The Editors of LIFE - LIFE Titanic

TITANIC

TODD GIPSTEIN/CORBIS/GETTY

A shipping register entry from April 10, 1912, logged the firstand finaldeparture of the RMS Titanic, from Southhampton, England.

Titanic

Editorial Director Kostya Kennedy (2018 Update)

Managing Editor Robert Sullivan

Director of Photography Barbara Baker Burrows, Christina Lieberman (2018 Update)

Creative Director Anke Stohlmann

Designer Allie Adams (2018 Update)

Senior Editor Eileen Daspin (2018 Update)

Associate Editor Courtney Mifsud (2018 Update)

Picture Editor Rachel Hatch (2018 Update)

Photo Assistant Alessandra Bianco (2018 Update)

Copy Editors Parlan McGaw (Chief), Barbara Gogan

Reporters Michelle DuPr (Chief), Marilyn Fu, Ryan Hatch (2018 Update)

Photo Associate Sarah Cates

Production Richard Shaffer

TIME INC. BOOKS

Publisher Margot Schupf

Senior Vice President, Finance Anthony Palumbo

Vice President, Marketing Jeremy Biloon

Executive Director, Marketing Services Carol Pittard

Director, Brand Marketing Jean Kennedy

Sales Director Christi Crowley

Associate Director, Brand Marketing Bryan Christian

Associate Director, Finance Jill Earyes

Assistant General Counsel Andrew Goldberg

Assistant Director, Production Susan Chodakiewicz

Senior Manager, Finance Ashley Petrasovic

Senior Brand Manager Katherine Barnet

Prepress Manager Alex Voznesenskiy

Associate Project and Production Manager Anna Riego Muiz

Editorial Director Kostya Kennedy

Creative Director Gary Stewart

Director of Photography Christina Lieberman

Editorial Operations Director Jamie Roth Major

Manager, Editorial Operations Gina Scauzillo

e-ISBN 978-1-54784-172-1

Special thanks Brad Beatson, Brett Finkelstein, Melissa Frankenberry, Kristina Jutzi, Simon Keeble, Seniqua Koger, Kate Roncinske

Copyright 2018 Time Inc. Books

Published by LIFE BOOKS, an imprint of Time Inc. Books 225 Liberty Street New York, NY 10281

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Vol. 18, No. 4 February 16, 2018

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Cover Painting Ken Marschall

Back cover Walt Disney/Courtesy Everett

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TITANIC

CORBIS/GETTY

This is Titanic s twin sister, Olympic, heading out to sea after leaving Queenstown, Irelandpresenting the precise same image that Titanic did just after 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 11, 1912.

All Aboard

The movie that made box-office history had truth as its muse

By Kostya Kennedy

20TH CENTURY FOX/COURTESY EVERETT

The ship in the movie Titanic, above, was built using the actual original blueprints and constructed on 40 acres of Mexican waterfront purchased by 20th Century Fox. Scenes from the film that were set in 1912 ran two hours and 40 minutesthe exact time it took the real RMS Titanic to sink.

Twenty years ago, at the 70th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, Sean Connery stood in his tuxedo before a microphone, the evenings final note card in his hand, and read the news: The award for Best Picture goes to Titanic. That it was the movies record-tying 11th Oscar winafter a record-tying 14 nominationsand that it came before a television audience of 57.3 million, the largest to watch an Academy Awards, seemed apt. From start to finish, this movie didnt simply go big. It went huge. Colossal. Titanic all the way.

Director James Cameron (Best Director James Cameron, that is) spent $200 million to make Titanic , almost twice the original budget and the most expensive movie of the 20th century. He dressed 1,000 extras in period costume. He oversaw 90,000 gallons of water being flooded into the set during the films climactic scene, and he delivered Titanic at a longest-movie-of-the-year running time of three hours and 15 minutes.

And after those extravagances came these: Titanic spent 15 straight weeks as the number one movie in the country (another record) and it was still showing in first-run theaters nearly 10 months after it opened. Paramount had to send theaters replacement reels because the originals wore out. Throw in the take from the movies occasional rereleases, among them a recent, limited run celebrating its 20th anniversary, and Titanic has brought in box office receipts of $2.2 billion.

Its a stunningly beautiful film, with startling effects. Cinematography, Production Design and Visual Effects were among its Oscar haul. More germane is that Titanic has at its heart an exquisitely drawn love story thats as Hollywood and as Shakespearean as can be, one that slips bounds of class and circumstance as defiantly and heroically as a Capulet and a Montague trysting at the balcony by moonlight. Jack the penniless, romantic third-class passenger. Rose the betrothed-to-an-ogre aristocrat in diamonds. They spit together. They dance. He sketches her in the nude. Together, they rise. Who among us does not cherish the rare momentslit by love or accomplishmentwhen we feel as if we are standing on the bow of our own ship, going somewhere, a king of the world?

Titanic touches on a fundamental question: How would you act and what would you do if you had just a short time to live? The boat takes a while to sink, and as it does the violinists famously play on, the bridge officer puts a gun to his head, Roses odious fianc weasels onto a lifeboat meant for women and children, and an old couple spoons in their cabin bed. Then theres Rose herself who, while being lowered to safety by lifeboat leaps back onto the sinking ship. Anything for a few more minutes with Jack. Shes nuts. She met the guy three days before. But we believe her. Its a moment even the greatest storytellers might wait a lifetime to achieve.

Theres another crucial slant to Titanic : the fact that the audience, godlike, knows from the start that disaster is nigh. This puts all the actions and reactions of the characters into a kind of final, judgmental light, and it ties straight to the movies real power. From the opening sepia montage at the departing dock, to the genuine shots of the real, rusted hull 12,500 feet deep in the Atlantic, to the appropriation of language from post-wreck inquiry transcripts into movie dialogue, lies the understanding that the story is, at essence, true. Whatever license was taken to form Leonardo DiCaprios Jack Dawson, Kate Winslets Rose Dewitt Bukater and Billy Zanes Caledon Hockley, such characters and others like them surely existed and were on that boat.