I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It may seem hard to believe today, but three films were made about the Titanic within six months of its sinking on April 15, 1912. Of course, all were silent films and shorts. The first was made just 29 days after the incident. "Saved from the Titanic" was a 10-minute short that featured a young actress, Dorothy Gibson, who survived the sinking. A 30-minute German film followed on Aug. 17, and a 23-minute French film came out in October.By 1929, sound films were being made, but this 1953 film was the first full-length Hollywood feature set on and about the Titanic. Even with some musicals, other films, and very good docudramas that followed well into the 21st century, the 1953 "Titanic" remains one of the best and most enjoyed films. That's because, unlike most films that have looked for the cause and the details of the disaster, "Titanic" is more about people. It's focus is on one family, a few other individuals, and some of the crew who just happen to be on the maiden voyage of the world's largest and most luxurious ship.We see the ship as it leaves Southampton, England on April 10, 1929; then when it stops near Cherbourg, France, and then at Queenstown (present day Cobh), Ireland. At each stop it takes on passengers. When it heads toward the open sea, it has about 1,300 passengers and a crew and staff of about 920 plus. A lot of things are at play in the inability to determine precisely the number of people on board the ship. An Encyclopedia Britannica article explains that in detail.Then, the film hones in on the Sturges family, around whom the rest of the drama unfolds. Clifton Webb plays Richard Ward Sturges, Barbara Stanwyck is his wife, Julia. The Sturges children are Annette (played by Audrey Dalton) and Norman, played by an uncredited Harper Carter. Other major characters we see are Gifford Rogers, played by Robert Wagner; and Thelma Ritter as Maude Young, Richard Basehart as George Healey, and Brian Aherne as Captain E.J. Smith. A number of actors play smaller parts, mostly of prominent people or key figures. Thus, we encounter John Jacob Astor and his wife, First Officer Murdock, Chief Officer Wilde, Isador and Ida Strauss, Benjamin Guggenheim, and Second Officer Lightroller.What we are treated to in this film, is a drama of life that takes place on board a huge ocean liner; and then the excitement, fear, worry, and tense scrambling to survive a disaster at sea. All of the cast perform it superbly.I have enjoyed all of the five or six films about the Titanic that I have seen. Each has its own special appeal and value. But this film, made just 40 years after the event, has a greater feel of reality. It may be in the more natural ease of early 1950s manners, customs, style, talk and peoples' looks to mimic those of the earlier period. The people in more recent films set in a more distant time are further removed from the culture and society. So, they don't seem as natural or real, but more like people in a play or movie.The beauty of this film is that one can fit in and feel as though you are a passenger on board the Titanic with the Sturges family and others. This is a wonderful drama on the high seas, before and during a disaster.

I remember first seeing this film on "Saturday Night At The Movies" on NBC. I enjoyed it then, and still enjoy it today. I don't really try to compare this and the Leonardo DiCaprio version...too many years in between and a different approach to the story, but I like them pretty equally.I am reviewing this film based on the recent Blu Ray edition. Sometimes it is very obvious that a Blu Ray edition of an old film is a significant improvement, this time it is not. That is not to say that it isn't a good transfer. There's little to complain about in this edition in terms of clear picture, other than a bit of graininess that may just be a result of 63 years.First off, this film is not about the Titanic. The Titanic is the setting. The story is actually about one family that is disintegrating, and their final act happens to occur on the ill-fated journey. The warring man and wife are Clifton Webb, in what is probably his finest role, and Barbara Stanwyck, in perhaps her best later role. The dialogue between two is about the best you'll find of a man and wife at war; top notch writing and delivered with real sting. The daughter is siding with the father and is quite bitter toward the mother. The younger son is left adrift by the father when he learns that he is not the father.Robert Wagner plays a young college man with romantic attention toward Webb's daughter...not unlike Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the later film...though here their romance is secondary to the failing marriage of the parents.Audrey Dalton plays Webb's daughter and is quite unpleasant about it. Harper Carter (still living as of this writing) is quite good as the young son.Filling out the cast is the wonderful Thelma Ritter, here -- I'm assuming -- representing the real Molly Brown, though named Maude Young in this story. Brian Aherne is the Titanic's captain. Richard Basehart has a very good role as a defrocked priest who is an alcoholic. Allyn Joslyn -- more often a very good comic actor -- plays an average guy who tries to latch on to the rich passengers on the ship, and turns out to be the coward on board.I have noticed in a couple of posts that reviewers said that the special effects were poor. Come on folks...this was made in 1953. For that era, the scenes here are darned good. There is one spot -- when the son is trying to find his father after the Titanic begins to list -- where it's obviously just a drastically tilted camera, because people are walking and climbing and descending stairs too normally. Ah well.I've actually watched this "Titanic" more often than the Leonardo DiCaprio film. I don't try to compare them. They're both excellent in different ways.

