Titanic (1997 film)

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Titanic
Directed by	James Cameron
Produced by	Jon Landau James Cameron
Written by	James Cameron
Starring	Leonardo DiCaprio Kate Winslet Billy Zane Frances Fisher Victor Garber Kathy Bates Gloria Stuart Bill Paxton Danny Nucci
Music by	James Horner
Cinematography	Russell Carpenter
Editing by	Conrad Buff James Cameron Richard A. Harris
Distributed by	-International- 20th Century Fox -USA/Canada- Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	December 19, 1997 (U.S.), (MEX), (AUS) January 23, 1998 (U.K.)
Running time	194 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$200,000,000
Gross revenue	US$1,848,813,795
Official website
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Titanic is a 1997 romance film directed, written, produced and edited by James Cameron about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. It features Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, and Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, two members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ill-fated 1912 maiden voyage of the ship. The main characters and the central love story are fictional, but some supporting characters (such as members of the ship's crew) are based on real historical figures. Gloria Stuart plays the elderly Rose, who narrates the film in a modern day framing device.

Production of the film began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the real wreck of the RMS Titanic. He envisioned the love story as a means to engage the audience with the real-life tragedy. Shooting took place at the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh for the modern scenes, and a reconstruction of the ship was built at Playas de Rosarito. Cameron also used scale models and computer-generated imagery to recreate the sinking of the ship. Titanic became at the time, the most expensive film ever made, costing approximately US$200 million with funding from Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox.

Originally slated to be released on July 2, 1997, post-production delays pushed back the film's release date to December 19, 1997. After word broke out that Titanic's release date was pushed back, the press believed that Titanic would fail and cause the downfall of Fox and Paramount. Despite low expectations, the film was both a major critical and commercial success, winning eleven Academy Awards including Best Picture and becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, with a total worldwide gross of approximately $1.8 billion (it is the sixth-highest grossing in North America once adjusted for inflation).

Plot

The Heart of the Ocean.

In 1996, treasure hunter Brock Lovett and his team explore the wreck of the RMS Titanic, searching for a necklace set with a valuable blue diamond called the Heart of the Ocean. They discover a drawing of a young woman reclining nude, wearing the Heart of the Ocean, dated the day the Titanic sank. News of this drawing on television attracts the interest of the woman in question, Rose Calvert, now nearly 101, who informs Lovett that she is the nude woman in the drawing. She and her granddaughter Lizzy visit Lovett on his ship, and she recalls her memories as 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater aboard the Titanic to the somewhat skeptical team.

In 1912, young Rose boards the departing ship in Southampton England with the upper-class passengers, her mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater, and her fiancé, Caledon Hockley. Also on board is Margaret "Molly" Brown, who meets Rose at a dinner. Distraught and frustrated with her engagement to Cal and her controlled life, Rose attempts to commit suicide by jumping from the stern, but a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson, who had won his ticket on the ship from a poker game, intervenes. Initially Cal, his friends and the sailors, overhearing Rose's screams, believe the penniless Jack attempted to rape her. She explains Jack saved her life, covering up her suicide attempt by explaining she slipped after trying to see the propellers. Jack corroborates her white lie to everyone present, but privately, Hockley's manservant, former police officer Spicer Lovejoy, expresses to Jack his skepticism. Jack and Rose strike up a tentative friendship as she thanks him for his corroboration, and he shares stories of his adventures traveling and sketching; their bond deepens when they leave a first-class formal dinner for a much livelier gathering in third-class.

