A Night to Remember (1958 film)


A Night to Remember is a 1958 British historical drama film adaptation of Walter Lord's 1955 book, which recounts the final night of. Adapted by Eric Ambler and directed by Roy Ward Baker, the film stars Kenneth More and features Michael Goodliffe, Laurence Naismith, Kenneth Griffith, David McCallum and Tucker McGuire. It was filmed in the United Kingdom and tells the story of the sinking, portraying the main incidents and players in a documentary-style fashion with considerable attention to detail. The production team, supervised by producer William MacQuitty used blueprints of the ship to create authentic sets, while Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall and ex-Cunard Commodore Harry Grattidge worked as technical advisors on the film. Its budget of £600,000 was exceptional and made it the most expensive film ever made in Britain up to that time.
The World Premiere was on Thursday, 3 July 1958 at the Odeon Leicester Square. Titanic survivor Elizabeth Dowdell attended the American premiere in New York on Tuesday 16 December 1958. The film was a relative disappointment at the box office. However, it received critical acclaim and won the 1959 "Samuel Goldwyn International Award" for the UK at the Golden Globe Awards. The film is still widely regarded as "the definitive cinematic telling of the story." Among the many films about the Titanic, A Night to Remember has long been regarded as the high point by Titanic historians and survivors alike for its accuracy, despite its modest production values, compared with the Oscar-winning film Titanic.

Plot

In 1912, the luxurious Titanic is the largest vessel afloat and is widely believed to be unsinkable. Passengers aboard for her maiden voyage are the cream of American and British society. Boarding are first class passengers Sir Richard and Lady Richard, second class passengers Mr. Clarke and Mrs. Clarke, a young newly wed couple, and steerage passengers Mr. Murphy, Mr. Gallagher and Mr. James Farrel. Second Officer Charles Lightoller is also readying for the voyage. On 10 April, Titanic sails out to sea. On 14 April, at sea, the ship receives a number of ice warnings from other steamers. Only a few of the messages are relayed to Captain Edward J. Smith, who orders a lookout, but does not slow the ship or consider changing course.
Late that night, the SS Californian spots float ice in the distance, and tries to send a message to the Titanic. On the Titanic, the steerage passengers enjoy their time at a party in Third Class where Murphy becomes attracted to a young Polish girl, and dances with her. In the ship's boiler room, Thomas Andrews, the ship's builder, finishes an inspection. In the wireless room, wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Sydney Bride are changing shifts. Phillips receives an ice warning, but when more messages arrive for him to send out, it is lost under them. On the Californian, field ice is spotted, and the ship stops, for it is too dangerous to proceed, and a message is sent to the Titanic. Because the Californian is so close, the message is very loud, and Phillips interrupts the message. Titanics passengers begin to settle in for the night, while some, including Mr. Hoyle and Jay Yates stay up to gamble. Meanwhile Lookout Frederick Fleet suddenly spots an iceberg directly in Titanic`s path and alerts the bridge. First Officer Murdoch then attempts to slow down and steer around the iceberg, but they are too close and the vessel collides with the iceberg. Captain Smith sends for Thomas Andrews who goes to inspect the damage. Andrews determines that the ship will sink within two hours, and it lacks sufficient lifeboat capacity for everyone on board.
A distress signal is sent out, and efforts begin to signal the Californian, visible on the horizon 10 miles away, but its radio operator is off duty and does not hear the distress signal. Fortunately, the radio operator on the receives the distress call and alerts Captain Arthur Rostron, who orders the ship to head to the site. Unfortunately, the ship is 58 miles away, and will take around four hours to reach the Titanic. Meanwhile, the Californian remains where it is, the crew failing to comprehend why the large ship they are in sight of is firing rockets. Captain Smith orders Officers Lightoller and William Murdoch to start lowering the lifeboats. On Lightoller's side, men are not allowed on board, but Murdoch, working the other side of the ship, is far more lenient, letting men board lifeboats. Chief Baker Charles Joughin, after giving up his space in a lifeboat, turns to the bottle to ease his ailments. In the Grand Staircase, Robbie Lucas runs into Mr. Andrews and asks if the ship is seriously damaged. Andrews tells him to get his wife and children into the boats. Lucas rouses his children and wife to go to the lifeboats. He gets them safety in a boat, and turns away, realizing he will never see his family again. Murphy, Gallagher, and Farrel help the Polish girl, and her mother find their way through the ship, and get them in a lifeboat. The Richards, and Hoyle are admitted to a boat by Murdoch. Yates gives a female passenger a note to send to his sister. Several women refuse to leave their husbands, inadvertently setting an example for Mrs. Clarke, who first decides to stay with her husband, until Andrews advises them on how to escape the sinking ship. As the stewards struggle to hold back women and children in third-class, most of those from first- and second-class board the lifeboats and launch away from the ship. The ship quickly fills with water, and the passengers begin to realize the danger, as the ship lists more and more. When the third-class passengers are allowed up from below, chaos ensues. The Chairman of the White Star Line, J. Bruce Ismay steps into one of the last lifeboats to save himself. The Titanics bow submerges, and only two collapsible lifeboats are left. Lightoller and other able seamen struggle to free them, when the ship begins its final plunge. Captain Smith gives the order to abandon ship, and every man for himself, before returning to the bridge to go down with the ship, while the orchestra performs the Horbury rendition of the hymn, "Nearer My God To Thee." Thomas Andrews awaits his fate in the first class smoking room. Lightoller and many others are swept off the ship. Passengers jump into the sea as the stern rises high into the air. The Clarkes, struggling in the water, are killed by a falling funnel. The stricken liner rapidly sinks into the icy sea.
Many passengers, including Lucas, and Farrel, die of hypothermia. One of the collapsibles is floating overturned, so Lightoller and a few more men balance on it and wait. Yates, denied access to the upturned boat, swims away to drown himself. Murphy and Gallagher make it to the collapsible and are taken on board. Joughin holds onto the side, not minding the cold because he's been drinking, and is eventually taken aboard. Lightoller spots another boat, and the men are saved. The Carpathia arrives and rescues the survivors. On the Carpathia, after a group prayer, Lightoller is told by Rostron the numbers of the saved and lost. In all, 1500 people were lost; 705 survived.

