titanic film review essay

Titanic (United States, 1997)

Short of climbing aboard a time capsule and peeling back eight and one-half decades, James Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the closest any of us will get to walking the decks of the doomed ocean liner. 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 -- from the launch to the sinking, then on a journey two and one-half miles below the surface, into the cold, watery grave where Cameron has shot never-before seen documentary footage specifically for this movie.

In each of his previous outings, Cameron has pushed the special effects envelope. In Aliens , he cloned H.R. Giger's creation dozens of times, fashioning an army of nightmarish monsters. In The Abyss , he took us deep under the sea to greet a band of benevolent space travelers. In T2 , he introduced the morphing terminator (perfecting an effects process that was pioneered in The Abyss ). And in True Lies , he used digital technology to choreograph an in-air battle. Now, in Titanic , Cameron's flawless re-creation of the legendary ship has blurred the line between reality and illusion to such a degree that we can't be sure what's real and what isn't. To make this movie, it's as if Cameron built an all-new Titanic , let it sail, then sunk it.

Of course, special effects alone don't make for a successful film, and Titanic would have been nothing more than an expensive piece of eye candy without a gripping story featuring interesting characters. In his previous outings, Cameron has always placed people above the technological marvels that surround them. Unlike film makers such as Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, Cameron has used visual effects to serve his plot, not the other way around. That hasn't changed with Titanic . The picture's spectacle is the ship's sinking, but its core is the affair between a pair of mismatched, star-crossed lovers.

Titanic is a romance, an adventure, and a thriller all rolled into one. It contains moments of exuberance, humor, pathos, and tragedy. In their own way, the characters are all larger-than- life, but they're human enough (with all of the attendant frailties) to capture our sympathy. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Titanic is that, even though Cameron carefully recreates the death of the ship in all of its terrible grandeur, the event never eclipses the protagonists. To the end, we never cease caring about Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Titanic sank during the early morning hours of April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic, killing 1500 of the 2200 on board. The movie does not begin in 1912, however -- instead, it opens in modern times, with a salvage expedition intent on recovering some of the ship's long-buried treasure. The expedition is led by Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton), a fortune hunter who is searching for the mythical "Heart of the Ocean", a majestic 56 karat diamond which reputedly went down with the ship. After seeing a TV report about the salvage mission, a 101-year old woman (Gloria Stuart) contacts Brock with information regarding the jewel. She identifies herself as Rose DeWitt Bukater, a survivor of the tragedy. Brock has her flown out to his ship. Once there, she tells him her version of the story of Titanic 's ill-fated voyage.

The bulk of the film -- well over 80% of its running time -- is spent in flashbacks. We pick up the story on the day that Titanic leaves Southampton, with jubilant crowds cheering as it glides away from land. On board are the movie's three main characters: Rose, a young American debutante trapped in a loveless engagement because her mother is facing financial ruin; Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), her rich-but-cold-hearted fiancé; and Jack Dawson, a penniless artist who won his third-class ticket in a poker game. When Jack first sees Rose, it's from afar, but circumstances offer him the opportunity to become much closer to her. As the voyage continues, Jack and Rose grow more intimate, and she tries to summon up the courage to defy her mother (Frances Fisher) and break off her engagement. But, even with the aid of an outspoken rich women named Molly Brown (Kathy Bates), the barrier of class looms as a seemingly-insurmountable obstacle. Then, when circumstances in the Rose/Cal/Jack triangle are coming to a head, Titanic strikes an iceberg and the "unsinkable" ship (that term is a testament to man's hubris) begins to go down.

By keeping the focus firmly on Rose and Jack, Cameron avoids one frequent failing of epic disaster movies: too many characters in too many stories. When a film tries to chronicle the lives and struggles of a dozen or more individuals, it reduces them all to cardboard cut-outs. In Titanic , Rose and Jack are at the fore from beginning to end, and the supporting characters are just that -- supporting. The two protagonists (as well as Cal) are accorded enough screen time for Cameron to develop multifaceted personalities.

