saywardstudio I have not seen the new 1997? version of the Titanic. Yes, I live somewhere deep in a cave under the ocean on a faraway planet. Anyway, I saw this one at the local library and thought, what the hey. (My daughter is enthralled with the Titanic, and she has seen the new one.... she lives on Earth, by the way! ;)) anyway, I thought we could watch it together. This movie is good for several reasons. Not blockbuster good, but good. There are very few, if any, 'special effects', which is something I find really cool. You get the effect of the ship actually sinking and all this water rushing around and everything without any 'digital' enhancement, to my knowledge.(Ex, today, the water very well be computer generated.) Special tiltings of the camera and general good acting made it seem real.(Although the guy that was falling in love with the girl--the older, blonde guy...not the young Irish guy, who was also in love, but with a totally different girl..) seemed a bit sleepy or dazed or something throughout the whole thing. When he is on the lifeboat and there are people floating in the water, he's like, "come on." barely putting his arm over the side of the boat, and he could have been smoking a pipe and in his pajamas for all anyone would know, not "Come on!!!COME ON!!!" All wild eyed and loud as I would picture myself to be in that situation, not to mention trying as hard as I could to get as many people in the boat with me as I could. I chalked it up to he was dazed, confused, scared, and possibly tired.I also found it refreshing that he and his 'girlfriend' meet and are talking earlier in the night, and they sort of 'break up' even though they weren't officially 'together', and I thought for sure they would be showcased in the lifeboat scene, "Ill save you, honey!!!" or whatever, but it didn't happen. I also thought one of them would die, but they're on the Carpathia(I love the sound of that name...have no idea what it means, it just sounds cool) "Well, that was scary, blah blah blah...) They totally leave you hanging! Are they going to go out again? Did they get married? After that, did they talk again? So, the movie makers didn't do two 'classic' movie moves in them saving each other or getting torn apart in death.Also, it was fairly historically accurate from what I have read about the music being played right up to the end. Personally, who the heck is going to be actually listening to music running around trying to survive??The ship going down was really cool the way they did it. It sounded eerie, too.We are rolling up on the 100th anniversary of the ship going down in a few years. It is a never ending reminder to me that man is not always as smart as he seems, we can never tame nature, anything can happen at any time, and that segregating people by class is stupid and wrong. High society and finery will get you nowhere on a sinking ship.

gus81 This film is an extremely atmospheric telling of the sinking of the Titanic. It used mainly real passengers to tell the story through, and as a result isn't too bad a production.However, the special effects were terrible and inaccurate. Firstly, the film makers used the Queen Mary to film on as the Titanic - this ship looks totally different and is the same ship used for the Poseidon Adventure. In the long shots of the ship sinking, SOS Titanic simply colourised scenes from A Night to Remember. The scenes of the ship sinking were really hopeless - continuity was terrible and the water actually flowed down the deck TOWARD the submerged bow. This is the most important part in a Titanic story, so to handle it so sloppily really is unforgivable.However, the scenes on board really captured the atmosphere of the times and the atmosphere of impending disaster to which all on board were fatally oblivious. The opening scenes as the Carpathia rescues survivors were really handled well (apart from Cpt. Rostron only organising the ship at the last minute - this wasn't true), and they conveyed a sense of numbed shock and loss. The characters are all real, which is a plus too.All in all, this film does not impress in realistic special effects, nor in making the disaster look real; but it does well in telling a story and telling it with considerable atmosphere.

cskocik I have mixed feelings about S.O.S. Titanic. On the one hand, I remember seeing it when I was about nine years old and being stunned. On the other, I watch it now and wonder why they bothered to make the movie. First of all, I have the shortened version, which I understand is far less effective than the full three-hour version, so my comments might not apply to the full version. But it seems to me A Night to Remember is the definitive movie about the Titanic, and this one seems like a brief and half-hearted recap of that much better movie. We see only the most cursory glimpses of various characters and how they came to abandon ship. I think the entire sinking ends up taking half an hour of screen time, even less than the Barbara Stanwyk movie. The attention to detail is impressive, but it seems to me you'd have to already know a lot about the Titanic in order to pick up on it -- for example, Lightoller jumping into the wave as it overtakes the boat deck. I agree with whoever said that the characters were not well-researched, with the notable exceptions of Lawrence Beesley, Thomas Andrews, and J. Bruce Ismay (the casting of Ian Holm was a stroke of genius!), and I simply can't accept Harry Andrews as the soft-spoken Captain Smith, or Cloris Leachman as Molly Brown, or David Janssen in a compelling but inaccurate performance as J.J. Astor. Still, all told, I'd take this movie over James Cameron's bloated epic. The music, as someone else pointed out, is outstanding, really underscoring the magnitude of the tragedy and somehow making it feel like you're drowning as you listen to it. Philip Stone is almost as good as Anthony Bushell as Captain Rostron. The stories are real, for the most part, even if some of them are clumped together into composite stories. The characters really existed. The script treats the story with the appropriate reverence, as opposed to Cameron's action movie treatment and offensive ridiculing of some of the heroes of that night. But still, I don't see any real value in this movie, when you can get everything it offers, and much more, from A Night to Remember.

dosifei This is one of several film versions of the Titanic disaster. While not as meticulous as A Night to Remember, it is superior to Cameron's bloated epic. The film, originally made for television, gives a soap-opera like telling of the lives of those involved in the disaster, focusing on actual persons instead of fictitious ones. While the special effects are not so good, and the use of the Queen Mary as a set is obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with ships, the script and acting are superb. David Janssen is terrific in one of his last roles as John Jacob Astor. Also excellent is Ian Holm as the ship's owner, Ismay. Holm portrays Ismay as a real man who suffers because of the disaster, not the cartoonish villain other films have made him. Harry Andrews is impressive as Captain Smith, Cloris Leachman definitive as a raucaus Molly Brown (much better than Kathy Bates's flat performance in Titanic), and David Warner is intelligent and understated as Lawrence Beasley. The rest of the women in the cast don't fare quite as well, however. Susan St. James is pretty wooden as Warner's fictional love interest, and Beverly Ross doesn't do much more than sigh and worry as Madeleine Astor.The score for the film is extremely well-done and is one of the best assetsof the movie.Don't expect pinpoint accuracy about the details of the disaster, but by all means, if you like a good melodrama and are interested in the Titanic, check this film out.