Cal is informed of her partying in the steerage and forbids Rose to meet Jack again. Rose's mother also commands her to give up Jack and save her engagement to Cal in order to ensure their financial welfare. Eventually, Jack confronts Rose alone, but she is inclined to ignore their growing affection because of her engagement and responsibilities. However, after witnessing a woman encouraging her seven-year-old daughter to behave like a "proper lady" at tea, Rose later changes her mind and decides to offer her heart to Jack in a forbidden romance. As a sign of her affection, she asks him to sketch her naked wearing only the Heart of the Ocean, which she had previously been offered as an engagement present by Cal. Afterwards, the two playfully run away from Lovejoy, and they go below decks to the ship's cargo hold. They enter William Carter's Renault traveling car and make love, before escaping up to the ship's forward well deck. They escape just in time, before two ship's hands, per Cal's orders, come and search for them in the cargo hold. Rose decides that when they arrive at New York, she will leave the ship with Jack. They then witness the ship's collision with an iceberg, which fatally damages it. Meanwhile, Cal discovers Rose's nude drawing and her taunting note in his safe. He plots revenge, deciding to frame Jack for stealing the Heart of the Ocean by having Lovejoy plant the diamond in Jack's pocket and bribing the master-at-arms to go along with his plan. Although Rose is at first indecisive, she later runs away from Cal, risking her chances of getting on a lifeboat with her mother, in order to find and rescue Jack, since the ship has begun sinking and the master-at-arms has no intention of going back to his office to free Jack.

Rose manages to free Jack with a fire axe, and finds that the third-class passengers are trapped below decks, since the stewards have been instructed to keep them locked up (to allow the first and second-class passengers off first). Frustrated, Jack breaks through a gate, allowing Rose and others to make their way to the boat deck. Cal and Jack, though enemies, both want Rose safe, so they manage to persuade Rose to board a lifeboat. But after realizing that she cannot leave Jack, Rose jumps back on the ship and reunites with Jack in the ship's first class staircase. Infuriated, Cal takes Lovejoy's pistol and chases Jack and Rose down the decks and into the first class dining saloon. After running out of ammunition, he angrily shouts at them saying that he hopes "they enjoy their time together" and realizes that he has unintentionally left the diamond in the pocket of an overcoat that Rose is wearing. Cal returns to the boat deck and gets aboard Collapsible A by pretending to look after an abandoned child. This is one of only two lifeboats remaining on the ship. Although Jack and Rose manage to avoid Cal's fury, they find that the lifeboats are gone. With no other options, they decide to head aft and stay on the ship for as long as possible before it sinks completely. Eventually, the ship breaks in half and begins its final descent, washing everyone into the freezing Atlantic waters. Jack and Rose are separated under the water but shortly reunite. Around them, well over a thousand people are dying painfully from hypothermia.

Meanwhile, in Lifeboat 6, Molly Brown tries to convince Quartermaster Robert Hichens to go back and rescue people, as there is plenty of room, but he refuses, knowing that there is not enough room for all of them and that all the boats will be swamped. Jack manages to grab hold of a dining room door, and gets Rose to lie on it. While lying on the door, Jack makes Rose promise that, whatever happens, she must get out alive. When Fifth Officer Harold Lowe returns with empty Lifeboat 14 to rescue several people from the water, Rose tries to wake Jack, but then realizes that he has died in the freezing water. Upon this realization, she begins to lose hope and wants to stay there to die with Jack; however, she remembers her promise and does her best to call out to Lowe. She is hoarse and he does not hear her and rows away. Still remembering her promise to "never let go", Rose manages to unclasp Jack's frozen hand from her own, letting his body disappear into the sea. Throwing herself into the water, Rose takes a whistle from a dead Chief Officer Henry Wilde and blows it, and is heard. She is pulled to safety, joining five others recovered from the ocean, and is taken on board the rescue ship RMS Carpathia.

On the Carpathia's deck, Rose notices Cal coming down searching for her; when he turns in her direction, she turns away and avoids being seen by him thanks to a blanket wrapped around her. This is the last time she ever sees him. Upon arrival in New York City, Rose registers her name as Rose Dawson (adopting Jack's surname, which is why everyone, including everyone she knew thought that Rose died on Titanic and never learned the truth about her surviving) and presumably starts a life on her own. Through the elderly Rose, we learn that Cal went on to marry another woman, and later committed suicide as a result of business losses in the Great Depression. The subsequent story of Rose's mother, who escaped on a lifeboat and was presumably rescued, is not told. After completing her story to the team (who now look at her with sympathy and awe), the elderly Rose goes alone to the stern of Lovett's ship. After she steps onto the railing, it is revealed that she still has the Heart of the Ocean in her possession. She then drops the diamond into the water, sending it to join the remains of the single most important event of her life. She kept every promise she had made to Jack, and did everything they ever talked about doing. Rose lies in her bed, next to photographs of her life's achievements, as the shot pans across her into darkness.