As important as the characters are, however, it's impossible to deny the power of the visual effects. Especially during the final hour, as Titanic undergoes its death throes, the film functions not only as a rousing adventure with harrowing escapes, but as a testimony to the power of computers to simulate reality in the modern motion picture. The scenes of Titanic going under are some of the most awe-inspiring in any recent film. This is the kind of movie that it's necessary to see more than once just to appreciate the level of detail.

One of the most unique aspects of Titanic is its use of genuine documentary images to set the stage for the flashback story. Not satisfied with the reels of currently-existing footage of the sunken ship, Cameron took a crew to the site of the wreck to do his own filming. As a result, some of the underwater shots in the framing sequences are of the actual liner lying on the ocean floor. Their importance and impact should not be underestimated, since they further heighten the production's sense of verisimilitude.

For the leading romantic roles of Jack and Rose, Cameron has chosen two of today's finest young actors. Leonardo DiCaprio ( Romeo + Juliet ), who has rarely done better work, has shed his cocky image. Instead, he's likable and energetic in this part -- two characteristics vital to establishing Jack as a hero. Meanwhile, Kate Winslet, whose impressive resume includes Sense and Sensibility, Hamlet , and Jude , dons a flawless American accent along with her 1912 garb, and essays an appealing, vulnerable Rose. Billy Zane comes across as the perfect villain -- callous, arrogant, yet displaying true affection for his prized fiancé. The supporting cast, which includes Kathy Bates, Bill Paxton, Frances Fisher, Bernard Hill (as Titanic 's captain), and David Warner (as Cal's no-nonsense manservant), is flawless.

While Titanic is easily the most subdued and dramatic of Cameron's films, fans of more frantic pictures like Aliens and The Abyss will not be disappointed. Titanic has all of the thrills and intensity that movie-goers have come to expect from the director. A dazzling mix of style and substance, of the sublime and the spectacular, Titanic represents Cameron's most accomplished work to date. It's important not to let the running time hold you back -- these three-plus hour pass very quickly. Although this telling of the Titanic story is far from the first, it is the most memorable, and is deserving of Oscar nominations not only in the technical categories, but in the more substantive ones of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, special effects live up to hype in 'titanic'.

There is a shot in " Titanic " that I watched like a hawk. The point of view is from above, as the great ship steams to its destiny. In one apparently uninterrupted piece of celluloid, we see the ship from bow to stern, every foot of it, with flags flying and smoke coiling from its stacks, and on the deck hundreds of passengers strolling, children running, servants serving, sportsmen playing.

I watched it because I knew, logically, that this shot was a special effect. They did not rebuild the Titanic to make the movie. I knew, in general, what to look for - what trickery might be involved - and yet I was fooled. The shot looks like the real thing.

"That was a model shot," James Cameron said, smiling. "The people were all computer graphics. The way we did it was, we had people act out all of those individual behaviors in what we call a 'motion capture environment.' So, a steward pouring tea for a lady seated on a deck chair - that was all acted out and then that motion file was used to drive and animate those figures. The end result is like you said: We pull back down the full length of Titanic, and you see 350 people all over the decks, doing all those different things. The same technique was used for the sinking, when you see hundreds of people on the ship jumping off or rolling down the decks."

So it's all f/x. Well, I didn't expect them to build the Titanic and sink it again. But what I also didn't expect was a film so completely convincing in its details. There are a few moments the viewer doubts (the portholes look suspiciously bright at night), but in general Cameron's film is a triumph of reconstructed realism: Inside and out, in good times and bad, when it is launched and when it goes to its grave, the Titanic in this movie looks like a real ship.

