Video Discription |
A Night to Remember is a 1958 British 🇬🇧 drama film adaptation of Walter Lord's 1955 book, which recounts the final night of RMS Titanic. Adapted by Eric Ambler and directed by Roy Ward Baker, the film stars Kenneth More and features Michael Goodliffe, Laurence Naismith, Kenneth Griffith, David McCallum and Tucker McGuire. It was filmed in the United Kingdom and tells the story of the sinking, portraying the main incidents and players in a documentary-style fashion with considerable attention to detail. The production team, supervised by producer William MacQuitty (who saw the original ship launched) used blueprints of the ship to create authentic sets, while Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall and ex-Cunard Commodore Harry Grattidge worked as technical advisors on the film. Its budget of £600,000 (£11,868,805 adjusted for inflation [2012]) was exceptional and made it the most expensive film ever made in Britain up to that time.
The World Premiere was on Thursday, 3 July 1958 at the Odeon Leicester Square. Titanic survivor Elizabeth Dowdell attended the American premiere in New York on Tuesday 16 December 1958. The film was a relative disappointment at the box office. However, it received critical acclaim and won the 1959 "Samuel Goldwyn International Award" for the UK at the Golden Globe Awards. The film is still widely regarded as "the definitive cinematic telling of the story." Among the many films about the Titanic, A Night to Remember has long been regarded as the high point by Titanic historians and survivors alike for its accuracy, despite its modest production values, compared with the Oscar-winning film Titanic (1997). Filming began 15 October 1957 at Pinewood Studios. It went until 5 March 1958.
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.
During the sinking, a steward pauses as he flees through the first-class smoking room to ask ship's designer Thomas Andrews, "Aren't you going to try for it, Mr Andrews?" This sequence was replicated essentially word-for-word in Titanic (1997), substituting that film's protagonists Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater instead of the steward. The scene was also repeated in S.O.S. Titanic (1979), with a stewardess asking him if he will save himself, pointing out that there would be questions that only he could answer.
Four clips from the Nazi propaganda film Titanic (1943) were used in A Night to Remember; two of the ship sailing in calm waters during the day, and two of a flooding walkway in the engine room. 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." Selpin himself was arrested on instruction from Propaganda Minister Joseph 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. He was then found dead in his prison cell. Directed by: Roy Ward Baker
Produced by William MacQuitty
Screenplay by: Eric Ambler
Story by: Walter Lord
Starring: Kenneth More
Music by: William Alwyn
Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth
Distributed by: The Rank Organisation
Release date:
3 July 1958
Running time:
123 minutes
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Budget £500,000[1] or £530,000 [JKi86RCWAaw] |