Cast

Cast notes:
The film is based on Walter Lord's book A Night to Remember, but in Ray Johnson's documentary The Making of 'A Night to Remember', Lord says that when he wrote his book, there was no mass interest in the Titanic, and he was the first writer in four decades to attempt a grand-scale history of the disaster, synthesizing written sources and survivors' firsthand accounts. Lord dated the genesis of his interest in the subject to childhood. So did producer MacQuitty, who, as a boy of six, watched the Titanic set out from Belfast, as well as screenwriter Ambler, who was a lad in London when the ship was launched. MacQuitty had seen Titanic being launched on 31 May 1911 and still remembered the occasion vividly. He also watched the maiden voyage departure the following year.

1956 television adaptation

The book was previously adapted as a live TV production, screened by NBC and sponsored by Kraft Foods as part of the Kraft Television Theatre strand on 28 March 1956. It has been described as "the biggest, most lavish, most expensive thing of its kind" attempted up to that point, with 31 sets, 107 actors, 72 speaking parts, 3,000 gallons of water and costing $95,000. George Roy Hill directed and Claude Rains provided a narration – a practice borrowed from radio dramas which provided a template for many television dramas of the time. It took a similar approach to the book, lacking dominant characters and switching between a multiplicity of scenes. Rains' narration was used "to bridge the almost limitless number of sequences of life aboard the doomed liner", as a reviewer put it, and closed with his declaration that "never again has Man been so confident. An age had come to an end."
The production was a major hit, attracting 28 million viewers, and greatly boosted the book's sales. It was rerun on kinescope on 2 May 1956, five weeks after its first broadcast.