James Cameron is, of course, a director who specializes in special effects, and he's been at the cutting edge since " Aliens " (1986), still the most disturbing of the " Alien " series. Before that he worked valiantly in films where the budget and the technology were not yet there for him ("Piranha II" in 1981, "Terminator" in 1984). After, he was the king of f/x, with such credits as "The Abyss" (1989), "Terminator II" (1991), " True Lies " (1994), and such producer credits as Kathryn Bigelow's " Strange Days " (1995). The story's the thing

There has always been the choice in Cameron's work to insist on a story; he doesn't lazily throw cardboard puppets into explosions and chases. When time ran out on the production schedule for "The Abyss," and he had to make a deadline decision about what to finish for the release print, he kept the relationship story between aquanauts Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio . Not until the Directors' Cut could we see the spectacular special effects (a city rising from the sea, a tidal wave) that he was willing to surrender before he short-changed his story.

In "Titanic," there are three stories: the historic story of the sinking of the grandest ship of its time; the fictional story of a young female passenger and the men in her life; and the modern story of the Titanic in its grave, 2 1/2 miles beneath the sea.

There is a lot of footage of the real Titanic on the bottom, some fake footage, and some that dissolves from one to the other. Cameron wasn't content to buy footage from documentaries about the search for the Titanic; he shot the film's undersea footage himself, new for this film: "It's all our own. I made the dives and operated the camera and we lit it and everything."

You saw the Titanic, I said.

"Yes. Sat on the deck 12 times. The IMAX film stuck the camera inside the sub; it shot out of the view port, which was very limiting. We built a camera that went outside the sub and could pan and tilt and do all the normal movie camera type stuff. Ironically, we totaled the number of hours that we spent at Titanic during the course of those dives and it was more than the number of hours that the passengers spent on board."

That last shot, I said, where we float on the bottom along the wrecked ship's deck, and then . . .

"In that particular case it's a model," he said, "but we did generate a lot of footage of the real ship that's in the film. Also interiors of the ship as it sits right now on the bottom of the ocean, and then fake interiors as well."

It's all so seamless.

"It's consistent with what Titanic looks like. We couldn't explore the whole interior of the ship. We could only get a glimpse into some areas. We went down some corridors to the D-deck level and saw a lot of the remaining hand-carved woodwork, the wall-paneling, the beautiful ornate carved doors. A lot of it is still there. It's very, very cold, which helps preserve things. There are marine organisms that will eat wood, but in certain areas the wood was covered with white-leaded paint that protected Titanic."

"Titanic," he calls it. Not "the Titanic."

"That's how they referred to liners in those days. The great ships were places, not things. They were an entity almost. You'd say, `I'm crossing in Mauritania.' "

I was sitting in Chicago, drinking coffee with a man who had been as close to the Titanic as he was to me.

"It was eerie," Cameron said. "I love to dive and I love shipwrecks, so the adrenalin was spiking. But there's something about Titanic that's sort of mythic, that's storylike and you don't quite believe it. It's almost more like a novel than an event that really happened - and yet here's the wreck. It really happened. People died here. That was the thing I had to take away. Not just the images of a wreck. I had to take away the sense of responsibility to do it right and to honor Titanic. The film that resulted is an expression of what happened there."

"Titanic," which opens Dec. 19, is said to be the most expensive movie ever made. Perhaps it is. Few films contemplate financing an expedition to the bottom of the Atlantic just to get things rolling. When "Titanic" missed its original opening date last summer, there were rumors that the film was in trouble, that it would be a disaster in the tradition of " Raise the Titanic !" (1980), a film that inspired its producer, Lord Grade, to observe, "It would have been cheaper to lower the ocean."

But the film's world premiere, in November at the Tokyo Film Festival, was a triumph, and now the word is trickling forth from press screenings that, whatever its cost, "Titanic" is value for money, a marriage of imagination and technology in the Hollywood tradition of well-crafted epics.

The framing story involves an old lady, a Titanic survivor, who sees TV documentary footage of a sketch drawn on board all those years ago. She visits the documentary filmmakers and tells her story, which is reconstructed in flashbacks. Kate Winslow plays the survivor as a young girl, Billy Zane is her rich and arrogant fiance (who loves her all the same), and Leonardo DiCaprio is the kid from steerage who becomes her lover and, eventually, her savior.

