The Titanic on Film: Myth Versus Truth

by Koldau, Linda Maria

• ISBN13: 9780786463114
• ISBN10: 0786463112
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-07-30
• Publisher: McFarland & Co Inc Pub

Summary

The narrative surrounding the Titanic's voyage, collision, and sinking in April 1912 seems tailor-made for film. With clear categories of gender, class, nationality, and religion, the dominating Titanic myth offers a wealth of motifs ripe for the silver screen--heroism, melodrama, love, despair, pleasure, pain, failure, triumph, memory and eternal guilt. This volume provides a detailed overview of Titanic films from 1912 to the present and analyses the six major Titanic films, including the 1943 national socialist production, the 1953 Hollywood film, the 1958 British docudrama A Night to Remember, the 1979 TV production S.O.S. Titanic, the 1996 mini-series Titanic, and James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster. By showing how each film follows and builds on a pattern of fixed scenes, motifs and details called the Titanic code, this work yields telling insights into why this specific disaster has maintained such great relevance into the 21st century.

Author Biography

Linda Maria Koldau is a professor of musicology at Aarhus University in Denmark and an affiliated researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She is the author of several books on cultural history, including works on the submarine myth and the myth of the Titanic.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. 1
Introduction: The Archetype of Maritime Disaster	p. 9
History, Myth and Film
The Historical Event	p. 21
The Titanic Myth	p. 29
The Parameters and Their Codification in Film	p. 29
The Historical Development	p. 38
Titanic in Film	p. 46
Titanic in Film from 1912 to the Present Time	p. 48
Early Films and Newsreels, 1912-13	p. 49
The 1929 Atlantic and Selznick's Foundered Titanic Project	p. 55
The Six Major Titanic Productions	p. 59
Titanic Episodes and Fantasies	p. 66
The Dying Queen: Documentaries of the Wreck	p. 70
The Perfect Script	p. 77
The Basic Ingredients	p. 77
Making It Original: Subplots and Structural Models	p. 81
Framing Devices	p. 85
Major Titanic Films
The Nazi Titanic (1943): Unfit for Propaganda	p. 95
Greed as Main Theme: The Plot and the Protagonists	p. 97
Propaganda Failed	p. 105
Epilogue	p. 110
Titanic (1953): Myth Turned into Melodrama	p. 111
First Class with a Gender Conflict	p. 113
Religion and Redemption	p. 117
The Subplots and Their Relation to the Main Plot	p. 119
A Night to Remember (1958): The "Real Story"	p. 129
The Main Plot: The Ship as Star	p. 129
Social Microcosm: Class as Main Theme	p. 134
The Ideal of British Middle-Class Virtue	p. 136
Gender and Religion	p. 141
The "Titanic Code": Authenticity and Nostalgia	p. 143
S.O.S. Titanic (1979): Great in Detail, Weak in Plot	p. 148
The Frame Structure and Its Significance for Characterization	p. 148
Strictly Historical: The Representation of the Various Social Spheres	p. 153
Problems of Plot-Nevertheless an Impressive Film	p. 160
Titanic (1996): Poor Plots with an Impressive Disaster	p. 167
Structure and Plots	p. 169
Striving for Authenticity: Historical Motifs	p. 174
The Climax	p. 177
James Cameron's Titanic (1997)	p. 182
The Main Categories of the Titanic Myth and Their Treatment in Cameron's Titanic	p. 184
Postmodernist Features in Cameron's Titanic	p. 195
The Recipe for Success	p. 206
The Titanic Code: Recurrent Motifs in Titanic Films	p. 223
Recurrent Motifs: History, Myth, and Fiction	p. 224
Music to Drown By: Music in the Titanic Myth	p. 234
The Final Song	p. 236
Music and Class	p. 241
The Film Music	p. 244
The Sounds of Death	p. 256
Conclusion: Making Titanic Immortal	p. 259
Chapter Notes	p. 265
Bibliography	p. 287
Index	p. 293
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