A Transatlantic Tragedy on Film--A Night to Remember (1958)

We've all had the experience of tuning in to our favorite channel, intending to quickly turn our attention to more pressing things, and instead get sucked in for the duration. That is what happened to me recently when TCM was airing A Night to Remember, a movie I'd never seen. When I tuned in, the Titanic had just impacted the iceberg, and I was hooked almost immediately. I couldn't wait until the film popped up on TCM's streaming platform so I could watch from the beginning. After that, I knew I had my subject for the Classic Movie Blog Association's Tearjerker Blogathon. 

A Night to Remember (1958)
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Starring: Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, David McCallum,
and a deep ensemble cast

Fans of James Cameron's blockbuster Titanic (1997) will inevitably draw comparisons. While Cameron's film is glossy, huge, extra-long, and melodramatic, A Night to Remember is none of those things. It's actually better.

Made by England's Rank Organisation, the source is the book of the same name by American author and historian Walter Lord, who brought the tragedy vividly to life for a new generation, based on interviews with dozens of survivors. The screenwriter was Eric Ambler, a thriller specialist who penned hits like Oliver Twist, Topkapi, and a smattering of 1940s noir including The Mask of Dimitrios and Journey into Fear. 

Ambler's script weaves several narrative threads illustrating challenges confronting various groups of characters: the men running the ship: Captain Smith (Laurence Naismith), Second Officer Charles Lightoller (Kenneth More) and other crew; the telegraph operators Jack Phillips (Kenneth Griffith) and Harold Bride (David McCallum); many of the notable wealthy passengers: "unsinkable" Molly Brown (Tucker McGuire), Benjamin Guggenheim (Harold Goldblatt), and Isidor and Ida Straus (Meier Tzelniker and Helen Misener); White Star Line Chief J. Bruce Ismay (Frank Lawton); Titanic architect Thomas Andrews (Michael Goodliffe); the chief baker (George Rose), drunk for comic relief; and fictionalized characters from all levels of the ship: a newlywed couple, a group of Irish passengers in steerage looking to escape the sinking ship, the stokers and other workers at the ships engines, and a family with three young children. Importantly, the script jumps between the events unfolding on the Titanic and the drama taking place on the neighboring ship Carpathia, whose Captain Rostron (Anthony Bushell) jumped into action to rescue those survivors who managed to get into lifeboats, and the closer Californian, whose crew tragically ignored (or missed) wires and flares from Titanic.

Kenneth Griffith (left) and David McCallum as telegraph operators Phillips and Bride
grow increasingly concerned as their distress calls go unheeded. (Bride survived,
Phillips didn't.)

The production is astonishing. Sets meticulously recreated the Titanic’s interiors, and apparently the costumes are also spot-on, with no trace of 1950s sensibilities overlaid on Edwardian fashions. The choice of black-and-white cinematography enhanced the feeling of peering through a portal to a much earlier time. I loved how the camera (or the sets) swayed gently back and forth to create the illusion of being on the sea. 

Kenneth More (center) is seen with the smoking room in the background. Every
architectural detail is authentic to the extent possible through meticulous research.

I've always been moved by the power of repressed emotion. For example, two more recently made movies that hit me hard were understated: The Winslow Boy (1999) and Brokeback Mountain (2005).  A Night to Remember fits that mold, as it is a film deeply rooted in mid-century "stiff-upper-lip" British sensibility. And the fact that the script touches on the experiences of so many of the thousands involved in the tragedy keeps one from getting too invested in a single storyline or relationship (a la Jack and Rose in the Cameron film); the film's devastating effect comes from a series of "small cuts" that require top-notch acting to be cumulatively effective. 

Through this lens of short, understated moments, I found a few scenes especially moving. A father (John Merivale), made aware of the ship's fate, arranges to get his wife (Honor Blackman) and three children to safety while hiding from them his knowledge that he will never see them again. In one scene, he gently places what looks like an heirloom necklace around his wife's neck before waking the children. A bit later, the camera captures him looking on in devastation as he is about to pass his sleeping son to safety in the lifeboats with his wife and daughters. And then he manages to smile at them while waving so they don't see his fear. While fictional, these characters represent the fate of many families as detailed by survivors in Lord's book.

In a tender scene, Mr. Lucas (John Merivale) places a precious necklace
around his wife's (Honor Blackman) neck.

Lucas (Merivale) about to pass his sleeping son into a lifeboat.

I found the scene of the ship's band playing "Nearer My God to Thee" a gut punch, especially when the camera focused on solemn passengers in lifeboats listening to the music while the ship sank deeper into the Atlantic.

Cellist (actor unknown) sings "Nearer My God To Thee" 

There are a series of short scenes near the end featuring a young child who has become separated from his mother amidst the chaos on the top decks. An older man scoops him up, comforting him, repeating that they will find the lad's mother, all while it is all too apparent they will not escape the sinking. Thinking about how that man's last act was a selfless one brings a lump to my throat even as I write this.

A little boy cries out for his mother (John Martin?--I was unable to confirm the actor's identity).

Finally, our hero has a moment: Kenneth More as Lightoller lets tears fill his eyes only in the film's penultimate scene, as survivors aboard the Carpathia gather for a solemn prayer service. Considering that we got closer to him, as the "main" character, than anyone else, this payoff, however restrained, is earned.

Lightoller (Kenneth More, center) is shown to fight back tears aboard the Carpathia.

There is a bit of comic relief as chief baker Joughin (George Rose) progressively
gets himself drunk as the flooding waves lap close to his cabin door. Apparently this
really happened, and Joughin survived.

Captain Smith (Laurence Naismith) realizes his night, and his life, will soon be ending.

In addition to the deep, often surpressed, emotions of the characters as they deal with the inevitable, there is another level in which A Night to Remember can generate emotion, and that is in its asking viewers to reflect on the tragedy. Those scenes showing the heroism of individuals such as Lightoller and Captain Rostron of Carpathia, who demands in the middle of the night his ship immediately turn around to race to the aid of Titanic, or the film's final titles sharing the reforms made in passenger boat travel after the tragedy, serve this purpose. Additionally, the crazy arrogance that led to everyone thinking the ship was unsinkable and the decision not to stow enough lifeboats to accommodate all passengers are underscored, adding up to a powerful and truthful emotional experience. 

Finally, the film slyly but directly confronts the class distinctions and prejudices that contributed to disproportionate numbers of steerage passengers, mostly immigrants in search of better lives, perishing. 

Steerage passengers play "kick the ice block" while a first class couple looks on from above.

NY Times famed critic Bosley Crowther dropped his usual snark in favor of a sincere, favorable review, which highlighted how well the film asked viewers to consider the true nature of this tragedy:
"(the film) is given as fine and convincing an enactment as anyone could wish—or expect....it puts the story of the great disaster in simple human terms and yet brings it all into a drama of monumental unity and scope."

In summary, A Night to Remember is a film that trusts its audience to feel things without being told what to feel. It’s not the biggest or most expensive Titanic film, but it may be the most honest. And sometimes, that’s what makes a story unforgettable.

Watch the finale of the film (below) to experience a bit of what I've attempted to share here, and don't miss the many other terrific posts in the blogathon!