History’s most notorious maritime disaster inspired filmmakers long before James Cameron. Although hardly anyone ever actually saw the 1943 German Titanic, many of us have seen scenes from it that were spliced into the 1958 British movie A Night to Remember. A restored print of the German Titanic is out on Blu-ray.
The film’s director, Herbert Selpin, didn’t live to see the final cut. He was arrested by the Gestapo and found dead in his cell. Although completed by other hands, the projected blockbuster was never released in wartime Germany. Josef Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister-movie mogul, feared it would be seen as a metaphor for Nazi Germany as the ship of state, piloted by reckless helmsmen, sails toward inevitable disaster. The Blu-ray includes a trailer that breathlessly announces the movie’s release, “Six years after completion!,” putting it at 1949.
It was probably screened only in Soviet-controlled East Germany and served their purposes well. The screenplay spends more time in corporate boardrooms than in the lifeboats; it calls out the British White Star line for causing the Titanic to race heedlessly into the ice to set a speed record (and drive up stock prices). It depicts White Star’s president, J. Bruce Ismay, negotiating with American millionaire John Jacob Astor as the ship was going down. This Titanic is an indictment of capitalism with the British and Americans as villains.
It also has all the marks of a Hollywood movie from the period: a love story between servants; an undercurrent of humor; a melodramatic orchestral score; and, yes, state of the art special effects.
The Blu-ray contains a second bonus selection, a 1912 newsreel released just after the “unsinkable” Titanic sank. There are shots of the doomed captain inspecting the gleaming new liner, scenes from inside the ship including a close-up of the “emergency telephone” on the bridge to be used if calling for help. Passengers are seen boarding the ship in a holiday spirit. It’s spooky, all the more for being silent.
