A Night to Remember
original movie poster
Directed by	Roy Ward Baker
Produced by	William MacQuitty
Written by	Eric Ambler Walter Lord (novel)
Starring	Kenneth More Ronald Allen Robert Ayres Honor Blackman
Music by	William Alwyn
Cinematography	Geoffrey Unsworth
Distributed by	The Rank Organization
Release date(s)	July 1, 1958
Running time	123 min.
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$1,680,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

A Night to Remember is a 1958 film adaptation of Walter Lord's book of the same name, recounting the final night of the RMS Titanic. A Night to Remember was adapted by Eric Ambler, directed by Roy Ward Baker, and filmed in Britain as a docudrama. The production team, supervised by producer William MacQuitty, used blueprints from the ship to recreate sets, and Titanic's fourth officer, Joseph Boxhall and ex Cunard Commodore Harry Grattidge both worked as a technical advisors on the film. The movie is generally considered to be the most accurate dramatic retelling of the Titanic story.

Plot summary

The movie begins in Harland and Wolff Shipyard at the naming ceremony of the RMS Titanic. The ship is christened and a bottle of champagne is smashed against the hull. Immediately afterward, Charles Lightoller (Titanic's Second Officer and the main character in the film) is shown on a train with his wife, Sylvia, preparing to report for duty. He jokes with his wife about a newspaper advertisement for soap for the Titanic's first class cabins, which offends a fellow male train passenger who mistakenly assumes Lightoller is poking fun at the ship itself. However, the man apologizes when Lightoller reveals his assignment on the ship.

At Southampton, Titanic is ready for launch. As it leaves, many people say their goodbyes, including those joining the ship in steerage at Queenstown. Once in the open sea, the Titanic receives many ice warnings from nearby steamers. Captain Edward Smith is not worried by these warnings and the ship continues on.

At about 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, lookout Frederick Fleet spots an iceberg. Fellow lookout Reginald Lee warns Sixth Officer James Paul Moody by telephone that there is an iceberg dead ahead. Moody thanks Lee and shouts, "Iceberg ahead!" First Officer William McMaster Murdoch orders the engines reversed, the ship turned hard to port (with the ship's wheel turned to starboard as the steering linkage was configured that way at the time), and the watertight doors closed. Despite these efforts, Titanic collides with the iceberg on its starboard side, opening the first five compartments to the sea, below the waterline. Captain Smith immediately calls for Thomas Andrews, the ship's builder, to inspect the damages. Andrews explains the ship will sink in about an hour and a half.

Titanic's stern rises into the air as she begins to lower deeper into the water.

Titanic sailing on the calm, open sea.

Captain Smith tells Jack Phillips, the telegraph operator, to send out the distress call CQD. Phillips and his assistant, Harold Bride, continuously send distress calls. The closest ship is the SS Californian, which is a mere 10 miles away. Earlier that night however, frustrated by the Californian's ice reports, Phillips had told her to shut up, which caused the Californian's operator to shut down for the night.

Captain Smith orders Lightoller and Murdoch to start lowering the lifeboats. He instructs them to put women and children into the boats first, but Lightoller takes this to mean, "Women and children only". Chief Baker Charles Joughin tries to escape in a boat, but the boat is overcrowded and gives a woman his seat. He returns to his room, where he drinks whiskey as the ship sinks. The ship is now going down by the bow fast.

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. As the stewards struggle to hold back women and children holding third-class tickets, most of the women and children from second and first class climb into the lifeboats and launch away from the ship. Chief Officer Henry T. Wilde distributes guns and ammunition to the officers in case of emergency. The bow of the ship is 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. A drunk Joughin throws deck chairs overboard. The ship sinks and Lightoller and many others swim off of the ship. The ship sinks deeper into the water suddenly a smokestack breaks lose 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. Joughin is found in the water, not minding the cold, and pulled up on the boat. Lightoller spots another lifeboat and the men are saved. The Carpathia comes and rescues the survivors. A memorial service is dedicated to the Titanic and its victims.

Production

Kenneth More recalled the production of the film in his autobiography, published 20 years later in 1978. He had served in the Royal Navy in World War II (as a gunnery officer aboard the cruiser HMS Aurora) and automatically took on the naval officer's crisp and confident air of command when a crisis arose in the film-making. 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 o'clock in the morning of an icy-cold November day. The extras flatly refused to jump in. More realised it would be up to him. "Come on!" he cried.

'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 ....'^[1]

Cast

The film stars:

• Kenneth More as Second Officer Charles Lightoller
• Ronald Allen as Mr. Clarke
• Robert Ayers as Arthur Peuchen
• Honor Blackman as Mrs. Liz Lucas
• Anthony Bushell as Captain Arthur Henry Rostron
• John Cairney as Mr. Murphy
• Jill Dixon as Mrs. Clarke
• Michael Goodliffe as Thomas Andrews
• Kenneth Griffith as Jack Phillips
• Ann Lancaster as Women on train (uncredited)
• Frank Lawton as J. Bruce Ismay
• David McCallum as Harold Bride
• Tucker McGuire as Margaret Brown
• Laurence Naismith as Captain Edward Smith
• George Rose as Chief Baker Charles Joughin
• Patrick Waddington as Sir Richard

Awards

A Night to Remember won the Golden Globe for the "Best Picture - Foreign" category in 1959. It was also nominated for the Laurel Award for "Best Cinematography - Black and White".

Trivia

• The house where the rich family are seen leaving for the Titanic is Great Fosters in Egham, Surrey, UK. It also featured in the opening titles of the long running UK TV series 'Wacko' starring Jimmy Edwards as the Headmaster.

• Ann Lancaster, who appears uncredited on a train where her husband remonstrates with Lightoller for his remarks about the ship, also appeared in 'The Railway Children' (movie) as maid and as a prositute in 'The Dirty Dozen', she was also the voice of 'Ajax' commercials in the 1960's.

• Although at the start of the film the ship is christened with a bottle of champagne, the real Titanic was never christened (standard White Star Line practice was not to have a christening), nor was there a great ceremony held when the ship first touched water in Belfast, although White Star did host a celebratory lunch. Otherwise, the inclusion of Edwardian archive film of liners gives a docudrama feel at times, despite the use of ship models for long shots of the Titanic itself.

• As with most pictures about the Titanic, filmed before the discovery of the wreck in 1985, A Night to Remember portrays the Titanic as sinking in one piece. The discovery of the wreck revealed that the ship had broken in two and most films about the event since then (e.g. the 1996 TV mini-series Titanic, and the 1997 multi-Oscar-winning film Titanic), have reflected this point, although authorities debate to this day whether the break-up happened while the ship was above the water line, or while it was under the water and out of the view of survivors, plunging towards the ocean floor. Eyewitness testimony is not unanimous on this point, meaning that A Night to Remember's portrayal of the ship sinking intact may still be accurate.

• 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 whiskey, threw some 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.

• Sean Connery makes an uncredited appearance in the film, playing a crew member assisting passengers into the lifeboats during the later stages of the sinking.

• Desmond Llewelyn also appears uncredited in the film as a crew member reassuring the panicking steerage passengers^[2].

• Bernard Fox who appears in this film uncredited as the lookout who utters the famous words "Iceberg, dead ahead, sir" also appears as Colonel Archibald Gracie in the 1997 Titanic film, thereby making him a cast member of two films about the sinking of the Titanic.

• Film footage from the sinking scene is re-used in the 1981 film Time Bandits starring Sean Connery among others.

• During the sinking, a young couple pauses as they flee through the first-class lounge 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 as the young couple.

Notes

1. ^ More, Kenneth (1978). More or Less. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-22603-X. 
2. ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005155/

External links

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

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