| A Night to Remember | |
|---|---|
_-_US_Poster.jpg) Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Roy Ward Baker |
| Screenplay by | Eric Ambler |
| Story by | Walter Lord |
| Based on | A Night to Remember 1955 book byWalter Lord |
| Produced by | William MacQuitty |
| Starring | Kenneth More Michael Goodliffe Laurence Naismith Kenneth Griffith David McCallum Tucker McGuire |
| Cinematography | Geoffrey Unsworth |
| Edited by | Sidney Hayers[1] |
| Music by | William Alwyn |
| Distributed by | The Rank Organisation |
Release date |
|
Running time | 123 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £500–600,000[2][3][4] |
A Night to Remember is a 1958 Britishhistoricaldisaster film, directed byRoy Ward Baker. It is adapted from the1955 book byWalter Lord, about thesinking of the RMSTitanic on 15 April 1912, after it struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage. Written byEric Ambler, the film depicts the events of the night in adocumentary style in considerable detail.[5] It starsKenneth More as the ship's Second OfficerCharles Lightoller and featuresMichael Goodliffe,Laurence Naismith,Kenneth Griffith,David McCallum andTucker McGuire.
A Night to Remember was filmed atPinewood Studios from October 1957 to March 1958. The production team, supervised by producerWilliam MacQuitty, used blueprints of the ship to create authentic sets, while Fourth OfficerJoseph Boxhall and ex-Cunard Commodore Harry Grattidge worked as technical advisors on the film. Its estimated budget of up to £600,000 made it the most expensive film made in Britain up to that time.[4] The film's score was written byWilliam Alwyn.
Released on 3 July 1958,A Night to Remember disappointed at the box office.[2] However, the film was widely praised for its sets, soundtrack, cinematography, historical accuracy and performances; it won the 1959 "Samuel Goldwyn International Award" at theGolden Globe Awards. Among the manyfilms about theTitanic,A Night to Remember is regarded highly byTitanic historians and survivors for its accuracy, despite its modest production values compared with the 1997 filmTitanic.
On 10 April 1912, the luxuriousRMS Titanic, the largest vessel afloat, and widely believed to be unsinkable, sails from Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York. On 14 April, in the Atlantic, the ship receives a number of ice warnings from steamers, which are relayed to CaptainEdward Smith, who orders a lookout. That evening, theSS Californian spots floating ice in the distance and tries to send a warning via telegraph toTitanic. OnTitanic, first class passengers Sir Richard and Lady Richard, and second class passengers the Clarkes, a young newlywed couple, overhear the band, led byWallace Hartley, play, while steerage passengers Pat Murphy, Martin Gallagher, and James Farrel enjoy a party in third class, where Murphy dances with a young Polish girl. In the telegraph room, operatorsJack Phillips andHarold Bride are changing shifts. Phillips receives the warning but fails to decipher it properly due to the massive pile of unsent messages left by Bride. On theCalifornian, field ice is spotted. The ship stops due to the risk, and a second warning is sent toTitanic. Overworked and irritated, Phillips cuts the message off early. Second OfficerCharles Lightoller gives charge ofthe bridge to First OfficerWilliam Murdoch.Titanic's passengers begin to settle in for the night, while gamblers Hoyle and Jay Yates stay up.
Suddenly, the lookouts spotan iceberg dead ahead; despite Murdoch's evasive action, the ship collides with it. Captain Smith sends forThomas Andrews, the ship's builder, to inspect the damage; Andrews determines the ship has suffered a 300-foot gash, opening five of her compartments to the ocean. Andrews informs Smith that theTitanic will sink in one-and-a-half hours, and both realise that the ship lacks sufficientlifeboat capacity for all the passengers. Distress signals are sent out but theCalifornian's wireless operator is off duty. Fifty-eight miles away, theRMS Carpathia's wireless operator receives the distress call and alerts CaptainArthur Rostron, who orders his ship to turn around. Unfortunately, it will take about four hours to reach theTitanic. Seeing theCalifornian on the horizon ten miles away,Titanic begins to signal the ship, but theCalifornian's crew fails to comprehend why a ship within sight is firing rockets. Captain Smith orders Lightoller to start lowering the lifeboats, while the orchestra performsragtime. In theGrand Staircase, passenger Robbie Lucas is told the truth by Andrews, so he gets his wife and children safely into a boat. Murphy, Gallagher and Farrel help the Polish girl and her mother to the boat deck and get them to a boat. The Richards and Hoyle (whose unease convinced him to leave the poker game and save himself) are admitted to a boat by Murdoch. Yates gives a female passenger a note to send to his sister.Ida andIsidor Straus refuse to be separated, inadvertently setting an example for Mrs Clarke, who decides to stay with her husband until Andrews advises them on how to survive.
