In Nacht und Eis

This week's TCM Import, overnight tonight at 2:15 AM is Titanic, the 1943 Nazi German telling of the maritime disaster which I first bloged about back in March of 2008. That's followed at 3:45 AM by A Night to Remember, the British telling of the story which tries to be more factually correct.

TCM's Silent Sunday Nights isn't airing a story of the Titanic sinking. In fact, there is a silent version of the story. That movie, called In Nacht und Eis (which translates as In Night and Ice, although you probably could have figured that out) was made only a few months after the actual disaster in Germany, and was considered lost for decades, until in the mania over James Cameron's 1997 version, a collector found a copy of this one. So TCM could in theory run In Nacht und Eis. They wouldn't have any rights problems, because anything from 1912 ought to be in the public domain, although they'd have to get a copy in a format that they can air. So that and any score might be an issue. The other problem is that Silent Sunday Nights would have to run this one in conjunction with something else, since it only runs 35 minutes.

Still, it's interesting to be able to watch a movie made very shortly after the disaster.