Development

The film adaptation came about after its eventual director, Roy Ward Baker, and its producer, Belfast-born William MacQuitty both acquired copies of the book – Baker from his favorite bookshop and MacQuitty from his wife – and decided to obtain the film rights. He met Lord and brought him on board the production as a consultant.
MacQuitty succeeded in raising finance from John Davis at the Rank Organisation, who in the late 1950s were expanding into bigger-budgeted filmmaking. The job was assigned to Roy Baker who was under contract to Rank and Baker recommended Ambler be given the job of writing.
The film diverges from both the book and the NBC TV adaptation in focusing on a central character, Second Officer Charles Lightoller, played by More. Its conclusion reflects Lord's world-historical theme of a "world changed for ever" with a fictional conversation between Lightoller and Colonel Archibald Gracie, sitting on a lifeboat. Lightoller declares that the disaster is "different... Because we were so sure. Because even though it's happened, it's still unbelievable. I don't think I'll ever feel sure again. About anything."
Producer MacQuitty had originally contracted with Shaw, Savill & Albion Line to use its former flagship to shoot scenes for the film, but the company pulled out of the production at the last minute, citing that they did not want to use one of their liners to recreate the Titanic sinking. However, according to MacQuitty, the Shaw Savill Line at the time was managed by Basil Sanderson, son of Harold Sanderson, the White Star Line's director in the U.S. at the time of the sinking. Harold Sanderson would later succeed J. Bruce Ismay as president of the International Mercantile Marine Company, J.P. Morgan's shipping conglomerate that owned the White Star Line. This connection to White Star, according to MacQuitty, is what actually led the Shaw Savill Line to pull out of the film. MacQuitty eventually got permission from Ship Breaking Industries in Faslane, Scotland to film scenes aboard, a 1920s ocean liner that the company was scrapping. The liner's port side had been demolished, but its starboard was still intact, and so MacQuitty got art students to paint the liner the White Star Line colors and used mirrors to recreate scenes that took place on the port side. 30 sets were constructed using the builders' original plans for Titanic.
Rank wanted a star and the only role really suitable was Lightoller. The part was offered to Kenneth More, Britain's leading star at the time, who accepted. It was the first movie he made under a new contract with Rank to make seven films in five years at a fee of £40,000 a film.
The film was to a significant extent fictional, based on real events but with numerous changes made to increase its drama and appeal. The composite characters, while based in large part on Americans, are depicted as British, and the involvement of American passengers was either limited or left out. When questioned as to why he did the changes, Roy Baker noted that "it was a British film made by British artists for a British audience".
In addition to basing the script — both in action and dialogue — on Lord's book, the filmmakers achieved nuanced performances and authentic atmosphere by consulting several actual Titanic survivors who served as technical advisors. Among them were Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall, and passengers Edith Russell and Lawrence Beesley. One day during shooting Beesley famously gatecrashed the set; he infiltrated the set during the sinking scene, hoping to 'go down with the ship', but was discovered by the director, who ordered him off, and vetoed this unscheduled appearance due to actors' union rules; thus, as Julian Barnes puts it, "for the second time in his life, Beesley left the Titanic just before it was due to go down." Charles Lightoller's widow Sylvia Lightoller was also consulted during production, at one point visiting Pinewood Studios and meeting with Kenneth More, whom she introduced to her children on set. Sylvia commended More for the role of her husband.

Shooting

Filming began 15 October 1957 at Pinewood Studios. It went until 5 March 1958.
Kenneth More recalled the production of the film in his autobiography, published 20 years later in 1978. There was no tank big enough at Pinewood Studios to film the survivors struggling to climb into lifeboats, so it was done in the open-air swimming bath at Ruislip Lido, at 2:00 am on an icy November morning. When the extras refused to jump in, More realised he would have to set an example. He called out: "Come on!"
During the sinking, a steward pauses as he flees through the first-class smoking room to ask ship's designer Thomas Andrews, "Aren't you going to try for it, Mr Andrews?" This sequence was replicated essentially word-for-word in Titanic, substituting that film's protagonists Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater instead of the steward. The scene was also repeated in S.O.S. Titanic, with a stewardess asking him if he will save himself, pointing out that there would be questions that only he could answer.
Four clips from the Nazi propaganda film Titanic were used in A Night to Remember; two of the ship sailing in calm waters during the day, and two of a flooding walkway in the engine room. As Brian Hawkins writes: the British came closest "to the Titanic truth in 1958 with their black-and-white production of Walter Lord's novel A Night to Remember, seamlessly incorporating sequences from director Herbert Selpin's 1943 Titanic without giving any screen credits for these incredible scenes." Selpin himself was arrested on instruction from Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels over the course of production in early August 1942, for offering a negative opinion of the German military while directing this earlier Nazi era film. He was then found dead in his prison cell.