Around their story all of the details are fashioned of fact and fiction. The real Titanic took a long time to sink, and the film recreates an eerie feeling of how that time was spent by the passengers - both first class ticket holders, and those with cheaper tickets who are temporarily locked below, because there were not enough lifeboats for everyone.

"Many died in terror, you know," Cameron said. "When you look at the numbers, if you were a third class male on Titanic you stood a 1-in-10 chance of survival. If you were a first class female, it was virtually a 100 percent survival rate. It broke down along lines of gender and class. If you were a first class male, you stood about a 50-50 chance of survival. And the crew took it hardest.

"Of the 1,500 who died, 600 or 700 of them were crew members. The people who stayed in the dynamo room and the engine room, to keep the lights on so that the evacuation would not become panicked - who stayed till the end and missed their opportunity to leave the ship - that's something you'd see less of today."

I can only imagine, I said, the conditions on the set when you were filming the scenes where Titanic is almost vertical and people are sliding straight down and bouncing off air vents and deck walls.

"That was our most dangerous work," Cameron said. "The stunt team worked for weeks in advance, videotaping each one of those stunts and rehearsing it and showing me the tapes. It was all intensely pre-planned and the set was made about 50 percent out of rubber at that point, all padded up. But there's always an X-factor. We had 6,000 stunt person days on this film - the equivalent of one man doing stunts seven days a week for 16 years. But it was all happening at once. We did have a guy break his leg, which I hated. I don't think anybody should get hurt for a film. So I decided to do more of it with computer graphics. Here was a case where the effects actually stepped in and took the place of some of the more dangerous stunts - like the guy falling who hits the propeller of the ship and bounces off. But a lot of those other stunt falls are real. If you look at our stunt credits in the film it's like the Manhattan phone book." It was such a blow to human confidence, I said, that this great ship, unsinkable, the largest ever, would . . .

"The great lesson of Titanic for us, going into the 21st century," he said, "is that the inconceivable can happen. Those people lived in a time of certainty; they felt they had mastered everything - mastered nature and mastered themselves. But they had mastered neither. A thousand years from now Titanic will still be one of the great stories. Certainly there have been greater human tragedies during this century, but there's something poetically perfect about Titanic, because of the laying low of the wealthy and the beautiful people who thought life would be infinite and perfect for them." What would you have done? Anyone seeing this movie, I said, will have to ask themselves this question: Would I have fought to get on a lifeboat? Would I have pushed a woman or a child out of the way? Or would I have sat down in the lounge and called for a brandy, like Guggenheim, and faced the inevitable with grace?

"The sinking of Titanic took 2 hours and 40 minutes. People had time to think about their doom and to make choices. It wasn't instantaneous like the crash of the Hindenberg. This was about moral choices, and so it asks every member of the audience to question their own moral choices, their own courage, their own kind of fiber."

He sighed. "I don't know what I would have done. Well, I know what I would have done if I had been taken back on a time machine and put on the deck of Titanic. I know exactly how I could have survived without hurting anybody else. But if I was really there, with my personality but without my current knowledge, I don't know what I would have done."

What would the time traveler have known to do?

He smiled. "Oh, it's very simple. You just wait until Boat No. 4 is pulling away from the ship and dive in at the front off the B Deck level and swim to it, because it was only half full anyway."

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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"Titanic": A Timeless Tale of Love, Tragedy, and Artistic Brilliance

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Overview of the Movie

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Film direction and cinematography, soundtrack and effects, critical reception.

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The Significance and the Esteem of the Film “Titanic” Critical Essay

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The film “ Titanic ” represents the ship that was deemed unsinkable and occurrences on her 1912 maiden journey from Southampton, in the United Kingdom, to New York City, in the United States.

On the ship was a girl (Rose DeWitt Bukater, acted by Kate Winslet) engaged to a rich man (Caledon) that she never loved. Despite the engagement, Rose comes across a poor young man (Jack, acted by Leonardo DiCarprio) and they fall in love.

As they fight with class and Caledon’s opposition, the Titanic hits an iceberg and begins to sink gradually. The striking of the iceberg by the ship leaves the stars of the film (Rose and Jack) struggling for their lives as well as their love.

It was with some surprise that Stephen Rowley wrote the review on this movie (Rowley para. 1). Doing his review in September 1998, 8 months after the release of the movie Titanic , it was disorientating for Stephen Rowley to note that he enjoyed it.

This is owing to the reason that at some point in that era, the unrelenting cruelty that surrounds James Cameron’s movie “ Titanic ” has resulted in Stephen Rowley disliking the movie and all about it. Rowley dislikes Jack for falling in love with Rose, who was already engaged to Caledon.

James Cameron is an action director who is little known as director of romances. The beauty of the Titanic film is that Cameron came up with practical, yet distressing, sentimental subplots and incorporated them completely into the power of an action narrative.

It is hard to believe that James Cameron envisaged the love narrative involving the two characters (Jack and Rose) and ultimately decided the ideal backdrop would be the sinking of the Titanic (ship).

However, it is easier to believe that James Cameron began with the notion of how exhilarating the submerging scenes could be and afterward grafted the lovers into the events. Titanic shows this vividly, making it an excellent and outstanding antique disaster film (Rowley para. 1-2).

James Cameron has the benefit of making his movie after the wreckage of the ship was found.

This has brought about a great deal of fresh information that cheerfully directs to a series of events significantly more visually exhilarating when judged against the old representation of ship submerging under the effects of the iceberg and waves.

Cameron is inventive at operating his characters into the excellent positions to observe every one of the outstanding achievement.

The imagery in the movie astonishes, from the frightening instances like icy water chases around the hull to the film concluding views like the sinking of the ship undersea.

James Cameron excellently conveys all the peak points such as his tactical craftsmanship; perfect framing, redacting and choreography of activity ought to be carried out as an instance in film production.

These views get approximately an hour to glue a viewer to them, which is roughly the period taken by the ship to sink. James Cameron shows off his command of the medium, his elegant production design and his surprising visual outcomes. In this regard, the movie is a great success.

Nevertheless, Stephen Rowley rapidly rose to resent the movie and the success it bears since individuals appear to enjoy the movie at the instances that it is not good at all. This feature of the movie is just a bare minimum endeavour; it is compliant with the action.

Being a drama in its own capacity, Titanic has notably miniature integrity. Fundamentally, Titanic brings out a common, stale category of conflict romance (Rowley para. 2-3).

James Cameron fails to add any astounding notes to the hackneyed story, and his illustration of class domination is exceptionally schematic.

As a result of this class domination, I tend to think that a director from either Britain or Australia could have initiated the judgment of class with more niceness and positive reception.

The majority of character instances are oafishly awkward and apparent (like the manner in which Rose quickly identifies the lifeboat scarcity).

In Titanic , Caledon seems to be misplaced in the period of time; there is not a single flaw in him that could make an underprivileged character like Jack forcefully get away with his fiancée.

A film as huge as Titanic is effortless for critics to direct shots at, because there is a great chance of hitting the target. Blamed of being overindulgent, historically wrong and poorly written, Titanic has been severally spoofed. (Rowley para. 4-6)

Many people deem the film unpleasant, its striking portrayal of the submerging mocks the individuals that passed on in a disaster that shook the world.

Nevertheless, a film that has generated such a huge sum of money and that has arrested the attention of such a huge fan-base indubitably must have achieved the right thing.

Titanic has turned out to be one of the most triumphant, perdurable and best-cherished movie around the globe owing to three key points. To start with, the movie was anchored in a true historical event where real human beings were entailed.

