It still sinks

TCM is showing the 1943 Nazi version of Titanic overnight tonight at 2:00 AM as part of the weekly TCM Imports series. I've recommended this version of the Titanic story before. It's followed, at 3:45 AM, by what might be the best movie about the ship disaster: A Night to Remember.

The thing that makes A Night to Remember so much better than the other versions is that it's much more of a docudrama. Backstories involving other characters, as in the Barbara Stanwyck/Clifton Webb movie from Fox in the early 1950s, or the overblown James Cameron movie of a decade ago, are given much less weight here. That's a good thing, as this is a story that doesn't need such window dressing. What happened in real life is more than enough to make a gripping movie. And I'm personally not even a fan of all the lore that's sprung up over the Titanic tragedy.