Historical accuracy

The film is regarded as one of the most historically accurate Titanic disaster films, with the exception of not featuring the ship breaking in half. Lightoller's widow Sylvia Lightoller praised the film's historical accuracy in an interview with The Guardian, stating "The film is really the truth and has not been embroidered".
However, although some events are based on true history, the characters and the storyline are fictional; the characters of Mr. Murphy, Mr. Gallagher, Mr Hoyle, and Jay Yates being composites of several men. Murphy, who leads the steerage girls to the lifeboat, is a composite of several Irish emigrants. Hoyle, the gambler who gets into the lifeboat on the starboard side, is a composite of several such figures, men determined to save themselves at all costs. Robbie Lucas and Mrs. Liz Lucas are composites of several married couples, notably Mr Lucian P. Smith and Mrs Eloise Hughes Smith. Lucas even says the words actually spoken by Lucien Smith to his wife: "I never expected to ask you to obey me, but this is one time you must". Mr. Clarke and Mrs. Clarke are composites of several honeymoon couples, notably Mr. John Chapman and Mrs. Sarah Chapman, a pair of newlyweds from second-class who died in the sinking. In real life, when Sarah boarded a lifeboat, she found that her husband John couldn't go. She turned back saying. Goodbye' Mrs. Richards. If John can't go, I won't go either. John Chapman's body was recovered by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett, and there were no mentions or indications that his body was crushed, soot-blackened or disfigured in a manner suggesting that he had been killed by a falling funnel. Sarah's body was never found. The involvement of American passengers was either limited or left out.
Several historical figures were renamed or went unnamed to avoid potential legal action. Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon and Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon are depicted as Sir Richard and Lady Richard and Bruce Ismay is referred to throughout only as "The Chairman".
The film omits several key historical figures, including John Jacob Astor IV, the wealthiest passenger aboard Titanic, and Stoker Frederick Barrett, with 2nd Engineer Officer John Henry Hesketh's role being expanded to include duties and actions that were performed by Barrett and others.
In reality, the American gambler Jay Yates, travelling under the name of J.H. Rogers, was never on board the Titanic and the note he was said to have handed to a passenger was a hoax. Yates wrote the note in New York and then had a woman accomplice pose as a survivor and deliver the note to the newspaper. Yates did this in order to make the police think he was dead. They didn't fall for the ruse, though, and Yates was captured a couple of months after the sinking.
The film was also clearly intended as a vehicle for its main star, Kenneth More, who played Lightoller. Throughout the sinking, Lightoller is shown personally loading nearly every lifeboat. In reality, many of Lightoller's actions were performed by other officers.
The painting in the first-class smoking room is incorrectly shown as depicting the entrance to New York Harbour. It actually depicted the entrance to Plymouth Sound, which Titanic had been expected to visit on her return voyage. It was an error made by Walter Lord in his research, which he acknowledged in the documentary The Making of A Night to Remember.
The first scene of A Night to Remember depicts the christening of the ship at its launch. However, the Titanic was never christened, as it was not the practice of the White Star Line to stand on this sort of ceremony. This has come down in popular lore as one of the many contributing factors to the ship's "bad luck".
The crew, including Captain Smith, is depicted having a full trust in the Titanic, considering her "unsinkable", an allegation which was never claimed with such certainty.
Lightoller is depicted nearly being crushed by the fourth funnel falling in the ship's last moments. It was actually the first funnel that fell near Lightoller.
Murphy and Gallagher make it to the overturned Collapsible B with a child in their arms, which they pass to Lightoller. Lightoller takes one look inside the child's hood, realizes it is dead and sets it adrift in the ocean. In real life, Lightoller never reported receiving a child from the water. Though in the movie Gallagher survives the sinking, he actually died in the shipwreck.

Reception

Critical reception

Upon its December 1958 U.S. premiere, Bosley Crowther called the film a "tense, exciting and supremely awesome drama... puts the story of the great disaster in simple human terms and yet brings it all into a drama of monumental unity and scope"; according to Crowther:
this remarkable picture is a brilliant and moving account of the behavior of the people on the Titanic on that night that should never be forgotten. It is an account of the casualness and flippancy of most of the people right after the great ship has struck ; of the slow accumulation of panic that finally mounts to a human holocaust, of shockingly ugly bits of baseness and of wonderfully brave and noble deeds.

The film won numerous awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best English-Language Foreign Film and received high praise from reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Box office

The film was at best only a modest commercial success due to its original huge budget and a relatively poor impact in America. The film was one of the twenty most popular films of the year in Britain according to Motion Picture Herald.
Kinematograph Weekly listed it as being "in the money" at the British box office in 1958.
By 2001 it had not made a profit, in part because the film was issued as part of a slate of ten films and all its profits were cross-collateralised.

Reputation today

It has nonetheless aged well; the film has considerable artistic merit and, according to Professor Paul Heyer, it helped to spark the wave of disaster films that included The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Heyer comments that it "still stands as the definitive cinematic telling of the story and the prototype and finest example of the disaster-film genre." On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a "certified fresh" score of 100% based on 20 reviews with an average score of 8.71/10. It is considered "the best Titanic film before Titanic " and "the most accurate of all Titanic films" and "the definitive Titanic tale", especially for its social realism, reflecting, in the words of one critic, "the overwhelming historical evidence that the class rigidity of 1912, for all its defects, produced a genuine sense of behavioural obligation on the Titanic among rich and poor alike; that the greatest number of people aboard faced death or hardship with a stoic and selfless grace that the world has wondered at for most of this century."

Home video

A Night to Remember is one of the Criterion Collection's early titles. A high definition upgrade of the DVD and a Blu-ray edition were released on 27 March 2012 to commemorate the centennial of the sinking.