evanston_dad A couple of melodramatic stories that go nowhere are used to anchor this film whose sole reason for existence is (or was) to show audiences at the time what the sinking of the famously doomed ocean liner probably looked like. The exact same description could be used for the 1997 phenom directed by James Cameron, except that advanced technology allowed that film to fill out the destruction of the ship to epic proportions. As a result, there's really no reason to watch this 1953 version, unless you just want something that's a lot shorter. I would normally say actresses like Barbara Stanwyck and Thelma Ritter are reason enough, but their talents are wasted on this ridiculously thin screenplay, which inexplicably won writers Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, and Richard Breen an Oscar in 1953."Titanic" was also nominated for its black and white art direction, and it's kind of interesting to see how similar the recreation of the ship's interior is to the 1997 version (the answer is....pretty similar).Grade: C

Antonius Block In director Jean Negulesco's 1953 version of Titanic, Clifton Webb plays an affluent man brimming with confidence and as we soon see, a touch of arrogance. He believes their children should continue to be raised in Europe, and his wife (Barbara Stanwyck) believes they should return to America to get a taste of more humble surroundings. The two are at odds with another, and it culminates in the film's best scene, her informing him that their boy is not his son, and then walking off with the door slowly closing. The scene later where she describes how it happened, and the frostiness of his reaction, is sad and chilling. We admire Webb's certainty and his understanding of just what to do in social situations, and we recoil in horror at the coldness of his feelings, and his disdain for the common man. He's an iceberg, on a ship destined to hit an iceberg.Another nice moment is when Barbara Stanwyck reads the poem 'When I Was One-and-Twenty" by A.E. Housman to a young man played by Robert Wagner. Unfortunately, Wagner's character isn't all that likeable. He has a few comments to Stanwyck's daughter (Audrey Dalton) that may make you smile, such as "Never heard it before? Where have you been, locked up in some art gallery? Why, that's the hottest jig the kids do." However, he also has some musical performances between the 60 and 70 minute points of the film (pre-iceberg) that don't have the intended endearing effect, including a cringe-inducing performance of the "Navajo Rag", about how they dance down on the ol' reservation. Richard Basehart is strong in his supporting role of priest who we find out has been defrocked because of his drinking, and his scene with Stanwyck on the deck at night, each lost in their own troubles, is a good one. However, the performance seems a bit wasted, as there's nowhere for the character to go, and the film ends up choosing a path high in schmaltz. Unenviable comparisons to other Titanic movies aside (in particular Cameron's), the film fails most post-iceberg. Some of the right elements are there, including the hubris of a foolhardy increase in speed in order to impress the world in the first place, and the lack of enough lifeboats. The special effects are relatively brief but reasonably good for the time period. And of course, the moment is poignant, being a true story, and fate being so arbitrary. Stanwyck is said to have cried on set imagining the horror. Perhaps one of the ways people have of coping with this is to create heroic characters. In this version, it just gets to be a little much, and the stories between Webb and Stanwyck, their little boy, Basehart, and Wagner all seem false. Similar accusations are leveled at other movies that I sometimes find myself defending, but I can't in this case, or at least, as much. It's an average movie, certainly watchable, but dated and without balance in the fictional part of its story.

vincentlynch-moonoi I remember first seeing this film on "Saturday Night At The Movies" on NBC. I enjoyed it then, and still enjoy it today. I don't really try to compare this and the Leonardo DiCaprio version...too many years in between and a different approach to the story, but I like them pretty equally.I am reviewing this film based on the recent Blu Ray edition. Sometimes it is very obvious that a Blu Ray edition of an old film is a significant improvement, this time it is not. That is not to say that it isn't a good transfer. There's little to complain about in this edition in terms of clear picture, other than a bit of graininess that may just be a result of 63 years.First off, this film is not about the Titanic. The Titanic is the setting. The story is actually about one family that is disintegrating, and their final act happens to occur on the ill-fated journey. The warring man and wife are Clifton Webb, in what is probably his finest role, and Barbara Stanwyck, in perhaps her best later role. The dialogue between two is about the best you'll find of a man and wife at war; top notch writing and delivered with real sting. The daughter is siding with the father and is quite bitter toward the mother. The younger son is left adrift by the father when he learns that he is not the father.Robert Wagner plays a young college man with romantic attention toward Webb's daughter...not unlike Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the later film...though here their romance is secondary to the failing marriage of the parents.Audrey Dalton plays Webb's daughter and is quite unpleasant about it. Harper Carter (still living as of this writing) is quite good as the young son.Filling out the cast is the wonderful Thelma Ritter, here -- I'm assuming -- representing the real Molly Brown, though named Maude Young in this story. Brian Aherne is the Titanic's captain. Richard Basehart has a very good role as a defrocked priest who is an alcoholic. Allyn Joslyn -- more often a very good comic actor -- plays an average guy who tries to latch on to the rich passengers on the ship, and turns out to be the coward on board.I have noticed in a couple of posts that reviewers said that the special effects were poor. Come on folks...this was made in 1953. For that era, the scenes here are darned good. There is one spot -- when the son is trying to find his father after the Titanic begins to list -- where it's obviously just a drastically tilted camera, because people are walking and climbing and descending stairs too normally. Ah well.I've actually watched this "Titanic" more often than the Leonardo DiCaprio film. I don't try to compare them. They're both excellent in different ways.

sddavis63 Not everything that's made about the Titanic needs to be or even should be looked at in relation to the James Cameron film of 1997. However, realistically speaking, the 97 film was such a blockbuster that it's probably impossible not to do some comparison whenever you watch any story about the Titanic. This was the Cameron film's namesake - 1953's "Titanic." It's the third movie account of the sinking of the ship that I've seen - along with the Cameron film and 1958's "A Night To Remember" - and it's actually, as far as I know, the earliest film version made. The '58 version was very bare bones and to the point - it was quite a contrast to '97 and it worked very well, probably at least in part because of that. This '53 movie is more obviously what impacted James Cameron more. It uses much of the same technique of weaving fictional story lines among the passengers around the historical event of the sinking. Not surprisingly, it isn't as ornate as Cameron's version, and the actual mechanics of the ship's sinking is inaccurate, but when this was made no one knew that the ship had broken in half. Some of the historical names are changed. In this version, for example, there's no Molly Brown, although there's a Molly Brown-like character, played by Thelma Ritter.Most of the melodramatic content revolves around the Sturges family. Fed up with her posh life in Europe, Julia Sturges (played by Barbara Stanwyck) is leaving her husband and taking her children to America to start a new life. Her husband Richard (Clifton Webb) manages to get on board the ship to convince his children to go back to Europe with him. His wife he couldn't care less about. That was a reasonably well developed storyline.Some of the historical details seem inaccurate as well, although the basics are covered. There's no one from the White Star Lines, though, on board, pushing Captain Smith (Brian Aherne) to increase speed, and the strict polarization between first class and steerage doesn't seem as strict as it should be. This is a far shorter movie than Cameron's, and as it approaches the end the emotion does build, especially as Richard finds his son Norman, who suggests that they can "make a swim of it" together. The actual sinking - long and drawn out in '97 - happens fairly suddenly in this, and the movie ends, I thought, rather too abruptly, with no attention to the survivors afterward and their rescue.I saw this movie many years ago and was impressed with it. It's still quite good, and it has an obviously very impressive cast. People will inevitably compare it to James Cameron's movie. That's all a matter of personal taste I suppose. I liked both - and I liked "A Night To Remember" as well. To be honest, though, I'd probably rank this one as #3 out of those 3 - but #3 out of 3 very good movies. (7/10)