The film ends with a vision of young Rose reuniting with Jack at the Grand Staircase of the restored Titanic, surrounded by those who perished on the ship. They kiss and embrace, and all the people on the staircase start to applaud.

Production

James Cameron was fascinated by shipwrecks, including the RMS Titanic, and wrote a treatment for a film. He described the sinking of the Titanic as "like a great novel that really happened". Yet, over time he felt that the event had become a mere morality tale, and described making the film as putting the audience in an experience of living history. Cameron described a love story as the most engaging part of a story. As the likeable Jack and Rose had their love blossom and eventually destroyed, the audience would mourn the loss. Lastly, Cameron created a modern framing of the romance with an elderly Rose, making the history palpable and poignant. The treasure hunter Brock Lovett is meant to represent those who never connected with the human element of the tragedy. Cameron wanted to honour the people who died during the sinking, and he spent six months fully researching what happened, creating a timeline of all the Titanic's crew and passengers.

He met with 20th Century Fox, and convinced them to make a film based on the publicity afforded by shooting the wreck itself and organized a dive to the wreck of the Titanic over two years. The crew shot in the Atlantic Ocean twelve times in 1995, shooting during eleven of those occasions, and actually spent more time with the ship than its passengers. Afterwards, Cameron began writing a screenplay. Harland and Wolff, the RMS Titanic's builders, opened their private archives to the crew, sharing blueprints that were thought lost. For the ship's interiors, production designer Peter Lamont's team looked for artifacts from the era, though the newness of the ship meant every prop had to be made from scratch. Fox acquired forty acres of waterfront south of Playas de Rosarito in Mexico, and building of a new studio began on May 31, 1996. A seventeen-million-gallon tank was built for the exterior of the reconstructed ship, providing 270 degrees of ocean view. The ship was built to full scale, but Lamont removed redundant sections on the superstructure and forward well deck for the ship to fit in the tank, with the remaining sections filled with digital models. The lifeboats and funnels were shrunk by ten percent. The boat deck and A-deck were working sets, but the rest of the ship was just steel plating. Within was a fifty-foot lifting platform for the ship to tilt during the sinking sequences. Towering above was a 162 feet (49 m) tall tower crane on 600 feet (180 m) of railtrack, acting as a combined construction, lighting and camera platform. After shooting the sinking scenes, the ship was then dismantled and sold for scrap metal to cover budgetary costs.

Filming

The modern day scenes were shot on the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh in July 1996. It was during this shoot that someone sprinkled phencyclidine into the crew's dinner, affecting many including Cameron, and sending several dozen of them to the hospital. The person behind the prank was never caught. Principal photography for Titanic began in September 1996 at the newly-built Fox Baja Studios. The shot scenes on the poop deck was built on a hinge which could rise from zero to ninety degrees in a few seconds as the ship's stern rose during sinking. For the safety of the stuntmen, many props were made of foam rubber. By November 15, they were shooting the boarding scenes. Cameron chose to build his RMS Titanic on the starboard side as study of weather data showed prevailing north-to-south wind that blew the funnel smoke aft. This posed a problem for shooting the ship's departure from Southampton, as it was docked on its port side. Writing on props and costumes had to be reversed, and if someone walked to their right in the script, they had to walk left. In post-production, the film was flipped to the correct direction.

