Titanic

Julia Sturges decides to take her two children, leave her husband and return to America. At the last moment Richard boards the same ship. The ship is the Titanic, and the family quarrel runs until the iceberg. The film is not interested in the disaster. It is interested in the marriage: its first hour is entirely a couple wearing each other down, and the sinking is where that argument is cut off. The truth the husband learns about his son is the film's real blow. The form is studio production: ship miniatures, crowded salon scenes, and rising tempo in the last act. The sinking is built from panic and crowds with the means of the period. Jean Negulesco directed. The screenplay is by Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch and Richard L. Breen, and the three won the Academy Award for Best Story and Screenplay for it. The film was also nominated for art direction. Clifton Webb plays the husband, Barbara Stanwyck the wife, and a young Robert Wagner the student they meet aboard. Who it is for: viewers who like classical disaster films and fifties studio melodrama. Who it is not for: anyone after historical accuracy. Events aboard are arranged to suit the drama and technical detail comes second.