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Dom Robinson reviews

Titanic

Distributed by

20th Century Fox


Titanic pic

Titanic is James Cameron's epic account of the night that the R.M.S. Titanic went too fast on its maiden voyage and hit an iceberg, rupturing the underside of the ship's head and letting enough water in to make it sink. It's one of those films that doesn't really need its plot explaining as there can't be many people on the planet who don't know that the ship didn't quite make it to its destination, but rather took a diversion to the ocean bed.

In amongst the carnage, comes a tale of forbidden love and courage in the face of disaster. Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet, who was nominated for an Best Actress Oscar, as Jack and Rose, the young lovers separated by social class yet destined to find each other on the "unsinkable" ship.

The film won eleven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director and it's easy to see why due to the grand scale of what's on show. When the ship starts to go down, it's a special effects extravaganza from the huge reconstruction of the vessel - a 90%-scaled model - right down to the mere breath of cold air exhaled by cold and frightened passengers. The success of the film has resulted in worldwide box office takings of over $1 billion and has spawned two soundtrack albums featuring James Horner's unsurpassable score and music from the film including Celine Dion and "An Irish Party In Third Class".

It could have been a different story though. Originally budgeted at around $120 million, delays and mounting problems forced production costs to spiral in rocket-like fashion to way over $200 million. Soon after, Cameron was being criticised beyond all comprehension and Hollywood critics reckoned the film would sink at the box office like its namesake ship.

Thankfully, Cameron was proved right in the end. Cinemagoers and the rest of the nation piled into the cinemas for over six months, a rare sight indeed. In fact the only other film from recent times that has stayed in cinemas for as long was the British hit, The Full Monty, but it's quite a different thing though to get the average Joe to stampede to the cinema for a film over three hours in length - as opposed to a 90-minute comedy - and as such Titanic has become the biggest grossing film of all time to date.

A first-class film deserves a first-class cast and it gets it with the two leads performed by rising star, sometimes dubbed as the new River Phoenix, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, who is usually found in low-budget films, but has been cast into the limelight with this film. It hasn't gone to her head though and even at her recent wedding to James Threapleton, assistant film director on the set of her forthcoming film Hideous Kinky, there were no major amounts of security and the press were allowed to take photos, unlike a recent Spice Girl wedding.

While Jack is, literally, the small fish in a big pool of rich people, the rest of the cast includes Billy Zane as Rose's prospective but destructive husband, Frances Fisher as Rose's mother, Bernard Hill as the ship's captain, Jonathan Hyde as the ship's creator, Bill Paxton as the leader of a crew interviewing Rose in the present day trying to find out what exactly happened and Gloria Stuart as Rose now, which gave her the nomination for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

There are a few pieces of artistic licence though such as the scene of the captain going down with the ship, although apparently the real one didn't, as well as occasional one liners: As one man walks climbs a staircase towards the rear of the ship he recites Psalm 22. When he gets to "Yea, as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death", Jack shouts, "Wanna walk a little faster to that valley ?"


Titanic pic

A stunning film deserves a stunning transfer and that's almost exactly what you get here. The widescreen framing is preserved here and it's the only way it can be watched. Although the film was shot using the Super-35 technique, allowing non-SFX shots to sometimes be shown with more picture at the top and/or bottom, while losing some side picture information, word has it that the fullscreen version is as bad as a standard pan-and-scan transfer.

I say "almost", because it's not anamorphic, so you don't get the added advantage of 33% extra picture resolution for widescreen TVs, as can be found on many DVDs costing nearly half this price. With an average bitrate being a fine 5.19Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 7Mb/s, there's few artifacts on view, but zooming the picture in loses the impact it could have had.

Note that as the widescreen version has a ratio of 2.30:1 and that widescreen televisions have a ratio of 16:9 (ie. 1.78:1 approx.), so you will still get black bars on your widescreen television. This may seem obvious to may laserdisc owners out there, but while a few people have asked me why this happens - because one medium is wider than the other, so the old adage that you can't fit a square peg in a round hole applies - the problem manifested itself on BBC TV's Watchdog after an old man had more money than sense and spent £1700 on such a TV without bothering to learn the difference in ratios and complained when his Titanic video didn't fill the screen. Watchdog went on to explain, badly, that there are six different film ratios - when there are many more - and then showed the film on a widescreen TV but using the 16:9-enhanced mode (on a non-enhanced video) thus squashing the picture further and making everyone look fatter and accentuating the black bars thus filling the screen with twice as much blackness.

The sound quality is perfect though. While the PAL Laserdisc could only manage surround sound, this DVD contains Dolby Digital 5.1 as well. It's the first DVD in the UK to officially carry the THX logo for approved picture and sound quality (Twister was the first unofficial one as they mistakenly used the cover from the US version!)

Extras :

Chapters and Trailer :

There are 30 chapters throughout the film which isn't enough for a 189-minute film, but unlike the PAL Laserdisc, this time we are provided with a trailer and it's a different one that the Americans saw on their DVD.

Languages and Subtitles :

There's just one language on this disc - English, but it is available in Dolby Digital 5.1. Subtitles come in 13 flavours: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Iberian Portuguese, Hebrew, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Dutch, Greek and English for the hearing impaired.

Menu :

The main menu looks very good indeed, with subtle animation, some music from the opening score and Gloria Stuart professing the Titanic to be "the ship of dreams". The other menus are static and silent though.


Titanic pic

This is Fox's first UK DVD and it's important to go with such a high-profile title. However, while it looks and sounds good, things could've been a whole lot better. There are no extras (aside from a trailer), the transfer isn't anamorphic (the USA DVD isn't either but then the proportion of widescreen TVs over there isn't as high as the UK) and what about the price?

£20 is about the maximum that most people will pay for a DVD containing plenty of extras and a first-rate picture, so why pay £10 more for a DVD that has none of these? Of course Fox refuse to confirm that the price is as stated above because they're pretending there IS no dealer price, but then what was the figure I saw that equated to an RRP of £29.99 ? They claim that shops can set the dealer price themselves and charge accordingly. If that's the case, then why won't they sell it for a fiver?

The pricing is something of a thorny issue for many DVD retailers who have now refused to stock this title since they cannot get it cheaply enough to compete with the high-street chain stores.

The other problem is that it's widely-rumoured (and I'd lay money on it) that a Special Edition is in the works containing a director's cut with around 30 minutes of footage put back in, plus scores of extras including an audio commentary and a 'making of' film, as well as an anamorphic print. As such, there's little point in paying any money for this disc unless you can get it for a good price, don't mind about extras and aren't watching on a widescreen TV. In any case, the whole point of DVDs was that they could contain ALL of this stuff to begin with, without the need for paying for a second version (!)

On the other hand, it makes a change to be able to watch the film without turning over four sides - as per the PAL Laserdisc - and see it all the way through without getting up off my seat.

A review of the PAL Laserdisc can be found here. 

FILM	 		: *****
PICTURE QUALITY		: ****
SOUND QUALITY		: *****
EXTRAS			: *
-------------------------------
OVERALL			: **** (or * when the SE comes out)

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.

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