Filming Titanic was an arduous experience for all involved. The schedule was intended to last 138 days but grew to 160—twenty days shy of six months. Many cast members came down with colds, flu, or kidney infections after spending hours in cold water, including Kate Winslet. Several left and three stuntmen broke their bones, but the Screen Actors Guild decided, following an investigation, that nothing was inherently unsafe about the set. Cameron never apologized for running his sets like a military campaign, although he admitted, "I'm demanding, 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." After almost drowning, chipping an elbow bone, and getting the flu, Winslet decided she would not work with Cameron again unless she earned "a lot of money".

Effects

An enclosed five-million-gallon tank was used for sinking interiors, in which the entire set could be tilted into the water. To sink the Grand Staircase, ninety thousand gallons of water were dumped into the set as it was lowered into the tank. Unexpectedly, the waterfall ripped the staircase from its steel-reinforced foundations, though no one was hurt. The 744-foot (227 m) long exterior of the RMS Titanic had its first half lowered into the tank, but being the heaviest part of the ship meant it acted as a shock absorber against the water. To get the set into the water, Cameron had much of the set emptied and even smashed some of the promenade windows himself. After submerging the Dining Saloon, three days were spent shooting Lovett's ROV traversing the wreck in the present. The post-sinking scenes in the freezing Atlantic were shot in a 350,000-gallon tank, where the frozen corpses were created by applying a powder on actors that crystallized when exposed to water, and wax was coated on hair and clothes.

Cameron wanted to push the boundary of special effects with his film, and enlisted Digital Domain to continue the breakthroughs on digital technology the director pioneered on The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Previous films about the RMS Titanic shot water in slow motion, which did not look wholly convincing. He encouraged them to shoot their 45-foot (14 m) long miniature of the ship as if "we're making a commercial for the White Star Line". Afterward, digital water and smoke were added, as were extras captured on a motion capture stage. Visual effects supervisor Rob Legato scanned the faces of many actors, including himself and his children, for the digital extras and stuntmen. There was also a 65-foot (20 m) long model of the ship's stern that could break in two repeatedly, the only miniature to be used in water. For scenes set in the ship's engines, footage of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien's engines were composited with miniature support frames and actors shot against greenscreen. To save money, the First Class Lounge was a miniature set incorporated into a greenscreen backdrop.

Editing

During the first assembly cut, Cameron changed the planned ending, which had given resolution to Brock Lovett's story. In the original version of the ending, Brock sees Old Rose preparing to drop the necklace into the ocean. Assuming that she is going to jump, he and Lizzy stop her. She then reveals that she had the Heart of the Ocean diamond all along, but never sold it for money, as it reminded her of Cal too much. She tells Brock that life is priceless and throws the diamond into the ocean, after allowing him to hold it. Accepting that treasure is worthless, Brock laughs at his stupidity. He then falls for Lizzy, and Rose goes back to sleep, whereupon the film ends in the same way as the final version. In the editing room, Cameron decided that by this point the audience would no longer be interested in Brock Lovett and cut the resolution to his story, so that Rose is alone when she drops the diamond. He also did not want to disrupt the audience's melancholy after the Titanic's sinking.

The version used for the first test screening featured a fight between Jack and Lovejoy which took place after Jack and Rose escape into the flooded dining saloon, but the test audiences disliked it. The scene was written to give the film more suspense, and featured Cal (falsely) offering to give Lovejoy, his valet, the Heart of the Ocean if he can kill Jack and Rose. Lovejoy goes after the pair in the sinking First Class dining room. Just as they are about to escape him, Lovejoy notices Rose's hand slap the water as it slips off the table behind which she is hiding. In revenge for framing him for the "theft" of the necklace, Jack attacks him and smashes his head against a glass window (this explains the gash on Lovejoy's head that can be seen when he dies in the completed version of the film). The test audiences disliked this scene, saying it would be unrealistic to risk one's life for wealth, and Cameron cut it for this reason, as well as for timing and pacing reasons. Many other scenes were cut for similar reasons.

