A Night to Remember

A Night to Remember
original poster
Directed by	Roy Ward Baker
Produced by	William MacQuitty
Screenplay by	Eric Ambler
Story by	Walter Lord
Starring	Kenneth More Ronald Allen Robert Ayres Honor Blackman Michael Goodliffe Laurence Naismith
Music by	William Alwyn
Cinematography	Geoffrey Unsworth
Distributed by	The Rank Organisation
Release date(s)	1 July 1958 (1958-07-01)
Running time	123 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$1,680,000 (est.)

A Night to Remember is a 1958 docudrama film adaptation of Walter Lord's book A Night to Remember (1955), recounting the final night of the RMS Titanic. It was adapted by Eric Ambler, directed by Roy Ward Baker, and filmed in the United Kingdom. The production team, supervised by producer William MacQuitty, used blueprints of the ship to create the sets accurately, while Titanic fourth officer Joseph Boxhall and ex-Cunard Commodore Harry Grattidge both worked as technical advisors on the film.

The film premiered in the United Kingdom on Tuesday 1 July 1958. Titanic survivor Elizabeth Dowdell attended the American premiere in New York on Tuesday 16 December 1958. ^[1]

Among the many films about the Titanic, A Night to Remember has long been regarded as a high point by Titanic historians for its accuracy,^[2] despite its modest production values^[3] when compared with the 1997 Oscar-winning film Titanic.^[2][4]

Plot

The Titanic was the largest vessel afloat, and was widely believed to be unsinkable. Her passengers included the cream of American and British society. The story of her sinking is told from the point of view of her passengers and crew, principally Second Officer Charles Lightoller (Kenneth More).

Once in the open sea on her maiden voyage, the Titanic receives a number of ice warnings from nearby steamers. Captain Edward J. Smith (Laurence Naismith) is unconcerned and the ship continues on at high speed.

Late on 14 April 1912, lookout Frederick Fleet (Bernard Fox) spots an iceberg directly in front of the ship. The ship turns hard to port, but the Titanic collides with the iceberg on its starboard side, opening the first five compartments to the sea, below the waterline. Thomas Andrews (Michael Goodliffe), the ship's builder, inspects the damage and finds that the ship will soon sink, a bad situation made horrific by the fact the ship does not have sufficient lifeboat capacity for everyone on board.

A distress signal is immediately sent out, and efforts begin to signal a ship (depicted to be the SS Californian) that is seen on the horizon, a mere 10 miles away. But the ship's radio operator is off duty and he does not hear the distress signal. Fortunately, the radio operator on the RMS Carpathia receives the distress call, understands the emergency and immediately alerts Captain Arthur Rostron (Anthony Bushell) who promptly orders the ship to head to the Titanic at maximum speed.

Captain Smith orders his officers Lightoller and William Murdoch to start lowering the lifeboats. Many women and children are reluctant to get in a small, cramped lifeboat, and Murdoch and Lightoller must use force to put them in. Many men try to sneak into the lifeboats, but Lightoller will not allow them. Murdoch, working the other side of the ship, is shown as more accommodating to men. As the stewards struggle to hold back women and children holding third-class tickets ("steerage"), most of the women and children from second and first class climb into the lifeboats and launch away from the ship.

The bow of the ship is swiftly taking in a lot of water and there are only two collapsible lifeboats left. Lightoller and other able seamen struggle to untie them and, unable to take the time to put passengers into the boats, leave them in the hope that the boats will save more lives.

The RMS Carpathia is four hours away and is racing to the site, in hope of saving more lives. The ship sinks amid much chaos on the decks, with third class passengers allowed up from below after the boats are gone.

Lightoller and many others swim off the ship. The ship sinks deeper into the water; suddenly a funnel breaks loose and crashes into the water and the ship goes down. One of the overturned collapsibles is floating, so Lightoller and a few more men balance on the boat and wait. Chief Baker Charles Joughin is found in the water, not minding the cold because he's been drinking, and pulled up on the boat. Lightoller spots another lifeboat and the men are saved. The Carpathia comes and rescues the survivors.

As the film ends, Lightoller, the senior surviving officer, reflects that they were all so sure about the safety of the ship, and that he will "never be sure again, about anything."

Cast

• Gordon Holdom - baritone, sang the song "Nearer, My God, to Thee" dubbed.

