Saturday, April 14, 2012

Oh, that ship

By now, you've heard that we're at the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. TCM is marking the occasion first by showing The Unsinkable Molly Brown at 5:45 PM, as well as A Night to Remember at 10:00 PM. But what if other filmmakers had done a movie version of the Titanic story?

Alfred Hitchcock might have come up with a mystery along the lines of The Wreck of the Mary Deare. Or maybe not.

James Cameron would have taken something that should have been 90 minutes and turned it into a bloated three-hour snoozefest. Oh wait. He already did that, didn't he?

Edgar Ulmer would have made something interesting, but there would have been no ship, and no iceberg to hit: he wouldn't have been able to afford them.

Busby Berkeley's film would have been even more optimistic than The Unsinkable Molly Borwn, but it would also have been much more visually interesting, with overhead shots of the wrecked ship forming appealing geometric patterns.

Perhaps most interesting might be William Castle. I can imagine him setting up a gimmick such that, when the ship hits the iceberg, a huge flood of water enters the movie theater, partially submerging the moviegoers.

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