Cast

Fictional characters

• Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson: A penniless artist who travels the world, Jack wins tickets to the RMS Titanic in a card game. He is attracted to Rose's beauty and convinces her out of an attempted suicide. His saving of her life brings him into first-class society for a night, and he shows her a carefree way of life of which she had often fantasized but never realized of doing. Billy Crudup and Stephen Dorff were considered for the role of Jack.
• Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater: A first-class socialite, seventeen-year-old Rose is forced to become engaged to Caledon Hockley so she and her mother can maintain their high status after the death of her father. Feeling trapped, Rose becomes suicidal, but she soon discovers a completely new lease on life when she meets Jack Dawson. Cameron asked Claire Danes to play the part, but she was exhausted after Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, which also starred DiCaprio, and she found Titanic too similar.
• Billy Zane as Caledon "Cal" Nathan Hockley: The heir to an enormous steel fortune and the quintessential arrogant and snobbish first-class man. Rose's fiancé Cal becomes increasingly embarrassed, jealous, and cruel over Rose's relationship with Jack. He gives Rose the famous " Heart of the Ocean" diamond as a reminder of his feelings for her, and then asks her to "open her heart to him". Cal shoots himself in the head by putting a gun in his mouth in 1929 after the stock market crash hit his interests hard.
• Frances Fisher as Ruth DeWitt Bukater: Rose's widowed mother, who is marrying her off to ensure their high-class status. She loves her daughter but believes marriage to Cal is the right thing to do. The epitome of the shallowness and hypocrisies of high-class society, she scorns Jack, even though he saved her daughter's life.
• Danny Nucci as Fabrizio De Rossi: Jack's Italian best friend who comes aboard the RMS Titanic after winning a poker game. Fabrizio is killed during the sinking when one of the ship's funnels collapses and crushes him while he tries to swim away.
• Jason Barry as Tommy Ryan: An Irish third-class passenger who befriends Jack and Fabrizio. He also makes a comment to Jack about his unlikely chance to get next to Rose. Tommy is shot dead by First Officer Murdoch after being pushed and mistaken for attempting to rush into a lifeboat.
• David Warner as Spicer Lovejoy: An ex- Pinkerton constable, Lovejoy is Cal's English valet and bodyguard, who keeps an eye on Rose and is suspicious of the circumstances of Jack's rescue of her. According to Rose, Lovejoy was hired by Cal's father to "keep an eye on his little boy". He accompanies Cal, Rose and Ruth on the RMS Titanic and tells the porters where to put their luggage. He dies during the sinking and is last seen clinging onto the deck rail for dear life as the ship splits apart beneath him.
• Bill Paxton as Brock Lovett: A treasure hunter looking for the "Heart of the Ocean" in the wreck of the RMS Titanic in the present. Time and funding to his expedition is running out.
• Gloria Stuart plays the 101-year-old Rose Calvert: She comes to give Lovett information regarding the "Heart of the Ocean", after he discovers a nude drawing of her in the wreck of the RMS Titanic. She narrates the story of her time aboard the ship, mentioning Jack for the first time since.
• Suzy Amis as Lizzy Calvert: Rose's granddaughter, who takes care of her, and accompanies her to the ship on her visit to Lovett. In a deleted scene of the film, she angrily confronts Lovett and warns him not to browbeat Rose.
• Lewis Abernathy as Lewis Bodine: Lovett's friend, who expresses doubt at first whether the elderly Rose is telling the truth. He also explains to Rose, with little regard for sensitivity, how the RMS Titanic sank with a 3-D computer simulation.