As the crew struggles to hold back the third-class passengers, most first- and second-class passengers board lifeboats and row away. AsTitanic lists, passengers begin to realise the danger; when the third-class passengers finally storm the deck, chaos ensues.White Star Line ChairmanJ. Bruce Ismay steps into one of the last lifeboats. Passengers—among them Murphy, Gallagher and Farrel—retreat towards the stern as it rises into the air, while Lightoller and other able seamen struggle to free the two remaining collapsible lifeboats as theTitanic's bow submerges. Captain Smith gives the final order through his megaphone, "Abandon ship! Every man for himself!" The Clarkes use a rope to lower themselves over the ship's side as the orchestra performs the hymn, "Nearer, My God, to Thee" and Smith returns to the bridge togo down with his ship.Titanic begins her final plunge; Lightoller and many others are swept off. Andrews awaits his end in the first-class smoking room, while a steward comforts a lost boy. Lucas looks out towards the lifeboats, knowing he will never see his family again, while the Clarkes are killed by a falling funnel. The passengers pray as the stricken liner finally sinks into the ocean.
In the icy water, many passengers die ofhypothermia. Lucas's dead body floats by an overturned collapsible, as Yates, unwilling to overcrowd the boat, swims away to his death. Lightoller takes charge on the boat as Murphy and Gallagher make it aboard, although Farrel is lost. Chief Baker (Charles Joughin) after having given up his lifeboat seat and turning to the bottle to ease his ailments, also climbs aboard. The men are saved by another boat.Carpathia arrives to rescue the survivors, as Lightoller tells ColonelArchibald Gracie, "I don't think I'll ever feel sure again, about anything". On the ship, as a group prayer is held, Murphy and Gallagher stand with the Polish girl and her mother, while Mrs Farrel and Mrs Lucas mourn the loss of their husbands. AsCarpathia sails by the floating wreckage from theTitanic, Rostron tells Lightoller that 705 were saved and 1,500 lost.Carpathia receives a message from theCalifornian asking what can be done to help but Rostron sends back that "everything that was humanly possible has been done".
Cast notes:
The film is based onWalter Lord's bookA Night to Remember (1955). In Ray Johnson's documentaryThe Making of 'A Night to Remember' (1993), Lord says that when he wrote his book, there was no mass interest in theTitanic, and he was the first writer in four decades to attempt a grand history of the disaster, synthesising written sources and survivors' first-hand accounts.[9] Lord dated the genesis of his interest in the subject to childhood as did producer MacQuitty, who had vivid memories of, as a boy of six, watching the launch of theTitanic at theHarland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast on 31 May 1911 and seeing it depart on its maiden voyage the following April.[10]
The book had been adapted as alive American TV production, screened byNBC and sponsored byKraft Foods as part of theKraft Television Theatre series on 28 March 1956.[11] It was described as "the biggest, most lavish, most expensive thing of its kind" attempted up to that point, with 31 sets, 107 actors, 72 speaking parts, and 3,000 gallons of water and costing $95,000 ($837,000 at 2024 prices).George Roy Hill directed andClaude Rains narrated – a practice borrowed from radio dramas, which provided a template for many television dramas of the time.[12][13] It took a similar approach to the book, lacking dominant characters and switching between a multiplicity of scenes. Rains's narration was used "to bridge the almost limitless number of sequences of life aboard the doomed liner", as a reviewer put it and closed with his declaration that "never again has Man been so confident. An age had come to an end."[14] The production was a major hit, attracting 28 million viewers, and greatly boosted the book's sales.[12] It was rerun onkinescope on 2 May 1956, five weeks after its first broadcast.[11][15]
The film adaptation came about after its eventual director,Roy Ward Baker, and its producer, Belfast-bornWilliam MacQuitty, both acquired copies of the book – Baker from his favourite bookshop and MacQuitty from his wife – and decided to obtain the film rights. MacQuitty succeeded in raising finance fromJohn Davis at the Rank Organisation, who in the late 1950s were expanding into bigger-budgeted film making. The job of directing was assigned to Roy Baker, who was under contract to Rank, and Baker recommended Ambler be given the job of writing the screenplay.[3] Lord was brought on board as a consultant.[16]