Secondly, it displayed epic Computer-Generated Imagery of a huge magnitude. Thirdly, it narrated the personal tales of the individuals that had boarded the ship, instead of just a narration of the ship alone.

The submerging of the unsinkable ship has remained theatrically enthralling for more than one century (Rowley para. 5-7).

The impressive and perfect representation of the ship, the iceberg and the submerging accorded the movie the irresistible touch of a historical renewal, although an incongruously impressive one.

Nevertheless, what actually composes the movie is the cast of characters who boarded the ship as everyone is given time on the screen.

The rich girl (Rose) falls in love with the poor young man (Jack) with their short-lived affair being doomed and still rendered undying by the forthcoming disaster. Similar to Romeo and Juliet, Jack and Rose had a great conviction that they had found true love.

However, they hardly knew each other; they became infatuated and could try anything in their ability to safeguard their relationship.

For viewers, we have to suffer the pain of watching the two youngsters fall for each other, with the notion that their dreams and anticipations are nearly slipping off. As the years pass and Rose grows old, she still treasures the moments she shared with Jack and everything that he did for her.

Whereas the Titanic exhibits a number of flaws, it is not possible to disregard the significance and the esteem of the film.

Though I concur with Rowley that Titanic may not be a flawless movie, it has at least provided evidence that irrespective of how impressive and emotional it could be it is not beyond directing some criticism at itself.

Works Cited

Rowley Stephen. Titanic Review . 2012. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2019, July 5). The Significance and the Esteem of the Film “Titanic”. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-film-analysis-on-titanic/

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IvyPanda . 2019. "The Significance and the Esteem of the Film “Titanic”." July 5, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-film-analysis-on-titanic/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Significance and the Esteem of the Film “Titanic”." July 5, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-film-analysis-on-titanic/.

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Analysis of the Visual Work in the Movie "Titanic" by James Cameron

Analysis of film elements

• Cameron, J. (Director). (1997). Titanic [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount Pictures.
• Janicker, R. (2004). The Sinking of the Titanic: An Iceberg for Cultural Studies. Discourse, 26(2), 99-118.
• Boushel, M. (1999). 'I'll never let go': titanic and the ethics of spectatorship. Camera Obscura, 14(2 42), 60-97.
• Jones, E. (1998). Titanic and the making of James Cameron: the inside story of the three-year adventure that rewrote motion picture history. New York: Newmarket Press.
• Albornoz, L. (2012). James Cameron's Titanic and the myth of the male hero. Revista De Estudios Norteamericanos, 16, 55-67.
• Ingham, R. (2000). Finding a place for Titanic in our film and history classes. Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies, 30(1), 68-74.

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Titanic Film Review

Jack and Rose’s titanic film characters made me fall in love with the film because of their love storyline with action bits. The use of directional skills and character development was crucial to ensuring the audience felt that it could have happened in real life. The cinematographic effects, sound, and framing are the two things that provide the most significant impact on the audience. This is because they help the film determine and elaborate the film’s message. Technically, the Titanic film constitutes a love story of Jack and Rose based on factual and historical information. Typically, the film was produced in the year 1997 by James Cameron. The film is based on tragic events in 1912 when the ship hit an iceberg that caused it to sink to the bottom of the North Atlantic.

The higher budget associated with the film suggested that the director concentrated on the visual significance of the titanic tragedy. Fundamentally, the visual importance of the film was achieved by taking opening shots underwater in order to ensure that the crew involved in the production of the film explored the Titanic artifacts. The cameras were placed at strategic angles points to help the audience see the ship at the bottom of the sea. Doing this allowed the crew members have an easier time making the audience create a sense of anticipation as the crew went to the bottom of the ocean. There were plenty of camera shots throughout the whole film production, together with medium close-ups and pan-down shots. The medium close-ups and zooms were of great importance because they helped introduce citizens who came from the upper class by displaying their appearances and feelings. The medium close-ups were also crucial to demonstrate the scenes of partying and when the ship was sinking. On the other hand, the pan down shots came in hand when showcasing the ‘I’m Flying’ by Rose and Jack. Jack and Rose stood on the ship’s rails during these scenes, showcasing their psychological position of being proud and unfearful despite social class tensions.

