If you're one of the few people who has not seen the 1997 film, take the plunge, but first I suggest you read a book, "A Night to Remember," by Walter Lord.
What was it really like to be on the "Titanic" on that terrible April night in 1912? Only the survivors could say, and author Walter Lord, by interviewing 63 of them in later years, as part of his exhaustive research, creates a fascinating kind of oral history of the disaster, which was published in 1955. In the first few pages, the ship hits the iceberg: "To Lady Cosmo Duff Gordon, waking up from the jolt, it seemed 'as though somebody had drawn a giant finger along the side of the ship,'" Lord recounts. Another passenger compared it to her own recollection of the first shock of the San Francisco earthquake six years earlier. By incredible luck, call it good and bad, she would survive two of the greatest disasters of the century!
"A Night to Remember" was made into a splendid, if romanticized-heroic film in 1958, but "Titanic" has brought this amazing story back to the world's consciousness, as if the ship herself had been resurrected from the deep. Anyone who wants to know more about it would find Lord's account a wonderful place to start. As the minutes tick by, and doom or salvation approaches, we are everywhere on the ship, from the engine room to the bridge, in the staterooms and in steerage. Lord intertwines the words and actions of individuals into the whole that defines a true epic.
Many elements of James Cameron's film, like the raucous party in steerage that the two young lovers join, really happened. And at least one passenger actually survived the ship's final plunge into the icy waters in just the way some of the film's fictional characters do.
Neither film, nor the book (there is also a recently published sequel) , recounts in detail precisely what happened, for many details, even the number of persons lost and the captain's fate, will never be known. As Lord writes, "legends are part of great events, and if they help keep alive the memory of gallant self-sacrifice, they serve their purpose."
Featuring spectacular special effects set amidst the backdrop of one of the most tragic events of the 20th century James Cameron's award-winning TITAN...More at Family Video
Nothing on earth can rival the epic spectacle and breathtaking grandeur of Titanic, the sweeping love story that sailed into the hearts of moviegoers ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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