In addition to basing the script – both in action and dialogue – on Lord's book, the film makers achieved nuanced performances and authentic atmosphere by consultingTitanic survivors, who served as technical advisors. Among them were Fourth OfficerJoseph Boxhall and passengersEdith Russell andLawrence Beesley.[5] Beesley was asked to sit by a tape recorder in a caravan at Pinewood Studios and imitate the cries of the struggling swimmers after the sinking.[17] The film makers went out of their way to cast actors who resembled their real life counterparts. Charles Lightoller's widow Sylvia was also consulted during production, at one point visiting Pinewood Studios and meeting with Kenneth More, whom she introduced to her children on set. Sylvia commended More for his portrayal of her husband.[18] When Helen Smith, Captain Smith's daughter, visited the set and met Laurence Naismith, she was overcome with emotion by his striking physical resemblance to her father.[19]
There were numerous changes made to real events to increase the drama and appeal. For example, there is a limited involvement of American passengers (with the exception of the Strauses, Guggenheim, "the unsinkable"Molly Brown and Colonel Gracie), and several characters based on Americans are depicted as being British. When questioned as to why he did this, Roy Baker noted that "it was a British film made by British artists for a British audience".[20] The film diverges from the book and the NBC TV adaptation in focusing on a central character, Second OfficerCharles Lightoller, who performs actions that other crew members did and said during the disaster. Its conclusion reflects Lord's world-historical theme of a "world changed forever" with a fictional conversation between Lightoller and ColonelArchibald Gracie, sitting on a lifeboat. Lightoller declares that the disaster is "different ... Because we were so sure. Because even though it's happened, it's still unbelievable. I don't think I'll ever feel sure again. About anything".[21] Rank wanted a star for the part, so it was offered to Kenneth More, who accepted. It was the first film that he made under a new contract with Rank to make seven films in five years for a fee of £40,000 per film (about £1,090,000 in 2023 terms, with a total of £6,600,000 for all seven).[22]
Producer MacQuitty had originally contracted withShaw, Savill & Albion Line to use its former flagshipQSMV Dominion Monarch to shoot scenes, but the company pulled out at the last minute, citing that they did not want to use one of their liners to recreate theTitanic sinking. According to MacQuitty, the Shaw Savill Line at the time was managed byBasil Sanderson, son of Harold Sanderson, the White Star Line's deputy chairman. Harold Sanderson would later succeedJ. Bruce Ismay as president of theInternational Mercantile Marine Company,J.P. Morgan's shipping conglomerate that owned the White Star Line. Basil Sanderson was also married to Ismay´s daughter. This connection to White Star, according to MacQuitty, is what actually led the Shaw Savill Line to pull out. MacQuitty eventually got permission from Ship Breaking Industries inFaslane, Scotland to film scenes aboardRMS Asturias, a 1920s ocean liner that the company wasscrapping. The liner's port side had been demolished, but its starboard was still intact, so MacQuitty got art students to paint the liner the White Star Line colours and used mirrors to recreate scenes that took place on the port side. Thirty sets were constructed using the builders' original plans forTitanic.[23]
Filming began on 15 October 1957 at Pinewood Studios, until 5 March 1958. When the set was being raised at an angle, the microphones picked up the sounds of the set creaking. The director kept them in the sinking scenes because they made the scenes more realistic. The last shot to be filmed was Sir Richard and Lady Richard's departure from their home past the waving orphans, according to Ray Johnson's documentaryThe Making of 'A Night to Remember' (1993).
Kenneth More recalled the production of the film in his autobiography, published twenty years later in 1978. There was no tank big enough atPinewood Studios to film the survivors struggling to climb into lifeboats, so it was done in the open-air swimming bath atRuislip Lido, at 2:00 a.m. on an icy November morning. When the extras refused to jump in, More realised he would have to set an example. He called out: "Come on!".
