TITANIC: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Paramount/2oth Century-Fox/Lightstorm, 1997) Paramount Home Video

“Nothing on earth could come between them!” …except a really big chunk of ice. A little over two decades ago, I reviewed James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) as one of the most self-indulgent and unapologetic, super-sailors of bloated kitsch and coo, merely an excuse for grafting a threadbare romance onto an historical event. Twenty-six years later, I stand behind this critique. Perhaps, even more so today, having re-screened it twice more during the interim – and before this 4K remaster – once in 3D, (which had its moments), then again on standard Blu-ray. Going into the theater back in 1997, Titanic was the movie to see, and the one I desperately wanted to like immediately. Bewitched, as many have been, by the great ship and its’ even more cataclysmic demise, the fallout from its sinking in 1912 that realigned man’s faith in the industrial age and his own supremacy on this tiny planet, I was sincerely praying Hollywood, at long last, would get history right and do the event and the memory of its survivors a sincere justice. But no, this did not happen. Instead, a colossally obscene bankroll from two studios – 2oth Century-Fox and Paramount – was squandered on yet another excursion into fairytale romance – an even more colossal letdown, as its interminable and grossly misrepresented star-crossed lovers were ineffectually relayed on the screen by Leonardo DiCaprio (as Jack Dawson, a boy in man’s clothing) and Kate Winslet (in all her refinement as Rose DeWitt Bukater, appearing old enough to be his mother). If anything, the experience of seeing a full-frontal Winslet and DiCaprio naked left me with a queasy unease and even more glowing admiration for William MacQuitty’s A Night to Remember (1958) – despite its flawed depiction of the actual sinking, still the definitive retelling of this perennially revived tragedy.

Fueled by frenzied media hype plying a concerted marketing campaign that would make even the most seasoned Madison Ave. ad man blush, Titanic easily walked away with the Best Picture Oscar honors, as well as a slew of other little gold statuettes (tying the record first set by William Wyler’s Ben-Hur, 1959). Rather tellingly, it did not win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, to which Cameron – having already won Best Director and Best Picture, brashly gushed to feeling more than a tad slighted, as he had also penned this monstrosity. The story of the Titanic is so rich in actual history, so ripe in its A-list roster of real-life royalty sailing aboard her maiden voyage, the likes of which any one of these ill-fated robber barons from the Gilded Age would have made for more compelling storytelling – and, that a noteworthy writer, like Stirling Silliphant in his prime, could have cobbled together as a compelling ensemble piece with one eye shut and his writing arm tied behind his back – Cameron, instead, chose to pin his plot on a prepubescent flagrante delicto between a first-class prig in starched britches, and, third-class hackney artist/philosopher of life. However, casting such noteworthy talents as Oscar-winner, Kathy Bates as the irrepressible Denver socialite, Molly Brown, only to afford her six lines of dialogue in a 3-hour movie, just seemed the proverbial slap in the kisser. Any Actor’s Equity extra could have played this part as written. With Bates in the role, our expectations for a really juicy cameo were instead bitterly denied. I suspect Cameron reasoned the outspoken Brown’s story had already been regaled to audiences via 1964’s The Unsinkable Molly Brown. But then, why even mention Brown at all aboard this Titanic, especially, since Cameron had no problem virtually ignoring such luminaries as the Strausses, the Vanderbilt’s, the Astors and the Guggenheims, except to plant his stick figures as waxworks backdrop, moneyed caricatures.