Of course, this is not the first version of the story of the Titanic. It has been the subject of movies since the silent era, making appearances as important settings and being mentioned as part of history to reflect the passage of time. The passage on this maiden voyage focuses on a troubled American family who has been traveling abroad for years-estranged parents, a daughter caught up in European society who is slowly becoming a pretentious snob, and a young son so devoted to the man he assumes is his father. The battling parents are Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb, both admittedly not nice people, but Stanwyck's character is, even if she has a bombshell to dump on the uppity Webb that will rock his world just as much as the collision of the Titanic with the iceberg.Having kicked off the start of that popular film genre known as film noir, Stanwyck (as Phyllis Diedrickson in "Double Indemnity") and Webb (as Waldo Lydecker in "Laura") went toe to toe in 1944 for who was the greatest film villain of the year. Together, they seem an odd couple. He's rather prissy (as always), with his nose so high in the air that he can smell the atmosphere on the moon, so determined to raise his children among the elite of European society that he's furious that Stanwyck (whom he considers a failed Pygmallion like project) would take them away from him.Of the two children, Audrey Dalton's 18 year old daughter is the most like him-determined to remain among the elite rather than return to her mother's home town in Michigan. She cruelly announces to her mother that upon their arrival in New York, she will return to Europe with her father. Pre-teen Harper Carter (greatly used in the film but unbilled!) is closest in easy-going manner to his mother but greatly adores his father. When Stanwyck and Webb bring out the weapons in their battle for the children, Stanwyck's dagger inflicts the greatest wound, leaving the usually ready to fight Webb standing there with invisible egg on his face.Among the others on the ship is a handsome college athlete (Robert Wagner) who falls for Dalton in spite of her initial rudeness to him. A scene between Wagner and Stanwyck actually has more heat between them then their on-screen partners which reflects why in real life the two of them were involved in a heated affair. It is obvious even with a name change that Thelma Ritter is playing a character based upon Molly Brown. Richard Basehart gives an intense performance as a troubled priest defrocked for alcoholism. Veteran leading man Brian Aherne is dignified as the ship's captain.Real-life Titanic passengers Isadore and Ida Strauss, John Jacob and Madeline Astor, and Benjamin Guggenheim are also seen in snippets. William Johnstone, the wise Judge Lowell of "As the World Turns", is very elegant in his few moments on screen, much like Eric Braeden (the ruthless Victor Newman of "The Young and the Restless") was in the 1997 epic version. Allyn Joslyn brings total disgust to the role of his social climbing passenger who hangs onto Johnstone's every word and seems ready to shine (or kiss) his boots at any moment. Try not to hold back in the scene where Ida Strauss makes her determination to stay with her husband public. It is a heart-breaker.Barbara Stanwyck said that when she was filming the scene on the lifeboat that with the life jacket on and the set freezing cold, she began to emotionally feel the pain of what had happened 40 years before. The character at this time is dealing with a tragic acknowledgment in regards to one of her children, just having had an emotional farewell with a husband whom up until now she has come to think she despised. Every version of the this film has been successful in bringing in some new element, even the 1997 T.V. mini-series and the much overrated Broadway musical of the same year. Frankly, I would like to see the story involving the Astors and the Strausses dramatized for historical purposes. But in the end, it is the tragedy of the lives who were lost that counts and the emotional impact it had on the people who witnessed it. Lucky to survive yes, but certainly a memory that would remain a nightmare. Neerer my God to thee, indeed.

Fine telling of the story of the doomed ocean liner, focused on one family in particular on board. Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb play an unhappily married couple. He's a rich snob and she doesn't want her kids to grow up spoiled. So she boards the Titanic with them bound for America, where she boasts they will walk to school. The couple's differences seem irreconcilable, especially after one painful revelation. Then, of course, the ship sinks. Hope that's not a spoiler!Despite some unlikely casting, Stanwyck and Webb do a good job of selling themselves as a married couple. Their final scene together is especially well-done. Big kudos to Webb for one of his best dramatic screen performances here. Brian Aherne plays the ship's captain. Robert Wagner appears in an early role. Having met on this movie, he and Stanwyck would have a four-year relationship, despite the huge age difference. Richard Basehart, Thelma Ritter, and Allyn Joslyn are solid in small supporting roles. Obviously not the Titanic most people are familiar with today but very good and worth checking out. Unless you're an iceberg, the ending will have you in tears.