Rate the three Titanic films

A Night to Remember for the accuracy. The 1953 film has a better fictional storyline than the 1997 film but I'll go with the 97 one because of the sets and special effects. Combine those sets with the script for ANTR and we will have a perfect Titanic film.

The 53 film and Cameron's share a lot in common. A Night to Remember is very different, and while it has its qualities, it is too procedural. There is no heart or feeling. The lack of panic and danger to it are kind of alarming, and so for that reason I'd put it last. I'd have the '53 film second, and Cameron's first. Historical accuracy is less important to me in this instance than capturing a reality, and the 97 movie did that like no other.

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"A Night to Remember" is a good, straight forward recount, without too much emotion and histrionics.

I would like to see a movie based on the sinking of the Awa Maru, which claimed twice as many lives, in an illegal torpedoing of a Red Cross hospital ship during WWII, by an American submarine — only one person survived, he was having a smoke on deck when the ship was blown to bits.

The Titanic is overblown in our history, simply because a lot of rich people died, boo-hoo.

The Awa Maru took 4,000 doctors and nurses and wounded soldiers to the bottom of the sea, and reportedly about 5 billion dollars worth of gold, and the bones of the Peking Man.

I have read the entirety of the comments made so far in this long string. Here is my view of this.

First, I have not seen the 1953 movie but will look for a decently priced copy on the web to acquire and view. From what most have said so far about it, I most likely will like it pretty well if not enthusiastically.

Second, "A Night to Remember" is wonderfully done and about as faithful to the riveting Walter Lord book as a movie could be and still be dramatically engaging, which it is.

Third, "Titanic" (1997), a completely stunning cavalcade of special effects combined, as others have concluded, with a sappy, dinky, and juvenile love story, an often mediocre script, and some two-dimensional characterizations that combine to diminish what could have been the best movie ever made. As has been said or implied by others, if the approach in "A Night to Remember" could have been combined with the special effects of "Titanic," a truly titanic motion picture would have resulted.

(Also, it is good to keep in mind that a movie set in 1912 is old enough to be considered a "costume drama," which not infrequently is done with loose or nonexistent care for the history, when the movie is presenting a version of an historical event, or is poorly to wretchedly handled in bringing a good or great novel to the screen (e.g., 1940 "Pride and Prejudice," a mangling of the novel and the period even worse, if more benign and sprightly, than the 1995 awfulness.)

I agree with you.

Whatever anyone's feelings are about "Titanic" (1997) it remains one of the profoundest love stories ever told. Shakespeare himself would swoon had he seen it.