People love to quote stats, trumpeting record-breaking box office tallies and awards as though these factoid bits should point to more prestige on tap. Meaningless rubbish, as commercial success and artistic longevity are two different things entirely and, in Titanic’s case, result in a movie with apparently galvanized staying power for 1997 that has since all but evaporated with the passage of time. Consider this: in 2009, Paramount conducted a poll to unearth how many copies of Titanic on Blu-ray its ‘brick and mortar’ distributors would be willing to stock. They were promptly informed single digit copies would suffice - a far cry from the epic VHS and DVD roll out that saturated the home video market in 1998.  Viewed today, Titanic’s primary appeal remains the sinking of the great ship. And, to be sure, this moment is not spared its epic and thought-numbing resplendence. So too, should James Cameron get very high marks for recreating the era in totem, with superb period sets and costumes, sumptuously photographed by cinematographer, Russell Carpenter.  Regrettably, such virtues do not pardon the hopeless adolescence of the piece; just a romance between two people divided by class and forever parted by fate. What follows is painfully overwrought and puerile at best. DiCaprio and Winslet have zero chemistry. Winslet looks every bit the austere and proper Miss to whom all the rights and privileges of the upper classes have been afforded. DiCaprio – supposedly from the school of hard knocks, looks barely as though he has use of a straight razor. Worse, Cameron cannot resist the urge for the obligatory - and wholly unnecessary - nude scene, something not even a free-spirited American girl like Rose DeWitt Bukater would have acquiesced to in ye olden times. Ditto for submitting to the…uh…lesson Jack gives Rose on the finer points of hocking loogies off the port bow.

There are two glaring inaccuracies threatening to sink Titanic long before the ill-fated berg comes into view. Utmost, everyone except Jack and Rose behave according to the social dictates and conventions of their time. Seemingly, in an effort to appeal to the ‘younger generation’ – chiefly by talking down to their level, rather than making the attempt to elevate their scope of knowledge to a more tasteful and artful milieu, Cameron gives us all the naval-gazing pre-teen giddiness of a pair of social misfits, racing below decks to escape Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner) – the ex-Pinkerton man servant assigned by Rose’s fiancée, Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) to keep a watchful eye on his wayward beloved.  This disconnect in social graces and temperament is, I suspect, supposed to illustrate not only the open-mindedness of the lovers, forced to otherwise slavishly ascribe to convention in public – barely – but also, strike a kindred chord between them and the ‘tweens’ seated in the front row. It does neither. Thus, we can certainly empathize with Rose’s brittle mama, Ruth (Francis Fisher) who would want to cinch her daughter’s corset up too tight in a feeble attempt to confine Rose’s inner desire, as well as her deportment into more lady-like behavior.

Titanic’s second grave bungle is Cameron’s sacrifice of genuinely historical figures aboard this great ship. He all but martyrs magnificent actors like Victor Garber, cast as the magnanimous ship builder, Thomas Andrews, while skirting over the likes of Captain E.J. Smith (Bernard Hill), 1st Officer Murdoch (Ewan Stewart), 2nd Officer Lighttoller (Jonny Phillips) and 5th Officer Lowe (Ioan Gruffudd), while casting superb players to embody their spirit. Francis Fisher’s bug-eyed matron, willing to sell her daughter into a marriage of convenience – hers – to a maniacal and controlling millionaire’s son is about the most fleshed out secondary character we get in these flashbacks, book-ended by the even more fictional jewel caper subplot in the present-day, involving fortune hunter, Brock Lovett (the late, Bill Paxton) and wily centenarian, Rose Dawson Calvert (the magnificent, Gloria Stuart).  Like most projects undertaken by Cameron, this one began with his fanatical obsession – this time with shipwrecks in general and RMS Titanic in particular. Pitching his idea to 2oth Century-Fox execs as ‘Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic’, Cameron was met with ambivalence. Coaxing Fox to spend money to accompany an actual salvage expedition of the Titanic being shot in IMAX, thereby capturing footage without having to shell out extra cash to make models and recreate everything with CGI, Cameron settled in to pen his screenplay.

Yet, while Cameron invested his pre-production time in copious research to unearth the backstories of those who had sailed on her ill-fated maiden voyage, very little of this history would eventually find its way into the actual movie. Instead, Cameron concentrated on recreating a meticulous timeline of the ship’s launch and passage, determined to will a definitive visualization for posterity. The point to Cameron’s approach was to correct what he firmly felt all previous retellings of the disaster had avoided by concentrating on the ship’s passenger list as a microcosmic morality tale. His would become, or so he believed, a living tapestry dedicated to all those lives in peril on the sea. Brock Lovett was meant to represent the vast assortment of individuals who never quite connected with the human element, and viewed the ship only as a historical artifact to be plumbed for profit. To this end, Cameron firmly believed he had achieved greatness: a love story rather than a disaster epic, “with a fastidious overlay of real history.” To recreate the great ship in all its glory, Cameron was granted access to Harland and Wolff’s original blueprints, the movie’s reconstruction of a full-scale mockup in Baja, California, as well as full-size sections built on gimbles, lowered and raised into flood waters on soundstages, achieved a higher-than-usual verisimilitude. 

For some time, Cameron has held a notorious reputation as being an intractable perfectionist. And on Titanic his verve was no less formidable. “There were times when I was genuinely frightened of him,” Kate Winslet would later confess, “Jim has a temper like you wouldn't believe.” In his own defense, Cameron would suggest that “film-making is war. A great battle between business and aesthetics.” Hiring production designer, Peter Lamont to helm the mammoth task of re-building Titanic from the keel up, proved one of Cameron’s true inspirations. Lamont, whose post-British period included designing huge-scale sets for the Bond movies, Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965) reveled in the period recreations on Titanic. Fox acquired 40-acres of waterfront property in Mexico to build a new studio facility with a horizon tank of 17-million gallons and a 270-degrees ocean view. For even more authenticity, Cameron hired Titanic historians, Don Lynch and Ken Marschall to authenticate every last historical detail in set decoration. Although Titanic’s mock-up would be built to scale, Lamont removed redundant sections and shrunk the lifeboats and funnels by ten percent. Only Deck A was a fully functional set - the remainder of the ship, built from steel plating. The light-weightiness allowed for a fifty-foot lifting platform to tip and rock the ship for the sinking sequences. Towering above it all, Cameron could mount his camera and lights on a 162-foot crane, dolling across 600 ft. of rail track. Meanwhile, interior rooms were built exactly to the original designs, albeit from cheaper materials, including plaster-work. In the case of the grand staircase, it was widened ever so slightly to accommodate Cameron’s camera, and reinforced with steel girders to withstand the climactic dunk tank flooding.

Travelling to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Cameron lensed the present-day expedition scenes aboard the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, before relocating to the Baja sets, many made of foam rubber to protect the stuntmen, hurling themselves over the sides. As the mock-up was not sea-worthy, Cameron turned to Digital Domain to create convincing long shots of Titanic sailing into infamy, instructing the digital matte artists to view their work as a ‘commercial’ endorsement for sailing on the White Star Line. A full-time etiquette coach gave daily lessons on the mores and mannerisms of the upper class to the movie’s stars and myriad of extras. The famous pencil sketch of Rose in the nude was actually done by Cameron, although, he would have likely preferred to shoot the reenactment of Jack drawing Rose ‘like one of his French girls’ from another angle. Still, the moment satisfied Cameron in its nervous energy. As production delays caused the originally budgeted 138 days to balloon to 160, many cast members were befallen by colds, the flu, and, a curious kidney infection from having spent too long in the frigid waters. There is even a documented incident where Cameron and his crew were ‘poisoned’ by someone who spiked their soup with PCP, sending nearly 50 people to hospital. The culprit was never found.