Historical characters

• Kathy Bates as Margaret Brown: Brown is depicted as being frowned upon by other first-class women, including Ruth, as "new money" due to her sudden wealth. She is friendly to Jack and gives him a tuxedo (which she bought for her son) when he is invited to dinner in the first-class dining saloon.
• Victor Garber as Thomas Andrews, Jr.: The ship's designer, Andrews is portrayed as a very nice and pleasant man who is somewhat modest about his grand achievement. After the collision, he struggles to comprehend that his "unsinkable" ship is doomed with not enough lifeboats for half the people on board. He is depicted during the sinking of the ship as standing next to the clock in the first class smoking room, lamenting his failure to build a strong and safe ship. He gives Rose a life jacket so that she does not drown in the icy water, and is last seen looking at his watch and adjusting the clock in the same room, accepting his fate.
• Bernard Hill as Captain Edward John Smith: The film depicts the captain of the RMS Titanic as retiring to his quarters before the ship hits the iceberg. He retreats into the wheelhouse as the ship sinks, dying when the icy water bursts through the windows.
• Jonathan Hyde as Joseph Bruce Ismay: Ismay is portrayed as an ignorant first-class rich man, who does not know who Sigmund Freud is. He uses his position as White Star Line managing director to influence Captain Smith to go faster with the prospect of an earlier arrival in New York and favourable press attention. He cowardly takes the opportunity to get into a lifeboat, and looks back, guilt-stricken, as his ship sinks.
• Eric Braeden as Colonel John Jacob Astor: A first-class passenger whom Rose calls the richest man on the ship. The film depicts Astor and his 19-year-old wife Madeleine as being introduced to Jack by Rose in the first-class dining saloon. He is presumably drowned when the Grand Staircase glass dome implodes and tons of water surge in, clutching onto a post.
• Bernard Fox as Colonel Archibald Gracie: The film depicts Gracie making a comment to Cal that "women and machinery don't mix", and congratulating Jack for saving Rose from committing suicide. Gracie was American, but is depicted as an Englishman in the film.
• Michael Ensign as Benjamin Guggenheim: A mining tycoon traveling in first class. He openly shows off his French mistress Madame Aubart to his fellow passengers while his family wait for him back home. Before his death, he utters the famous words, "We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down as gentlemen", before asking for a final glass of brandy. Like Archibald Gracie, Guggenheim was American, but is portrayed as an Englishman.
• Jonathan Evans-Jones as Wallace Hartley: The ship's bandmaster who plays uplifting music with his colleagues on the boat deck as the ship sinks, culminating in a final, emotional performance of Nearer, My God, to Thee. His final words are "Gentlemen. It has been a privilege playing with you tonight."
• Ewan Stewart as First Officer William Murdoch: The film's most controversial depiction. During a sudden rush for the lifeboats, Murdoch's gun discharges and kills a passenger. Murdoch then commits suicide out of guilt. When Murdoch's nephew Scott saw the film, he objected to his uncle's portrayal as damaging to Murdoch's heroic reputation, considering that he did try to get a number of passengers off. A few months later, Fox Vice-president Scott Neeson went to Dalbeattie, where Murdoch lived, to deliver a personal apology, and also presented a £5000 donation to Dalbeattie High School to boost the school's William Murdoch Memorial Prize. Cameron apologized on the DVD commentary, but noted that there were officers who fired gunshots to follow the "women and children first" policy.
• Jonathan Phillips as Second Officer Charles Lightoller: The ship's most senior surviving officer of the sinking. The film depicts Lightoller arguing with Captain Smith that it would be difficult to see the icebergs with no breaking water. He is seen brandishing a gun and threatening to use it to keep order. He can be seen on top of one of the overturned collapsibles.
• Ioan Gruffudd as Fifth Officer Harold Lowe: The only ship's officer who led a lifeboat to retrieve survivors of the sinking. The film depicts Lowe rescuing Rose from the freezing ocean after finding her floating on a door.
• Edward Fletcher as Sixth Officer James Moody: The ship's only junior officer who died in the sinking. The film depicts Moody admitting Jack and Fabrizio onto the ship only moments before it departs from Southampton, and informs First Officer Murdoch about the iceberg.

Cameos

Several crew members of the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh appear in the film, including Anatoly Sagalevich, creator and pilot of the Mir submersibles. Anders Falk, who filmed a documentary about the film's sets for the Titanic Historical Society, cameoed in the film as a Swedish immigrant who Jack Dawson meets when he enters his cabin, and Ed and Karen Kamuda, then President and Vice President of the Society, were extras on the film.