I leaped. Never have I experienced such cold in all my life. It was like jumping into a deep freeze. The shock forced the breath out of my body. My heart seemed to stop beating. I felt crushed, unable to think. I hadrigor mortis, without themortis. And then I surfaced, spat out the dirty water and, gasping for breath, found my voice."Stop!" I shouted. "Don't listen to me! It's bloody awful! Stay where you are!" But it was too late...[24]
Four clips from theNazipropaganda filmTitanic (1943) were used inA Night to Remember; two of the ship sailing in calm waters during the day, and two of a flooding walkway in the engine room.[25] As Brian Hawkins writes, the British came closest "to theTitanic truth in 1958 with their black-and-white production of Walter Lord's novelA Night to Remember, seamlessly incorporating sequences from directorHerbert Selpin's 1943 (Nazi)Titanic without giving any screen credits for these incredible scenes".[26] Selpin was arrested on the instruction of Propaganda MinisterJoseph Goebbels during production in early August 1942, for offering a negative opinion of the German military while directing this earlier Nazi-era film. He was then found dead in his prison cell.
The film has a reputation of being regarded as the most historically accurate portrayal of theTitanic disaster.[27] One notable obvious inaccuracy is that the ship sinks intact; this was because it was the accepted view at the time despite survivor testimonies. This was disproved when the wreck was found in 1985.α[28][29] Charles Lightoller's widow Sylvia praised the film's historical accuracy in an interview withThe Guardian, stating "The film is really the truth and has not been embroidered".[18]
While some events are based on history, some of the characters and their stories are fictional or dramatised; the characters of Mr Murphy, Mr Hoyle, and Jay Yates beingcomposites of several men.[30] Murphy, who leads the steerage girls to the lifeboat, is a composite of several Irish emigrants. Although there was a Martin Gallagher travelling steerage aboard the Titanic, his actions in the film are fictional and although he survives the sinking, he died in real life. Hoyle, the gambler who gets into the lifeboat on the starboard side, is a composite of several such figures, men determined to save themselves at all costs. Robbie Lucas and Mrs Liz Lucas are composites of several married couples, notably Mr Lucian Smith and MrsEloise Hughes Smith. Lucas even says the words actually spoken by Lucien Smith to his wife: "I never expected to ask you to obey me, but this is one time you must".[31] Mr Clarke and Mrs Clarke are composites of several honeymoon couples, notably John and Sarah Chapman, a pair of newlyweds from second class who died in the sinking. John Chapman's body was recovered by the cable shipMackay-Bennett, and there were no mentions or indications that suggest that he had been killed by a falling funnel.[32] The involvement of American passengers was either limited or left out (with the exception of the Strauses, Guggenheim, Margaret Brown and Colonel Gracie).[20]
Several historical figures were renamed or went unnamed to avoid potential legal action.Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon andLucy, Lady Duff-Gordon are depicted as Sir Richard and Lady Richard (Lady Duff's secretary Miss Francatelli is omitted) and Bruce Ismay is referred to throughout only as "The Chairman". The film omits several historical figures, includingJohn Jacob Astor IV, the wealthiest passenger aboard theTitanic, andstokerFrederick Barrett, with Second Engineer Officer John Henry Hesketh's role being expanded to include duties and actions that were performed by Barrett and others.[30]
The American gambler Jay Yates (played as British by the distinctive British actor Ralph Michael), travelling under the name of J.H. Rogers, was never on board and the note he was said to have handed to a passenger was a hoax. Yates wrote the note in New York and then had a woman accomplice pose as a survivor and deliver the note to the newspaper. Yates did this to make the police think he was dead. The ruse failed and Yates was captured a couple of months later (he was wanted on federal charges connected with postal thefts). The fictional Yates says, "Good luck and God bless you", the words spoken by an unknown swimmer at Collapsible B, whom survivor fireman Walter Hurst thought was Captain Smith.[33]
The first scene ofA Night to Remember depicts the christening of the ship at its launch. TheTitanic was never christened, as it was not the practice of the White Star Line to stage this sort of ceremony.[34] This has come down in popular lore as one of the many contributing factors to the ship's "bad luck".
While describing the damage, Thomas Andrews states that a 300-foot long gash had been opened in the hull. While the damage indeed covered an area of 300 feet, it was due to a series of smaller incisions along the hull plates (the largest around 40 feet), rather than a single, continuous tear. IfTitanic suffered this kind of damage, she would have sunk, likely capsizing, within minutes instead of nearly 3 hours.