After several injuries occurred on set, the Actors Guild found no wrong doing on Cameron’s part. “I'm demanding,” he admitted, “…and I'm demanding on my crew. In terms of being kind of militaresque, I think there's an element of that in dealing with thousands of extras and big logistics and keeping people safe. I think you have to have a fairly strict methodology in dealing with a large number of people.” Titanic’s dubious distinction is it remains the only movie based on the disaster to actually show the ship breaking in two – a testament, given by many survivors of this horrific event, and borne out by the actual discovery of the wreckage at the bottom of the sea decades later.  To achieve this feat on film involved the tilting of a full-sized set, populated by 150 extras, and 100 stuntmen. The depiction of the sinking is, in fact, chaotic, with extras plummeting over the sides, and debris from the flooded staterooms, strewn about the ocean surface.  All of Cameron’s fastidiousness came with a hefty price tag - $200 million, or, roughly $1 million per minute of usable footage.  Breaking a sweat, Fox execs pleaded with Cameron to shave an hour off his 3-hour epic to maximize their bookings. Cameron dug in, “You want to cut my movie? You're going to have to fire me! You want to fire me? You're going to have to kill me!” Fox did neither, nor did they entertain Cameron's offer of forfeiting his share of the profits - an empty gesture, as the studio believed the picture would never see a dime in profits.

Titanic opens in the present with Brock Lovett and his crew diving to the wreck in search of ‘The Heart of the Ocean’ an extravagant jewel worth many times more than the Hope Diamond. Unable to unearth this hidden gem from the ocean floor, even after recovering the personal safe of millionaire, Cal Hockley, Lovett broadcasts his findings - a pencil sketch of a nude woman wearing the fabulous gemstone, the date clearly indicating the night the ship sank. Resting in her granddaughter’s cottage, aged Rose Calvert is compelled to telephone Lovett. She informs him, she is the woman in the sketch, prompting Lovett to bring her aboard his exploratory vessel. From here, we regress into a series of flashbacks marking young Rose’s first introduction to the great ship at South Hampton. Her apprehension is predicated on a personal saga rather than any great premonition about the tragedy to follow. Rose is engaged to Caledon Nathan Hockley, heir to a Pittsburgh steel empire. Rose’s mother, Ruth (Francis Fisher) is most pleased by the engagement as it will preserve their good name while elevating her from a penniless future. Rose, however, is a free spirit who outwardly conveys her disdain at having to bend to these stringent social mores and manners. She is emotionally brittle and outwardly haughty and condescending.

Meanwhile, in a bar near the docks, penniless artist, Jack Dawson and his best friend, Fabrizio DiRossi (Danny Nucci) are involved in a tense game of poker against a pair of Sweds. The stakes are high - two ‘third-class’ passages aboard Titanic. Jack bluffs and wins the game of chance. He and Fabrizio go aboard the leviathan with a frenetic optimism shared by the departing passengers.  The next day, Jack is captivated by the sight of Rose casually strolling along the ‘first class’ promenade. Later that evening, an impulsive Rose races to the stern, determined to throw herself overboard rather than sell herself in marriage to a man she does not love. Her suicide is narrowly averted by Jack who suggests Rose has neither the guts nor the determination to jump.  Jack’s frankness infuriates Rose. Even so, she begins to find him more and more fascinating as their journey progresses. To show his gratitude for saving Rose’s life, Cal invites Jack to dinner the following evening with Molly Brown offering her son’s formal attire for the occasion. At dinner, Ruth and Cal do their best to backhandedly discourage, humiliate and expose Jack to the others as someone not of their class. But Jack is hardly intimidated by their ignorance. Instead, he explains his philosophies on life – a gift, not to be wasted – and further proposes a toast, seconded by all except Ruth and Cal. Later, Jack isolates Rose near the grand staircase and offers to take her to steerage for a ‘real party’. Rose goes slumming, dancing barefoot and drinking herself into a pleasurable enough mild intoxication.

