Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson and Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ship during its ill-fated maiden voyage. Although the central roles and love story are fictitious, some characters are based on genuine historical figures. Gloria Stuart portrays the elderly Rose, who narrates the film in a modern-day framing device, and Billy Zane plays Cal Hockley, the overbearing fiancé of the younger Rose. Cameron saw the love story as a way to engage the audience with the real-life tragedy.
Production on the film began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the actual Titanic wreck. The modern scenes were shot on board the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, which Cameron had used as a base when filming the actual wreck. A reconstruction of the Titanic was built at Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, and scale models and computer-generated imagery were also used to recreate the sinking. The film was partially funded by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox – respectively, its American and international distributor – and at the time, it was the most expensive film ever made, with an estimated budget of US$200 million.
The film was originally scheduled to open on July 2, 1997, however, post-production delays pushed back its release to December 19 instead. Titanic was an enormous critical and commercial success. It was nominated for fourteen Academy Awards, eventually winning eleven, including Best Picture and Best Director. It became the highest-grossing film of all time, with a worldwide gross of over $1.8 billion, and remained so for twelve years until Cameron's next directorial effort, Avatar, surpassed it in 2010. Titanic also has been ranked as the sixth best epic film of all time in AFI's 10 Top 10 by the American Film Institute. The film is due for theatrical re-release in 2012 after Cameron completes its conversion into 3-D.
"The story could not have been written better...The juxtaposition of rich and poor, the gender roles played out unto death (women first), the stoicism and nobility of a bygone age, the magnificence of the great ship matched in scale only by the folly of the men who drove her hell-bent through the darkness. And above all the lesson: that life is uncertain, the future unknowable...the unthinkable possible." — James Cameron
The reconstruction of the RMS Titanic in Mexico. The blueprints were supplied by the original ship's builder and Cameron tried to make the ship as detailed and accurate as possible. The set included a Titanic model 775 feet long (the real one was 886' 9"), of the port side of the ship. It was constructed in a giant water front tank in Baja California, Mexico, near Rosarito beach.
The set was mounted on hydraulic rams so that when the sinking was being filmed, the set could be partly submerged at the correct angle in its water tank. Following the completion of filming, the model - basically a thin metal skin over chipboard, supported by scaffolding, was too badly damaged to be safe for public viewing. It was demolished, and individual props were auctioned off, many items at J. Peterman's web site, though no items remain for sale there. Some of the remaining rooms, clothes and models were used in the Titanic Movie Tour exhibition, and could be seen at various places around the world.
Writing and Inspiration
James Cameron was fascinated by shipwrecks, particularly the RMS Titanic, and wrote a treatment for the film. He said he made Titanic "because [he] wanted to dive to the shipwreck, not because [he] particularly wanted to make the movie". He said that the Titanic was "the Mount Everest of shipwrecks" and he, as a diver, wanted to tell the story correctly. "When I learned some other guys had dived to the Titanic to make an IMAX movie, I said, 'I’ll make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition and do the same thing.' I loved that first taste, and I wanted more," stated Cameron. "Titanic was about 'fuck you' money. It came along at a point in my life when I said, 'I can make movies until I’m 80, but I can’t do expedition stuff when I’m 80.'" Cameron's father had been an engineer. "I had studied to be an engineer and had a mental restlessness to live the life I had turned my back on when I switched from the sciences to the arts in college," said Cameron.
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 likable Jack and Rose had their love blossom and eventually destroyed, the audience would mourn the loss. Cameron said, "All my films are love stories, but in Titanic I finally got the balance right. It's not a disaster film. It's a love story with a fastidious overlay of real history." 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 honor 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. At the end of the film, it was not made clear if the elderly Rose was in a conscious dream, or had died in her sleep. Cameron stated that he did that on purpose in order to leave it for the viewer to interpret the scene individually.
Cameron met with 20th Century Fox, and pitched the film as "Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic". There was a tense pause and Cameron said, "Also, fellas, it's a period piece, it's going to cost $150,000,000 and there's not going to be a sequel." Peter Chernin was among the cadre of studio executives. Cameron said, "They were like, 'Oooooohkaaaaaay – a three-hour romantic epic? Sure, that's just what we want. Is there a little bit of Terminator in that? Any Harrier jets, shoot-outs, or car chases?' I said, 'No, no, no. It's not like that.'" Fox was dubious about the idea's commercial prospects, but hoping for a long term relationship with Cameron, they gave him a greenlight. Cameron convinced them to make a film based on the publicity afforded by shooting the wreck itself, and organized several dives to the wreck of the Titanic over a period of two years. "My pitch on that had to be a little more detailed," said Cameron. "So I said, ‘Look, we’ve got to do this whole opening where they’re exploring the Titanic and they find the diamond, so we’re going to have all these shots of the ship." Cameron stated, "Now we can either do them with elaborate models and motion control shots and CG and all that, which will cost X amount of money – or we can spend X plus 30 per cent and actually go shoot it at the real wreck."
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. At that depth, the water pressure is 6,000 pounds per square inch. "One small flaw in the vessel's superstructure would mean instant death for all on board." In addition to all of the dives being high-risk, various conditions prevented Cameron from getting the high quality footage that he wanted. After filming the underwater shots, he began writing the film's screenplay. Cameron said that diving to the wreck made him and his crew want "to live up to that level of reality" from that point on. "But there was another level of reaction coming away from the real wreck, which was that it wasn't just a story, it wasn't just a drama," he said. "It was an event that happened to real people who really died. Working around the wreck for so much time, you get such a strong sense of the profound sadness and injustice of it, and the message of it." Cameron stated, "You think, 'There probably aren't going to be many filmmakers who go to Titanic. There may never be another one – maybe a documentarian." Due to this, he felt that it "sort of [became] a great mantle of responsibility to convey the emotional message of it – to do that part of it right, too".
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