Release

Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox financed Titanic, and expected James Cameron to complete the film for a release on July 2, 1997. With production delays, Paramount pushed back the release date to December 19, 1997. The film premiered on November 1, 1997, at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where reaction was described as " tepid" by the New York Times.

Box office

The film received steady attendance after opening in North America on Friday, December 19, 1997. By Sunday that same weekend, theaters were beginning to sell out. The film debuted with $28,638,131 in 2,674 theaters, averaging to about $10,710 per venue. By New Year's Day, Titanic had increased in popularity and theaters continued selling out. Its biggest box office weekend took place over Valentine's Day weekend in 1998, more than six weeks after it debuted in North America. After it was released, it stayed at #1 for 15 consecutive weeks in the U.S. box office, an undefeated record. By March 1998, it was the first film to earn more than $1 billion worldwide. Some theaters in Australia, India, and South Africa ran it for more than one year. The movie stayed in theaters in North America for more than nine months before finally closing on Thursday October 1, 1998 with a final domestic gross of $600,788,188. Accumulating $1.8 billion worldwide, to this day Titanic retains the record as the most successful box office film in history (not adjusted for inflation).

Critical reaction

The film garnered mostly positive reviews from critics. It is a "Certified Fresh" film on Rotten Tomatoes, with 82% overall approval from critics. The film currently has a 74/100 metascore on Metacritic, classified as a generally favorable reviewed film.

Roger Ebert wrote, "It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted, and spellbinding... Movies like this are not merely difficult to make at all, but almost impossible to make well. The technical difficulties are so daunting that it's a wonder when the filmmakers are also able to bring the drama and history into proportion. I found myself convinced by both the story and the sad saga." It was his ninth best film of 1997. On the television program Siskel & Ebert, the film received "two thumbs up"; Ebert describing it as "a glorious Hollywood epic, well-crafted and well worth the wait" Gene Siskel found Leonardo DiCaprio "captivating" while he felt Kate Winslet "came off as flat in comparison". Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote a mostly negative review, criticizing the special effects and lack of interesting emotional elements.

James Berardinelli explains, "Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic, you experience it." It was his second best movie of 1997. Some reviewers felt that the story and dialogue were weak, while the visuals were spectacular. Kenneth Turan's review in the Los Angeles Times was particularly scathing. Dismissing the emotive elements, he says, "What really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only is it not, it is not even close." Barbara Shulgasser of San Francisco Examiner gave Titanic one star out of four, citing a friend as saying, "The number of times in this unbelievably badly-written script that the two [lead characters] refer to each other by name was an indication of just how dramatically the script lacked anything more interesting for the actors to say."

Titanic suffered backlash from many after its release. In 2003, the film topped a poll of "Best Film Endings", and yet it also topped a poll by The Film programme as "the worst movie of all time". Parodies and spoofs abounded and were circulated around the Internet, often inspiring passionate responses from fans of various opinions of the film.

Since its release, Titanic has appeared on the AFI's award-winning 100 Years.... So far, it has ranked on the following six lists:

Awards

Titanic began its awards sweep starting with the Golden Globes, winning four, namely Best Motion Picture (Drama), Best Director, Best Original Score, and Best Song. Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Gloria Stuart, and James Cameron's screenplay were also nominees but lost. It won the ACE "Eddie" Award, ASC Award, Art Directors Guild Award, Cinema Audio Society Award, Screen Actors Guild Awards, (Best Supporting Actress Gloria Stuart), The Directors Guild of America Award, and Broadcast Film Critics Association Award (Best Director James Cameron), and The Producer Guild of America Awards. It was also nominated for ten BAFTA awards, including Best Film and Director.

It tied All About Eve for having the most Oscar nominations in history, with 14. It won Best Picture and Best Director. It also picked up Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography. Kate Winslet, Gloria Stuart and the make-up artists were the three nominees that did not win. James Cameron's original screenplay and Leonardo DiCaprio were not nominees. It was the second movie to win eleven Academy Awards, after Ben-Hur. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King would also match this record in 2004, with its 11 wins from 11 nominations.