The next day, Cal is enraged and threatening. He orders Rose to never see Jack again. But Jack finds a way to re-enter Rose’s life. The two quickly become inseparable. After Rose discovers Jack is an artist of considerable talents, she asks him to sketch her like one of his ‘French girls’ wearing nothing but The Heart of the Ocean. Jack and Rose retire to her private suite where she disrobes and Jack immortalizes her in charcoals. Afterward, the two narrowly escape the watchful eye of Spicer Lovejoy. Jack and Rose descend into the bowels of the ship, improbable – as these were off limits and virtually impossible to explore. Nevertheless, Jack and Rose race past burly stokers, feeding Titanic’s cavernous furnaces, before slipping into the cargo hold where they make passionate love in the backseat of a vintage automobile. Cal discovers the nude portrait of Rose in his safe, but devises a more insidious plan to rid himself of Jack once and for all. The iceberg strikes and Rose and Jack return to her suite to share in the news with Cal and Ruth, whereupon Cal slips The Heart of the Ocean into Jack’s pocket before accusing him of its theft. Lovejoy searches Jack’s person and finds the jewel. Cal orders the Master at Arms to arrest Jack and take him below until they reach port.

From here on in, the narrative gradually begins to shift to the more immediate predicament of escaping the frigid Atlantic quickly filling Titanic’s not-so-watertight front compartments. Rose informs Ruth the tally of lifeboats is short by at least half, thus ensuring many will die before the night is over. Ruth and Molly Brown manage to take refuge in one of the first lifeboats launched from the imperiled luxury liner. But at the last possible moment, Rose refuses to go with them. Instead, she rushes to Jack’s side, informing Cal she would rather be Jack’s whore than his wife. Cal becomes incensed. He steals a gun from Lovejoy and begins recklessly – and rather aimlessly – shooting at Jack and Rose. The couple are driven deep into the bowels of the ship, already half submerged in icy waters. Jack and Fabrizio help to liberate other ‘third-class’ passengers from steerage. The ship is sinking faster than anticipated. Cal escapes into a lifeboat, leaving Rose and Jack to rush to the stern with hundreds of others. The ship breaks apart, with the stern momentarily delayed in its’ descent into the frigid Atlantic. After the stern slips beneath the waves, Jack and Rose grasp onto some floating wooden debris. He chivalrously pushes Rose on top, thereby sparing her from extreme hypothermia. This ultimately claims his life. As Jack’s lifeless body slips beneath the waves, Rose vows to honor him by living her life to its fullest. We return to the present with Brock and his crew utterly mesmerized by the aged Rose’s story of heroism and survival. That evening, after everyone has gone to bed, Rose sneaks to the edge of Brock’s salvage ship and tosses The Heart of the Ocean, she has kept these many years, back into the sea. She returns to her cabin and quietly dies – her spirit, returning to the sunken wreck below as it is miraculously restored to its vintage condition with Jack, dressed in Molly Brown’s finery, patiently awaiting her return.

Titanic remains a highly watchable movie, even if it is not a particularly good one. Peter Lamont’s production design and Martin Laing and Charles Lee’s art direction are the real stars of the movie, visually resurrecting the great ship in all its stately grandeur. If only such attention to detail had been paid the script and casting choices, then perhaps Titanic might have set sail as truly one for the ages. Alas, it remains a rather superficial experience, artfully crafted, yet completely void of the necessary ballast to make it a true American classic. The picture’s thought-numbing publicity created near hysteria after it was discovered a real J. Dawson was buried among the dead in Halifax’s Titanic cemetery. For the record, that man was Joseph Dawson, bearing no earthly resemblance to his fictional counterpoint. 

Leonardo DiCaprio utterly lacks the roughhewn masculinity of a worldly scrapper with the proverbial heart of gold. His Jack was Titanic’s Achilles’ Heel in 1997 and has remained such, perhaps even more so with the passage of time. In ’97, Titanic made ‘Leo’ a heartthrob with prepubescent teenage girls. Yet, his baby-face, and worse, the sight of that boyishly naked body pressed against Winslet’s more womanly frame during their steamy pas deux in the cargo hold, is a truly cringe-worthy and uncomfortable moment, deprived of all eroticism, and strangely too, to contain a whiff of pedophilia for seeing a child in bed with their mother. 

