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Titanic (motion picture, 1997), drama about the sinking of a luxury liner during its first transatlantic voyage, based on
the true story of the Titanic disaster that occurred in 1912. Released in 1997, this box-office hit won eleven Academy
Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. The young adventurer Jack Dawson (played by
Leonardo DiCaprio) wins a third-class ticket on the luxury liner in a poker game. While on board, he saves Rose
DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) from killing herself, and although she is already engaged to a very wealthy man (Billy
Zane), the two fall in love. The ship hits an iceberg and sinks rapidly because of a major flaw in its design. More than a
thousand people die in the wreckage, including Dawson. The story is told in a series of flashbacks by the 101-year-old
Bukater (Gloria Stuart) as she revisits the site of the disaster. This blockbuster cost more than $200 million to make and
earned more than $530 million in the United States during the first year of its release. Many other movies about the
Titanic have been made, including Titanic (1953) and A Night to Remember (1958).
Director
James Cameron
Cast
Awards
Academy Award for Best Picture (1997)
Academy Award for Best Director (1997): James Cameron
Academy Award for Best Film Editing (1997): Conrad Buff IV, James Cameron, Richard A. Harris
Academy Award for Best Original Song (1997): James Horner, Will Jennings, “My Heart Will Go On”
Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score (1997): James Horner
Academy Award for Best Art Direction (1997): Michael Ford, Peter Lamont
Academy Award for Best Cinematography (1997): Russell Carpenter
Academy Award for Best Visual Effects (1997): Thomas L. Fisher. Michael Kanfer, Mark A. Lasoff, Robert Legato
Academy Award for Best Costume Design (1997): Deborah Lynn Scott
Academy Award for Best Sound Effects Editing (1997): Tom Bellfort, Christopher Boyes
Academy Award for Best Sound (1997): Tom Johnson, Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, Mark Ulano
Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture—Drama (1998)
Golden Globe Award for Best Director (1998): James Cameron
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score (1998): James Horner
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song (1998): James Horner, Will Jennings, “My Heart Will Go On”
Trivia
Director Cameron’s brother Mike Cameron and Panavision invented a special underwater camera mechanism capable
of withstanding the high atmospheric pressure at the bottom of the ocean, so the director could get footage shot inside
the actual Titanic.
The filmmakers built a 90-percent-to-scale model of the ship for this movie. It took nine months to shoot the movie,
during which the cost of the movie exceeded the budget by more than $100 million.
Director Cameron sketched the pictures of Bukater that appear in this movie. In the scene where Dawson is supposed to
be drawing Bukater, Cameron’s hands are shown sketching.
Quotes
Dawson (standing at the prow of the ship): “I’m the king of the world!”
Ruth DeWitt Bukater (to her daughter’s fiancé): “So this is the ship they say is unsinkable.”
Cal Hockley: “It is unsinkable. God himself couldn’t sink this ship.”
Dawson (to a table full of first-class passengers): “I love waking up in the morning not knowing where I'm gonna go or
who I'm gonna meet. Just the other day I was sleeping under a bridge, and now I'm on the grandest ship in the world
drinking champagne with you fine people.”