Desmond Llewelyn makes an uncredited appearance as a crew member reassuring the panicking steerage passengers. Three cast members – Connery, Llewelyn and Blackman – would all later appear in the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger.^[5] Similarly, Bayldon and McCowen would later respectively appear in rival Bond films Casino Royale, and Never Say Never Again. Coincidently, the two of them and Llewelyn all played Q. Bernard Fox, who appears uncredited as Lookout Frederick Fleet who utters the famous words "Iceberg, dead ahead, sir" also appears as Colonel Archibald Gracie IV in the 1997 Titanic film, making him a cast member of two films about the sinking of the Titanic. Norman Rossington plays a steward who loses his temper with non-English speaking passengers just after the collision. Rossington twenty years later played the Sergeant-at-Arms in 1979's SOS Titanic.

Production

The film is based on the 1955 book A Night To Remember by Walter Lord, but in Ray Johnson’s documentary The Making of “A Night to Remember” (1993), Lord says that when he wrote his book, there was no mass interest in the Titanic.^[6] Lord was the first writer in four decades to attempt a grand-scale history of the disaster, synthesizing written sources and survivors’ firsthand accounts. Lord dated the genesis of his interest in the subject to childhood. So did producer MacQuitty, who, as a boy of six, watched the Titanic set out from Belfast and screenwriter Ambler, who was a lad in London when the ship was launched.

Kenneth More recalled the production of the film in his autobiography, published 20 years later in 1978. There was no tank big enough at Pinewood Studios to film the survivors struggling to climb into lifeboats, so it was done in the open-air swimming bath at Ruislip Lido at 2.00am 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 had rigor mortis, without the mortis. 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 ...."^[7]

The character of the baker, seen drinking after giving up his seat in a lifeboat to a female passenger, is based on Chief Baker Charles Joughin, who on that night drank some whisky, threw deck chairs overboard, rode the stern all the way down, swam in the freezing water for hours and was eventually picked up by the overturned collapsible boat B, surviving the disaster.

During the sinking, a man pauses as he flees through the first-class smoking room to ask ship's designer Thomas Andrews, "Aren't you even going to try for it, Mr Andrews?" This sequence was replicated essentially word-for-word in the 1997 Titanic film, substituting that film's protagonists Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater instead of the man. The scene was also repeated in S.O.S. Titanic with a stewardess asking him if he'll save himself, pointing out that there would be questions that only he could answer. In reality, it was a steward, the last person to see Andrews alive, who asked him if he was going to save himself.

Awards and honours

A Night to Remember won the 1959 "Samuel Goldwyn International Award" for the United Kingdom at the Golden Globe Awards.^[8]

Historical accuracy

A Night to Remember still receives praise as "the best Titanic film before Titanic (1997)" and "the most accurate of all Titanic films" ^[9] and "the definitive Titanic tale",^[10] 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 the Titanic 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."^[11]

As with most films about the Titanic made before the discovery of the wreck in 1985, A Night to Remember portrays the ship sinking in one piece. In fact, some witness reports describe the ship as breaking in two and the discovery of the wreck confirmed this. Most films since then have reflected this finding.^[12]

Similarities to the 1943 German Titanic film

Four clips from the 1943 Nazi propaganda film Titanic were used in A Night to Remember; two of the ship sailing in calm waters during the day, and two clips of a flooding walkway in the engine room. ^[13] As Brian Hawkins writes: the British came closest "to the Titanic truth in 1958 with their black-and-white production of Walter Lord's novel A Night to Remember, seamlessly incorporating sequences from director Herbert Selpin's 1943 (Nazi) Titanic without giving any screen credits for these incredible scenes."^[14] Selpin, himself, was executed by Goebbels over the course of production in early August 1942 for offering a negative opinion of the German military while directing this earlier Nazi era film.

DVD

The film is one of the Criterion Collection's early titles. A High Definition upgrade of the DVD and a Blu-ray edition were released on 27 March 2012.

Related links

• Films about the RMS Titanic
• Sinking of the Titanic
• RMS Titanic in popular culture

References

External links

• A Night to Remember at the Internet Movie Database
• A Night to Remember at the TCM Movie Database
• A Night to Remember at AllRovi
• A Night to Remember at Rotten Tomatoes
• Criterion Collection essay by Michael Sragow

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