The ending credits' song also won the Grammy Awards for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television. The film also won Best Male Performance for Leonardo DiCaprio and Best Movie at the MTV Movie Awards. The film was voted as Best Film at the People's Choice Awards. It won various awards outside the United States, including the Awards of the Japanese Academy as the Best Foreign Film of the Year. Titanic eventually won nearly 90 awards and had an additional 47 nominations from various award-giving bodies around the world.

Home video

Titanic was released world-wide in widescreen and pan and scan formats on VHS and laserdisc on September 1, 1998. The VHS was also made available in a deluxe boxed gift set with a mounted filmstrip and a colour booklet. A DVD version was released on July 31, 1999 in a widescreen-only (non- anamorphic) single disc edition with no special features other than a theatrical trailer. Cameron stated at the time that he intended to release a special edition with extra features later. This release became the best-selling DVD of 1999 and early 2000, becoming the first DVD ever to sell 1 million copies.

Six years after the original DVD release, on October 25, 2005, a special edition release finally occurred with a three-disc set marketed as Special Collector's Edition in North America and as the Ultimate Edition in Japan. The release included an anamorphic widescreen presentation of the film divided onto two discs, with 6.1 channel surround sound. The supplements included 29 deleted scenes, an alternate ending, a faux 1912-style newsreel, a crew tribute/gag reel, and other features. Ed Marsh was originally commissioned to shoot and edit a two-hour retrospective documentary, and had completed it when Cameron decided to drop it from the DVD set.

An international two- and four-disc set followed on November 7, 2005. The two-disc edition was marketed as the Special Edition, and featured the first two discs of the three-disc set, only PAL enabled. A four-disc edition, marketed as the Deluxe Collector's Edition, was also released on November 7, 2005. This set included all of the material of the three-disc edition, with the fourth disc containing the HBO special Heart of the Ocean, spoofs and parodies (available as Easter eggs in the Region 1 edition), and a gallery of trailers and TV spots, some never before seen. This set, alongside the two- and five-disc set, has not yet been released in North America. The four-disc edition was released in Mexico for Region 4 on December 21, 2005.

Available only in the UK, a limited five-disc set of the film, under the title Deluxe Limited Edition, was released with only 10,000 copies manufactured. The fifth disc contains James Cameron's documentary Ghosts of the Abyss. Unlike the individual release of Ghosts of the Abyss, which contained two discs, only the first disc was included in the set. Each set is numbered, for buyers to easily tell the difference between an authentic copy and a bootleg copy. The set was exclusive to HMV and Virgin Megastores, but were only available in December 2005. The 10,000 sets produced were split, 5,000 to each store chain.

On September 1, 2007 it was announced that a two-disc tenth anniversary edition would be released by Paramount Pictures on November 20, 2007, but the re-release turned out to be a re-package of the first two discs from the 2005 release.

An HD DVD release was planned, but after Toshiba stopped production of HD DVD equipment, the release was canceled. Instead, a Blu-ray Disc will be released.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack CD for Titanic was composed by James Horner and sold more than twenty-seven million copies, notable because it included only one pop song with lyrics. The soundtrack includes performances from the Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø, and the Canadian singer Céline Dion. It became a worldwide success, and led to the release of a second volume that contained a mixture of previously unreleased soundtrack recordings with newly-recorded performances of some of the songs in the film, including one track recorded by Enya's sister, Máire Brennan of the Irish band Clannad. "Hymn to the Sea" features Bad Haggis's Eric Rigler on the uilleann pipes and whistles.

James Horner wrote the song " My Heart Will Go On" in secret with Will Jennings because Cameron did not want any songs with singing in the film. Dion agreed to record a demo with the persuasion of her husband René Angélil. Horner waited until Cameron was in an appropriate mood before presenting him with the song. After playing it several times, Cameron declared its approval, although worried that he would have been criticized for "going commercial at the end of the movie". It eventually won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song.