Books2Movies Club discussion

On this day, 15th April 1912, RMS Titanic sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, after most unluckily colliding with an huge iceberg that was surprisingly enough floating somewhere north in the Atlantic Ocean. That was one of deadliest maritime tragedies happened during the peacetime, that caused the deaths of 1,514 unfortunate souls, most of which hoped to find happiness in the New World. But more about it would be better to read on www.history.com. Or on Wikipedia, if you like it more.

What made that event more ominous, is the existence of a novella, Futility or the Wreck of the Titan by Morgan Robertson that depicts the events strikingly similar to the sinking of Titanic, but written fourteen years before. That fact I always found disturbing, but I didn't manage to find any explanations whatsoever regarding that, so I've put that aside as a pure coincidence.

There are two books that give an proper account of the tragedy, A Night to Remember with its sequel The Night Lives on by the same author. Of course, many other books emerged with the discovery of the wreck of Titanic in 1985, of which the most prominent are, I guess, the founder’s, Robert D. Ballard’s The Discovery of the Titanic and John P. Eaton’s Titanic: Triumph and Tragedy. On the other hand, Robin Gardiner chose to elaborate in his books a conspiracy, that the wreck found wasn’t of Titanic, but actually of the RMS Olympic. Well, let’s just say, to each his own…

Digging in the today’s popcorn culture, there are a couple of novels – and movies, but about them later - that are in some way connected with these above mentioned events, Clive Cussler’s Raise The Titanic!, Arthur C. Clarke’s The Ghost From The Grand Banks, Beryl Bainbridge’s Every Man for Himself and Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic. I am sure there are many more, but those are the most famous – again, that would be my guess. If you think there are others also noteworthy, please do not hesitate to mention them.

Now – movies! Oh many of them. There is a full list of them on Wikipedia, so I will list only the most famous, that might be even manageable to find. That heartthrob of Titanic (1997) that got now a 3D make-over is the most famous, I imagine. I personally couldn’t ever understand such an ending - not that I expected that the ship would survive the collision – I talk about the other ending (view spoiler)[Jack’s – wasn’t that wooden board large enough to save both of them??? (hide spoiler)]. Beside the movie, James Cameron made a documentary about Titanic, Ghosts of the Abyss (2003).
The movie that is still praised as the most accurate one is A Night to Remember (1958), based on the above mentioned Walter Lord’s book, of course. Another not really accurate movie, S.O.S. Titanic (1979) was nominated for Emmy.
A minor role Titanic got in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981), although I do not recall that moment – such a lousy fan of the movie I am. Made for TV, Titanic (1996) features Peter Gallagher, George C. Scott and Catherine Zeta-Jones in main roles.
As usually goes with Hollywood and its counterparts abroad, there are two productions that recreate the Titanic disaster in detail this year, in honour to its hundredth anniversary. The first is the British one, a lavish four-part TV miniseries made by Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey. The second is still to be aired, Titanic: Blood and Steel, a 12-part TV series, in which the most famous actors are Derek Jacobi, Liam Cunningham, Neve Campbell and Chris Noth.

Well. That would be all I have to say about the subject. And that was way too much, I believe, sorry – I feel somewhat ill today, and this I considered a time spent better in writing than in venting on my irritation on the family members... Now I might calmly go to the bed ;)