Conversely, the director of the film also used low-tracking shots. This helped the audience create a sense of action and movement in depth which are crucial to the film (Gerstnerp, 1-22). Also, to showcase the different perspectives of the film, the directors made sure to use different camera angles to dominate the screens. Low camera angles were used during the I’m Flying’ scene and when the ship was sinking. The high camera angles and crane shots were also used during the sinking part to illustrate the helplessness and vulnerability the passengers experienced. The film’s producer also ensured editing techniques, especially when the ship hit the iceberg. The editing scenes were showcased when Jack and Rose were being chased, where the camera cut back and forth the moment the ship hits the iceberg. This helped the crew members illustrate a sense of suspense to the audience, thus acknowledging that things could change in an instance.

Primarily, the directors also used mise en scene so that the audience could see the distinction in social class and the characters’ emotions. The mise en scene was also evident during the I’m Flying scene, where the director used soft sunset colors to convey the romantic mood to the audience. To showcase the difference in social class that existed during those periods, the director used different dress styles such as fancy hats and dresses to represent women from the upper class and costumes that were similar to those of farmers to describe individuals that came from lower-class (Skarics p, 161-177). The difference in social class can be seen in Rose and Jack’s clothes. Following this, the audience was able to conclude to themselves that Jack was from the lower class and Rose originated from the upper class. During the editing part, the audience sees the ship being hit by the iceberg, but they also jump to the scene where Rose is trying to let go of Jack while at the same time escaping since the water was beginning to rise above the ship. The directors used different sound effects during these events in the film. Some of the sounding techniques used include diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. The diegetic sounds were mainly utilized during the parting scenes, whereas the non-diegetic settings were used during panic scenes. As a result, the director was able to create tension in the audience, thus making the film more interesting.

Class differences were also seen when the ship was sinking, where individuals from the upper classes acted with the utmost hatred of taking all lifeboats for themselves, leaving the lower class individuals with none. The director used this to showcase to the audience that power was the only technique for survival and that the fate of the individuals was entirely dependent on the class they originated from. The film’s lighting also played a crucial role in determining the type of scenes. The film used lowkey lighting during the scene where the ship hit the iceberg. The lowkey lighting was used to ensure that the audience saw the moon as the only lighting source. The high key lighting with a hint of yellow lighting was seen in the scene where Jack meets Rose. Consequently, the yellow lighting was only present at the highest level of the ships, thus creating a high culture and high class to the film.

The use of cinematography technique, musical sounds, and visual effects were successfully showcased in the Titanic film. These effects were also crucial in explaining the plot and the film’s compelling narrative. Following cinematographic techniques, the film was able to demonstrate the use of different themes such as romance, social class tensions, thriller, and horror. The working together of these themes due to the cinematography techniques aided in constructing an epi narrative with unique effects that ensured the audience experienced the film’s reality. Moreover, the audience was able to remember memories of the historical tragedy in 1912, when the events took place.

Gerstner, David. “Unsinkable Masculinity: The Artist And The Work Of Art In James Cameron’s Titanic”.  Cultural Critique , vol 50, no. 1, 2002, pp. 1-22.  Project Muse , https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2002.0007.

Skarics, Marianne. “Undercover-Religion In James Camerons Film “Titanic””.  Communicatio Socialis , vol 37, no. 2, 2004, pp. 161-177.  Nomos Verlag , https://doi.org/10.5771/0010-3497-2004-2-161.

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Home / Essay Samples / Entertainment / Titanic / Titanic Movie: A Cinematic Retelling of Tragedy and Love

Titanic Movie: A Cinematic Retelling of Tragedy and Love

• Category: Entertainment
• Topic: Film Analysis , Movie Review , Titanic

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