Worst of all, Cameron gives us stereotypes instead of archetypes. Billy Zane is a freakishly unstable villain, perter than pulverizing as he fanatically simpers after the fleeing lovers, shouting, “I hope you enjoy your time together!” Francis Fisher’s shallow matron is despicably one-dimensional as are David Warner and Jonathan Hyde, the latter cast as White Star Line’s perennial whipping boy, J. Bruce Ismay - the man who may or may not have ordered the captain to sail full steam ahead into a looming ice field and thus sealed the great ship’s fate. With no attempt to imbue his watered-down masterpiece with subplots to engage the rest of his players, Cameron’s Titanic dissolves into the Kate and Leo show, lacking any truer celebration of its classicist microcosm. Virtually all other adaptations of this maritime tragedy have endeavored to cover at least some of the varied backstories involving members from the actual passenger list and crew when retelling the story. Alright – so Cameron chose to go in a different direction. We can accept that…but only if the results are as rewarding. They are not.  Having found the original theatrical experience of Titanic a real ‘fanny-twitcher’ soap opera in 1997, I have enjoyed it far less with each repeat viewing. Instead of ripening with age, it’s curdled like warm milk on a hot, sunny day.

The same cannot be said of Paramount’s 4K Blu-ray. The real curiosity here resides in the newly imagined overall grain structure. Titanic was shot on film. And while grain still exists, it is so finite and tightly represented, even when projected on a 123” screen, what remains looks suspiciously more digital than film-based. Is this bad? Let us suggest, it’s just a different viewing experience from any of the previous ways Titanic has found its way into your heart – either via its original theatrical run, the reimagined IMAX experience, the re-re-imagined 3D, and now, in 4K. Should we be complaining? Naw! It looks fine – solid, for sure – and with gorgeous and refined colors to boot. Contrast is uniformly exquisite. If the considerable uptick in visuals is not enough to get one’s knickers in a ball for a re-purchase, then the Dolby Atmos 7.1 audio certainly takes center stage, with an aggressive spatial spread and ambient effects that carry across from screen to ceiling to rear channels and subwoofer, for an enveloping ‘ship-like’ audio presentation. The hum of Titanic’s engines is always subtly represented in the background once the ship departs South Hampton for the last time.

Paramount has shelled out for a new documentary: ‘Stories from the Heart’ featuring newly recorded interviews with Cameron, producer, Jon Landau and Kate Winslet. It’s a puff piece at best, offering far less reflection than one might anticipate.  For that, we rely on the heritage extras, including Reflections on Titanic and Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron, the latter of which - regrettably - did not make the leap to this 4K/Blu release. So, keep your Blu/DVD set for this fabulous hour-and-a-half doc. The rest of the goodies are all imports from the deluxe DVD edition from 1998, and include numerous picture-in-picture options integrated and re-purposed as brief featurettes. These are on a separate Blu-ray. There are 3 separate audio commentaries to consider. Also, Celine Dion’s music video, trailers and TV spots, plus extensive stills gallery and three Titanic spoofs.  In a nutshell, fans will have absolutely nothing to grouse about here. Titanic in 4K should be the standard bearer and the final word on a home video release for the foreseeable future. Please note: the 4K also comes as a deluxe box set with superfluous swag – a hardbound book, stills, lobby cards, etc. - that will only be of interest to die-hard fans, and for which that set’s premium price tag is hardly warranted. Not everything from the previous Blu-ray/DVD edition made the leap to this 4K/Blu edition. Lots of omissions. The point is, most won't actually be missed as the aforementioned treasure trove of extras has now been consolidated into several very well-purposed documentaries and/or featurettes. So, you still get to see a lot of that 'lost' footage, presented in a far more intellectually stimulating way. Bottom line: if you are a fan, then Titanic in 4K will not disappoint. It's still not a great movie. But it looks absolutely fantastic in ultra-hi-def.  

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

5+