A Night to Remember

"Symbol of man's final victory over nature and the elements," from champagne christening to oceanic tomb. A pointillist view of the Titanic, a dry chronicle of the ruthless progression of disaster, Roy Ward Baker's first horror film. The stout steward (Kenneth More) connects the ensemble on the fateful transatlantic crossing, from captain (Laurence Naismith) and telegraph operators (Kenneth Griffith, David McCallum) to stately moneybags (Harold Goldblatt) and scrappy pleb (John Cairney). The note with "iceberg" scribbled on it lies ignored in the message spindle, the collision registered in the clenching of the officer's jaw cuts to the subtle rattling of glasses in the grand dining room. ("I spilled my drink," somebody grouses at a card game.) Water creeps into staterooms, sailors kick chunks of ice about the deck, the screen gradually tilts diagonally. "I don't know much about ships, but maybe we're in a tight corner." The millionairess (Tucker McGuire) cheerleading evacuees, a married couple (John Merivale, Honor Blackman) separated with impeccable sang froid, the cook (George Rose) medicating himself with liquor in his cabin, the gambler (Redmond Phillips) trying his luck in the lifeboat. At the center, the shipbuilder (Michael Goodliffe) sinking into himself as his luxurious creation methodically heads to the bottom of the sea. "Not the panicking kind," Baker's camera hopscotches with somber elegance from one miniature drama to the next. Gallantry and terror, the creaking of metal and "Nearer My God to Thee" and the cries of passengers in frigid water. A traveling shot across distraught faces on the raft comes to rest on a close-up of a piglet-shaped music box, it dissolves to the RMS Carpathia sailing to the rescue. "Everything that was humanly possible has been done." The heir is not Cameron but Stone (The Last Voyage). Cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth. With Anthony Bushell, Ronald Allen, Jill Dixon, Richard Leech, Frank Lawton, Alec McCowen, and Jane Downs. In black and white.