THEY CALLED HER THE SHIP OF DREAMS, AND SHE WAS…

Titanic is a 1997 film that was directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron, the film incorporated both historical and fictionalized aspects to tell a story based on the accounts of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio star as two fictional passengers of different social classes who fall in love during the ship’s maiden voyage. The film also featured the cast of Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Victor Garber, and Bill Paxton.

Cameron‘s inspiration for the film came from his fascination with shipwrecks. He felt a love story interspersed with human loss would be essential to convey the emotional impact of the disaster. Production began on September 1, 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the Titanic wreck. The modern scenes on the research vesselwere shot on board the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, which Cameron had used as a base when filming the wreck. Scale models, computer-generated imagery, and a reconstruction of the Titanic built at Baja Studios were used to recreate the sinking. The film was co-financed by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox; Paramount handled distribution in the United States and Canada while 20th Century Fox released the film internationally. Titanic was the most expensive film ever made at the time, with a production budget of $200 million. Filming took place from July 1996 to March 1997.

Titanic was released on December 19, 1997. It was praised for its visual effects, performances, (particularly those of DiCaprio, Winslet, and Stuart), production values, direction, score, cinematography, story, and emotional depth. Titanic was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won 11, including Best Picture and Best Director, tying Ben-Hur (1959) for the most Academy Awards won by a film. With an initial worldwide gross of over $1.84 billion, Titanic was the first film to reach the billion-dollar mark. It was the highest-grossing film of all time until Cameron’s next film, Avatar (2009), surpassed it in 2010. A number of re-releases have pushed the film’s worldwide total to $2.257 billion, making it the second film to gross more than $2 billion worldwide after Avatar. It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 2017.

Titanic will be re-released in theaters by Paramount domestically and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (through the 20th Century Studios label) internationally on February 10, 2023, included in the theater re-release is a remastered 3D 4K HDR render, with a high frame rate, as part of the film’s 25th anniversary. For this version, the international prints updated 20th Century’s logo with the studio’s current name, as a result of Disney’s 2019 acquisition of the studio.

Titanic is Movies to History’s Featured Blog of the Month for February! This means you can expect a Critique that will look at the historical story of the RMS Titanic and its sinking in 1912, 111 years ago. The Critique will also reflect on the real passengers that were on board for her maiden and final voyage and perished at sea over a century ago. If you visit the Featured Blog for Titanic, you can also read a Recommendation for James Cameron’s Titanic from a 25th Anniversary perspective from the original film released in 1997. There will also be a Review of Titanic’s 1997 Roger Ebert Review released the week the film first arrived in theaters for moviegoers. You can also watch an Interview with Kate Winslet discussing the 25th Anniversary of the film’s original release and what she has to say about her time making the film and what it’s like to be talking about the film 25 years later. And as usual with Movie to History’s Featured Film Blog, you can also expect a Top Ten List to commemorate its place as a Featured Blog on this site, I have compiled my Top Ten Doomed Ship Movies for the Top Ten List this month! And lastly, you can also watch the 1997 Official Trailer for the James Cameron film, Titanic in the Featured Blog of the Month section on this blog!

Without further wait, let us set sail back 25 years to 1997…

You can watch the 1997 Official Trailer for Titanic below: