave Titanic one star out of four, citing a friend as saying "the number of times in this unbelievably badly written script that the two [lead characters] refer to each other by name was an indication of just how dramatically the script lacked anything more interesting for the actors to say."

Reference in Popular Culture

The film, partly because of its popularity and partly because of a few iconic moments, has been referenced in popular culture.

• FoxTrot's Andrea Fox, the mother who is typically prone to obsession, develops a similar obsession for Titanic after seeing it, much to the dismay of her family, in a series soon after the film's release. She then explains that its tragic yet uplifting nature is inspiring to her. She then is also inspired to re-enact the "I'm flying, Jack" scene on a coin-operated boat with her husband Roger who says at this embarassing event for him, she prefer he not use his real name; her quote, "I'm Flying, Jack... I mean, Roger" was used as the title of a collection. The strip also makes occasional references to the film; for example, when a failed attempt at removing blue ink turns Peter's face blue, girls mistake him for "Leonardo DiCaprio at the end of Titanic."

• In Futurama (first episode of season two, "A Flight to Remember), Bender goes on a space cruise and falls in love with a female robot in a plot similar to Titanic's. In a humorous nod to the movie and with a possible smear towards the actor for not lending his voice for this episode, Leonardo di Caprio's head in a jar is used to launch the cruise instead of the typical bottle of champagne.

• In Sluggy Freelance, on August 21, 1998, while Bun-bun is traveling to Tijuana on a cruise ship, he sees two young people in what appears to be a replica of the scene in which Rose attempts suicide. After Rose threatens to commit suicide and Jack promises to follow her, Bun-bun "obliges" them by pushing them both overboard, partly because "He said he was 'king of the world,' and I'm ambitious!", a reference to a relatively famous line by Jack.

• In Kevin and Kell's June 20, 2002 strip, the newly married Ralph and Martha Dewclaw are on honeymoon on a cruise ship in Bermuda, when a bag of surplus party ice causes it to sink. Martha then sits on a floating door while Ralph holds onto it, in a scene similar to Jack's demise. The reference is made clear when Martha asks, "Didn't we see this in a movie once?".

• Many present day cruise liners have declared their bows off limits to passengers and give specific order not to climb railings. A good number of married couples have tried to impersonate Rose and Jack.

• In Volume 24 of the manga Detective Conan (anime episode 174, "The 20 Year Old Murder Case: The Symphony Serial Murders"), while the main characters Conan Edogawa, Ran Mori/Rachel Moore and her father Kogoro Mori/Richard Moore are on vacation on a cruise liner. Ran stands on the bow railings and mimics Jack's movements while shouting his line "I'm the King of the World!" She tells her family that she always wanted to do that. Her father sarcastically responds "Are you in 'Titanic' a bit too much?" while Conan sarcastically thinks "What if something happens, like this ship's gonna sink?" That night, something did indeed 'happen', not the ship sinking but a murder of two of the ship's passengers which leads to an uncovering of a 20 Year Old Murder Case.

• As in the case of The Dark Side Of The Rainbow, this film also syncs quite nicely with another Pink Floyd album, The Wall. In the scene where the lookouts are in the crow's nest, and they see the iceberg, one of them exclaims "Bugger me!" Begin disc one of The Wall right after he says that and the rest flows rather nicely.

Awards

Won

Titanic won Oscars in almost every category it was nominated in (14 nominations and 11 wins). It was the second movie to win that number (the first was Ben-Hur with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King matching the record in 2004). At the time, it was also the only movie in which two people playing the same person (Kate Winslet as Rose and Gloria Stuart as Old Rose) were both nominated for an award (coincidentally, the second film to do so, Iris, also starred Winslet). Cameron's screenplay received no nomination.

This was the second film distributed by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in three years. The other was Braveheart (1995).

