"Titanic"
 A Film Review by
 Linda Lopez McAlister
 on "The Women's Show"
 WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL
 February 14, 1998

Well, I finally got around to seeing _Titanic_. I wasn't eager to because
tend to avoid the big Hollywood blockbusters on principle.  Last week's
film,  _The Tango Lesson_, had a scene that explains why--a scene in which
Sally Potter was being interviewed by a bunch of Hollywood producers who
were probably toddlers when she made her first film, who knew nothing
about her except her last film, and were only interested in trying to make
her next film fit the mold of what sells commercially and had no
compunctions about asking her to rearrange her whole concept to
fit their tiny one.  The results of this kind of mind set are usually
pretty boring.

So when I heard that Titanic cost $200 million and had yards of special
effects, I said
no thank you, because it sounded like they were just going for the kind of
audience that loves disaster movies and great effects--not my cup of tea.
Then _Titanic_ got 14 Oscar nominations and my mother wanted to see
it, so I went.  I have to confess I  was pleasantly surprised.  For all
its big budget and enormous production apparatus, it turned out,
nonetheless, to be a film about people that was coherent and interesting.
I would tend to give the major credit for this to James Cameron's stature
in Hollywood. He obviously had the clout to do the film his way--I mean
how many times have you seen someone have both writer/director credits on
a Hollywood blockbuster?  I doubt that it has happened more than a handful
of times since Orson Welles made _Citizen Kane_.  Nut Cameron was both
writer and director on this film, just as if it had been a low budget
independent production. That gives him true artistic control and gives the
film a coherence that makes it unusually good for such a blockbuster. All
the special effects and opulent art direction you'd expect are there but
what I didn't expect was a story line handled the way this one was.

      The film opens not in 1912, but in 1997 with little submarines
exploring the wreckage of the Titanic on the floor of the North Atlantic.
These guys are looking for something very specific, however, a particular
stateroom, a safe, an item of great value.  They don't find it, but what
they do find is a nude drawing of a young woman wearing the distinctive
piece of jewlery they're looking for.  Disappointed, at least they make it
on to the evening news.  Out in California a young woman and her elderly
grandmother are watching.  When the grandmother sees the drawing she
utters a very ungrandmotherly expletive.  She, it turns out, is a survivor
of the Titanic disaster and the drawing is of her.  Naturally they contact
the explorers and join them on their salvage vessel where she relates her
story for them.  So, in effect, this film is about the most vivid episode
in the life of a 100+ woman whose youthful life had been forever changed
by the few days she spent aboard the Titanic.  I thought this was a great
way to approach the story and Gloria Stuart, who plays the role, is quite
wonderful and deserving of her Oscar nomination.

Both Kate Winslett who plays her as a young woman returning to the US in
order to marry a rich fiance whom she loathes and Leonardo Di Caprio who
plays the young artist travelling in steerage who falls in love with her,
do a great job as do the members of the supporting cast:  Kathy Bates as
the Unsinkable Molly Brown, Billy Zane as the nasty fiance, and David
Warner as a security agent.  The human story carries the film for me.  It
says a great deal about women's situation in those days before World War
I, and the restrictions placed by upper class mores on the lives of women
of that class.  It also shows clearly  the attitudes of the upper classes
to the lower classes. The second half of the film is devoted largely to
the special effects that show the sinking of the ship in great detail.  It
was so well done that you have to admire it as well.

So I recommend that, if you're curious about all the Academy Award hoopla
his film has generated, go ahead and take a look.  It's entertaining and
well done, indeed.


Copyright 1998.  All rights reserved.  Please do not copy or reproduce
this review without permission of the author: mcaliste@chuma.cas.usf.edu.