The painting in the first class smoking room is incorrectly shown as depicting the entrance toNew York Harbor, while it actually depicted the entrance to Plymouth Sound, whichTitanic had been expected to visit on her return voyage (there was a painting of New York Harbor at this spot onRMS Olympic, asister ship ofTitanic). This was an error made by Walter Lord in his research, which he acknowledged in the documentaryThe Making of A Night to Remember.[35][36][37]
Stanley Lord was upset over his negative portrayal; he was depicted wearing pyjamas and as being asleep in his cabin while theTitanic was sinking. In fact, Lord was sleeping in the chart room wearing his uniform. The film gives the impression second officer Lightoller had launched almost every lifeboat. Actions that were actually performed by others were attributed to Lightoller.[38] Lightoller is also depicted as nearly being crushed by the fourth funnel falling in the ship's last moments; it was actually the first funnel that fell near him.[39][40][30]
Murphy and Gallagher make it to the overturnedCollapsible B with a child in their arms, which they pass to Lightoller. Lightoller finds the child is dead and puts it back in the water. This was based on accounts that Captain Smith reportedly carried a child to the boat, which later died; along with these accounts being of dubious nature, Lightoller never reported receiving a child on Collapsible B.[41] Third-Class passenger Victor Francis Sunderland, who survived on board Collapsible B, strongly criticised the adaptation of Lord's book, as well as several accounts by Lord. Sunderland gave his own version of the events in a narration and a later interview withThe Toronto Star.[42]
After its December 1958 US premiere,Bosley Crowther called the film a "tense, exciting and supremely awesome drama...[that] puts the story of the great disaster in simple human terms and yet brings it all into a drama of monumental unity and scope"; according to Crowther,
this remarkable picture is a brilliant and moving account of the behavior of the people on theTitanic on that night that should never be forgotten. It is an account of the casualness and flippancy of most of the people right after the great ship has struck (even though an ominous cascade of water is pouring into her bowels); of the slow accumulation of panic that finally mounts to a human holocaust, of shockingly ugly bits of baseness and of wonderfully brave and noble deeds.[43]
The film won numerous awards, including aGolden Globe Award forBest English-Language Foreign Film, and received high praise from reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic.[44]
The film was one of the twenty most popular films of the year in Britain according toMotion Picture Herald, but it was only a modest commercial success due to the size of its original budget and its relative underperformance at the American box office.[45]Kinematograph Weekly listed it as being "in the money" at the British box office in 1958.[46] By 2001, it had still not made a profit, in part because it was issued as part of a slate of ten films and all of its profits were cross-collateralised.[45]Filmink called the film "a tribute to the whole Rank Organisation" and its relatively disappointing "financial performance must have shattered the studio."[47]
According to Professor Paul Heyer, the film helped to spark the wave ofdisaster films that includedThe Poseidon Adventure (1972) andThe Towering Inferno (1974).[44] Heyer comments that it "still stands as the definitive cinematic telling of the story and the prototype and finest example of the disaster-film genre".[48] On the review aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of100% based on 23 critical reviews and a 91% value according to audience responses.[49] It is considered "the bestTitanic film beforeTitanic (1997)", "the mostaccurate of allTitanic films", and "the definitiveTitanic tale", especially for its social realism, reflecting, in the words of one critic, "the overwhelming historical evidence that the class rigidity of 1912, for all its defects, produced a genuine sense of behavioural obligation on theTitanic among rich and poor alike; that the greatest number of people aboard faced death or hardship with a stoic and selfless grace that the world has wondered at for most of this century".[28][50][51] Film criticBarry Norman called it "more moving" thanTitanic (1997). Andrew Collins ofEmpire gave the film five out of five, writing that "this is a landmark in British cinema, as good today as it's always been".[52] Catherine Shoard ofThe Guardian gave the film four out of five, saying "A restrained, nearly austere ensemble drama that manages to intertwine a dozen different stories without tripping up on any of them, it relies on real-life survivor testimony for almost every line and incident, to immensely moving and dignified effect."[53] Similarly, John Patterson praised the film for "the crispness and intelligence of its writing and direction".[54]Filmink argued this was the best film Kenneth More ever starred in.[55]
Titanic experts Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt describe the film as a huge step forward in terms of correctness compared to previous films about the disaster.
The film was also a masterpiece in that it did not use a fictional plot and primary characters to draw audiences in; instead, it primarily relied upon historical figures and showed them in such a way that audiences cared about what happened to them.[38]
A Night to Remember was released bythe Criterion Collection on DVD in May 1998, in the wake of the release ofTitanic (1997)".[56] Initial versions of the DVD omitted Lightoller finding the child to be dead and putting it in the water. A new DVD and a high-definition Blu-ray edition were released on 27 March 2012 to commemorate the centenary of the sinking.
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