Academy Awards

Award	Person
Art Direction	Peter Lamont Michael Ford Michael Foster
Cinematography	Russell Carpenter
Costume Design	Deborah Lynn Scott
Best Director	James Cameron
Film Editing	Conrad Buff IV James Cameron Richard A. Harris
Music (Original Dramatic Score)	James Horner
Best Original Song for My Heart Will Go On	James Horner Will Jennings
Best Picture	James Cameron Jon Landau
Best Sound	Gary Rydstrom Tom Johnson Gary Summers Mark Ulano
Sound Effects Editing	Tom Bellfort Christopher Boyes
Visual Effects	Robert Legato Mark A. Lasoff Thomas L. Fisher Michael Kanfer
Nominated	Person
Best Actress in a Leading Role	Kate Winslet
Best Actress in a Supporting Role	Gloria Stuart
Best Makeup	Tina Earnshaw Greg Cannom Simon Thompson

Cast and Characters

Main article: List of characters in Titanic (1997)

• Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson
• Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater
• Billy Zane as Caledon Nathan Hockley
• Frances Fisher as Ruth DeWitt Bukater
• Kathy Bates as Margaret Tobin "Molly" Brown
• Eric Braeden as Colonel John Jacob Astor IV
• David Warner as Spicer Lovejoy
• Martin Jarvis as Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon
• Rosalind Ayres as Lady Lucille Duff Gordon
• Danny Nucci as Fabrizio De Rossi
• Gloria Stuart as Rose Dawson Calvert
• Victor Garber as Thomas Andrews, Jr.
• Bernard Hill as Captain Edward John Smith
• Jonathan Hyde as J. Bruce Ismay
• Bernard Fox as Colonel Archibald Gracie
• Jason Barry as Tommy Ryan
• Ewan Stewart as First Officer William McMaster Murdoch
• Jonathan Phillips as Second Officer Charles Lightoller
• Ioan Gruffudd as Fifth Officer Harold Lowe
• Michael Ensign as Benjamin Guggenheim
• James Lancaster as Father Thomas Byles
• Rochelle Rose as Noël Leslie, Countess of Rothes
• Suzy Amis as Lizzy Calvert
• Bill Paxton as Brock Lovett
• Anatoly Sagalevitch as Dr. Anatoly Milkailavich
• Lewis Abernathy as Lewis Bodine
• Elsa Raven as Ida Straus
• Lew Palter as Isidor Straus

Soundtrack

Main article: Titanic (soundtrack)

The soundtrack CD for Titanic was composed by James Horner and sold more than twenty-seven million copies, notable because it included only one pop song with lyrics. The soundtrack includes performances from the Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø, and the famous Canadian diva Céline Dion. It became a worldwide success, and led to the release of a second volume that contained a mixture of previously unreleased soundtrack recordings with newly-recorded performances of some of the songs in the film, including one track recorded by Enya's sister, Máire Brennan of the Irish band Clannad. "Hymn to the Sea" features Bad Haggis's Eric Rigler on the uilleann pipes and whistles.

James Horner wrote the song "My Heart Will Go On" in secret with Will Jennings because Cameron did not want any songs with singing in the film. Dion agreed to record a demo with the persuasion of her husband René Angélil. Horner waited until Cameron was in an appropriate mood before presenting him with the song. After playing it several times, Cameron declared its approval, although worried that he would have been criticized for "going commercial at the end of the movie".

DVD

Titanic was first released to DVD in 1999 in a widescreen-only (non-anamorphic) single disc edition with no special features. Cameron stated at the time that he intended to release a special edition with extra features at a later date. Six years later, on October 25, 2005, a special edition release finally occurred with a 3-DVD set in North America that included an anamorphic widescreen-only presentation of the movie divided onto two of the discs, 45 minutes of deleted scenes, an alternate ending, a faux 1912-style newsreel, a crew tribute/gag reel, and other features. Ed Marsh was originally commissioned to shoot and edit a two-hour retrospective documentary, and had completed it when Cameron decided to drop it from the DVD set. An international two-disc and four-disc edition followed on November 7, 2005, the fourth disc containing an HBO special, spoofs and parodies (available as easter eggs in the Region 1 edition), and a gallery of trailers and tv spots.

Deleted scenes

The 2005 Special Collector's Edition DVD included about 47 minutes worth of deleted scenes and also a 9 minute Alternate Ending that were cut from the film either for pacing [to shorten the film to a marketable running time] or for reasons James Cameron describes in his commentary as "tonal". Some of the deleted sequences are minor additions, such as the rescue of a Chinese man in the water, while others are major scenes, like the Lovejoy/Jack fight. The public were first made aware of these deleted scenes with the publication of 'TITANIC' Illustrated Screenplay in 1998 and a few of them were first shown in a Fox TV special "Breaking New Ground", and later Cameron incorporated some of the deleted scenes into his "Titanic Explorer" CD-ROM.

Sources

• "Top Grossing Films Ever". The Movie Times. Retrieved November 16. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)

External links

• Titanic official website
• Titanic: Two the surface official website