In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me and what’s available from my local public library.
Sometimes it’s nice to settle in for the evening with a classic studio film, basking in its predictable pleasures and the leaving the adventurous and avant-garde for another night. Roy Ward Baker’s A Night to Remember, based on the book of the same name by Walter Lord (by far his greatest success), is exactly that kind of film: well-crafted rather than innovative, measured in all things, and reliable in its workings.
The craft begins with Eric Ambler’s screenplay, which efficiently creates historical context and introduces us to the different social classes who boarded the ship with characters that are memorable without being particularly surprising. It also includes most of the people and events anyone familiar with the tragedy is likely to expect to see in a film about it.
A Night to Remember also offers plenty of spectacle (it was the most expensive British film in history at the time) and the sets representing the Titanic were based on blueprints of the ship. No less an authority than the Encyclopedia Britannica says this is the most accurate of the various Titanic movies, and who am I to argue with them? Rather surprisingly, it was not a box office hit upon initial release, but critics praised it and the fact that it was one of the first films included in the Criterion Collection should tell you that I’m not the only one who finds value in viewing it.
The most favored characters in A Night to Remember are middle class: Second Officer Charles Lightroller (Kenneth Moore), who exemplifies the British virtues of competence, loyalty and attention to duty and his wife Sylvia (Jane Downs) who also fulfills societal expectations perfectly. The upper classes are more of a mixed bag: some are self-centered or fools or worse while some are noble or all-around angels of the house. Bruce Ismay (Frank Lawton) gets the villainous treatment he usually does in Titanic films, Molly Brown (Tucker McGuire) is very American in her refusal to observe decorum, and Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus (Meier Tzelnicker and Helen Misener; the real-life Strauses were Americans born in Europe) refuse to be separated (the lifeboats were “women and children first”) and in the process gave up the chance to save their own lives in favor of other passengers. The lower classes are dutiful and hopeful, and of course there’s a cook with a taste for alcohol and the music played in steerage is Irish.
The special effects are remarkable for their time, and what appears to be a cast of thousands includes many actors who would go on to big careers, including Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, Bernard Lawson, David McCallum, and Desmond Llewelyn. So there’s lot to enjoy in this film, even if it follows mostly expected narrative and emotional lines, and you could do worse if you need a comfort film some evening. | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 7
Technical details: 123 min.; B&W; screen ratio 1.66:1; English.
Edition reviewed: DVD (2 discs)
Extras: audio commentary by Don Lynch and Ken Marschall; making-of documentary; archival interview with Eva Hart, a Titanic survivor; Swedish documentary featuring interviews with Titanic survivors; BBC documentary “The Iceberg that Sank the ‘Titanic’”; CD booklet including archival photographs and an essay by film critic Michael Sragow.
Fun Fact: I always thought that “It was a night to remember” was a quote from Joseph L. Mankiewisz’s screen play for the 1950 film All About Eve, but the Internet solemnly informed me that this was a false memory—maybe call it the Mandela Effect limited to the inside of my head. But in a final irony it turned out to be the Mandela Effect in reverse because George Sanders does say “And it was a night to remember, that night…” in his voiceover. The real lesson may be to always have your disc of All About Eve ready to hand, because many of the All About Eve screenplays available on the Internet include dialogue not in the film (they likely come from the published screenplay, which was longer) and you do want to get your Mankiewicz quotes correct.
Parting Thought: The Criterion web page for A Night to Remember says it features “remarkably restrained performances” and as “cinema’s subtlest and best dramatization of this monumental twentieth-century catastrophe.” Do you think those digs are aimed at any related film in particular, perhaps one who shares its name with that of the ship?
