(Part of the unconditioned response: “Titanic Weekend”!)
It’s Titanic disaster movies all day on TCM, so now they’re showing the classic 1950s Titanic-sinking drama: A Night to Remember, directed by that guy who made so many awesome Hammer Horror movies later in his career. (Hey, you can’t always make cheap horror, right? Sometimes, you’ve just got to bite the bullet and make A-level blockbusters whether you like it or not! Just ask James Cameron! But in fact, I much prefer his Hammer movies to this, although this is extremely well-made, and is probably the definitive Titanic-sinking movie for most of the historians I keep in my basement.) But while this movie shows rich passengers living the high-life until the ship sinks, was it really “a night to remember” for everyone else? What about the steerage passengers? What about the crew? Especially for the ones who went down with the ship, was this “a night to remember” for them? (Or would they rather have forgotten it?)
This movie just seems classist, doesn’t it? What about the poor people: don’t they matter? Or if they died, wouldn’t we cry: “Oh, the humanity!”? Maybe they couldn’t be sure, so they erred on the side of wealth! But in this election year’s “class warfare” issue, occurring as it does, coincidentally, on the centenary of the Titanic’s sinking, shouldn’t someone level the playing field with a movie about the other people on board? Even James Cameron’s popular classic Titanic focuses on the 1%’ers, and merely gives us one measly scamp as an identification-figure, hoping the vicarious hob-nobbing with the gentry would be enough for us low-class peasants! But where’s the Titanic movie for all of us who were not fooled by all the luxurious temptations of this scenario, but rather, pined for their comeuppance? Well, perhaps watching the rich people all drown would be a night to remember for them, but the true proletariat would prefer to see a bona-fide working-class drama, full of trials and tribulation, showing that life isn’t simply some fattening buffet of all-you-can-eat pleasures and indulgences, but rather, is something one must work for and earn! (And that sometimes is completely unrewarding to boot!) That’s why I propose the following Titanic disaster movie for the rest of us: A Night to Forget!
Yes, while the rich are all condemning themselves to hell with all their vices and easy living, this movie would show the steerage passengers getting seasick and forbidden to go where they wished, working hard against all odds and failing again and again, hoping against hope that something, anything, would allay their suffering! And then this movie would show the wait staff and housekeeping crew of the Titanic being pushed around and insulted by the Richie Rich-types on board, and having work get in the way of their love lives, etc., until they wished for something to make it all stop and spare them from the ignominy of it all! And then, of course, the Titanic strikes the iceberg, but rather than being a panicked tragedy, this part of the movie plays out like a great reckoning, with all the rich jerks finally getting their comeuppance, and cowering impotently like scaredy-cats, while the poor man finally gets the upper hand, even if only for a few seconds before they all drown, saying: “I wish I could forget this night ever happened!” before saying their final: “Blub, blub!”
But then again, I doubt anyone would pay to see that. So let’s go watch the rich have their trivial problems again in the new version of Titanic, coming soon to a theater near you (someday. Hey: it’s a proven property! All they have to do is remake it again, and: Cha-Ching! {Cash register sound effect.})!
Here’s the Wikipedia page for A Night to Remember (the movie that was once the most famous Titanic movie of them all, but is now largely forgotten due to James Cameron, the swine! {I am joking about the “swine” comment, but the rest is true.}):
