The Poseidon Adventure

On New Year's Eve a rogue wave takes the liner Poseidon from below and turns her completely over. Some of those left in the ballroom choose to wait for rescue, while a minister named Reverend Scott says they have to climb upward, toward what is now the bottom of the ship. A handful follow him. Ronald Neame directed and Irwin Allen produced. The source is Paul Gallico's 1968 novel. Filming ran seventy days between 27 March and 11 July 1972. Even getting it financed was difficult. Fox was deep in debt after a run of expensive musicals that failed, and pulled its support on the eve of production; Allen raised half the budget himself and Fox supplied the rest. The overturned ship was not an effect but construction work. The art director William Creber designed the dining room so that it could be redressed entirely upside down and built it on Stage 6 on the Fox lot. Forklifts could tilt the set to thirty degrees, which is how the scenes of actors and stunt performers sliding were shot. Creber and Raphael Bretton were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for it. Shelley Winters put on weight to play Belle, a former swimming champion, and trained with a swimming instructor to extend how long she could hold her breath; the underwater scene is not a trick. When Neame proposed changing the script so that Gene Hackman refuses the dive instead, Winters walked off, saying that scene was the only reason she was on the film, then came back and shot it. She was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden Globe. Made for under five million dollars, it took more than 160 million and was the highest-grossing film of 1972. Who it is for: viewers who like the golden age of the disaster film and survival stories with big casts. Who it is not for: anyone after depth of character. The cast is built from one-line types and who dies is decided by who is due to die next.