Titanic (1997)

Against expectations, the romantic epic and disaster film Titanic (1997), directed, written, co-produced and co-edited by James Cameron, became the highest-grossing film in the world and won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. The gigantic success transformed the young lead actors Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio into super stars. Young girls the world over idolised the two lovers bound for tragedy, and the film became a hype (remember Leo Mania?). From then on, everybody seemed either to love or hate the film. 20 years after the hype, Cameron's 3-hour epic is still a spectacularly emotional and visually stunning film.


French postcard by Salut. Photo: Paramount / Fox, 1998. Publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) with Kate Winslet.


German postcard by Sunburst Merchandising GmbH, Osnabrück / Ana Anakos AG, München. Photo: Paramount / Fox, 1998. Publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.


British postcard by Twentieth Century Fox / 7up, no. DD 2079A. Photo: Paramount / Fox. Publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The Heart of the Ocean

Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) tells the tale of the legendary ship Titanic on its first and last voyage, starting on 15 April 1912 at 2:20 in the morning. The film starts with a group searching the wreck of the RMS Titanic for treasures. They especially look for a necklace set with a valuable blue diamond called the Heart of the Ocean. Unsuccessful, they instead discover a drawing of a young woman wearing the Heart of the Ocean, dated the day the Titanic sank.

101-year-old Rose Dawson Calvert (Gloria Stuart) learns of the drawing on television, and contacts Lovett to inform him she is the woman in the drawing. She and her granddaughter Lizzy Calvert are flown to the boat where the search is being led to tell of what she remembers to help the search. When asked if she knew the whereabouts of the necklace, Rose Calvert recalls her memories aboard the Titanic, revealing for the first time that she was Rose DeWitt Bukater.

In 1912, the upper-class 17-year-old Rose (Kate Winslet) boards the Titanic in Southampton, Great Britain. She enters 'the most elegant ship in the world' together with her controlling fiance, Caledon Hockley (Billy Zane) and her desperate for money mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater (Francis Fisher).

Distraught and frustrated by her engagement, Rose attempts suicide by jumping from the stern. Before she leaps, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) intervenes who convinces her not to jump. Dawson and his best friend Fabrizio De Rossi have won third-class tickets to the ship in a poker game.

Jack and Rose strike up a tentative friendship as she thanks him for saving her life, and he shares stories of his adventures travelling and sketching. Their bond deepens when they leave a first-class formal dinner of the wealthy for a much livelier gathering of dancing, music and beer in third-class. After revealing their love for each other and wish to leave together when the ship docks, they then witness the ship's fatal collision with an iceberg and now must escape together.

Captain Smith was urged by the White Star Line Director to increase the speed of the ship so they would make the newspaper headlines and receive extra publicity by arriving in New York on Thursday night and not on Friday morning as planned. The Titanic had reports that the waters in the Atlantic they were sailing in were full of icebergs, but the captain ignored these warnings and proceeded at full speed. On 15 April 1912 at 11:39, an iceberg was sighted. The ship crew attempted to shut off the engines and turn the ship out of the path of the iceberg but there was not enough time and the ship hit the iceberg on the starboard side as depicted in the film.


Australian postcard by FX Entertainment Products, Sydney Photo: Paramount / Fox, 1998. Publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) with Kate Winslet and Billy Zane. Caption: "They call it 'Le Coeur de la Mer'."


Thai postcard by Starpics / Suwan Studio. Photo: Paramount / Fox. Publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) with Kate Winslet and Frances Fisher.


Vintage postcard. Photo: publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Why is Titanic a modern classic?

During the production of Titanic, perfectionist James Cameron went massively over time and budget, but this payed of well when it was clear he had managed what many had believed was impossible. Cameron had recreated a completely believable Titanic with accurate historical details. The sinking scenes are still amazing and horrific, as realistic as if you were there. Cameron respectfully shows what terror the victims went through that night. Titanic is both hunting and involving, filled with a wide range of deep feelings.

Cameron created the fictional love story to make sure that the public would remember those who lost their lives on the tragic voyage of the Titanic. The director weaved the historical details seamlessly around the fictional story of Jack and Rose. The audience sees the sinking of the Titanic primarily through their eyes. Cameron shows the various reactions to the crisis. Everyone reacts differently and Cameron gets his audience to contemplate of how they might have reacted in that situation, on the Titanic on that fateful night.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are excellent. Both show great charisma and their chemistry as a romantic couple works. DeCaprio and Winslet flying at the ship's front rail remains a gorgeous magic moment. Winslet is the centre of the film and holds the story together beautifully. Frances Fisher is perfect as her mother, the snobby aristocrat, who forces her daughter to become engaged to marry a rich, arrogant racist. One can feel the fear and loathing she feels every time she looks at Jack.

Also very good is Kathy Bates as 'the unsinkable' Molly Brown, a historical 'nouveau riche' from Denver, who is a lot less uptight than the other folk in the upperclass department. Brown was saved and later had medals made up for the crew of the Carpethia that picked the survivors of Titanic up from the water. Her ticket on the Titanic had cost over four-thousand dollars, but by the end of her life she ended up broke.

Titanic won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Original Song. Deservedly. The wonderful outfits and costuming were an excellent re-creation of the Post-Victorian era of 1912. All of the interiors of the ship were masterfully replicated down to the last pieces of china and silverware. The gymnasium, which is hardly seen in the film was recreated perfectly with all of the machines reproduced to match those seen in old photographs. James Horner's haunting score is also a key ingredient in the film's success. His music intensifies the emotions of the audience. Horner's love theme is still as beautiful as it is tragic.

Yes, Titanic (1997) is a modern classic, if you like it or not. Titanic became the first film to gross $1 billion, and stayed on the top of the box office charts for 12 years. Then it was kicked off the top by another James Cameron film, Avatar (2010). Over the years, it became somewhat fashionable to slag Titanic off, but just see it for yourself.


German postcard by Sunburst Merchandising GmbH, Osnabrück / Ana Anakos AG, München. Photo: Paramount / Fox, 1998. Publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.


German postcard by Sunburst Merchandising GmbH, Osnabrück / Ana Anakos AG, München. Photo: Paramount / Fox, 1998. Publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997).


German postcard by Sunburst Merchandising GmbH, Osnabrück / Ana Anakos AG, München. Photo: Paramount / Fox, 1998. Publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997).

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

Kate Winslet

Vivacious Kate Winslet (1975) is often seen as the best English-speaking film actress of her generation. The English actress and singer was the youngest person to acquire six Academy Award nominations, and won the Oscar for The Reader (2008).


Belgian postcard by P Magazine, no. 37 in the series 'De mooiste vrouwen van de eeuw' (the 100 most beautiful women of the century). Photo: Sante D'Orazio / Outline.


British postcard.

Heavenly Creatures

Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born Reading, England, in 1975. She is the second of four children of stage actors Sally Anne (née Bridges) and Roger John Winslet. Winslet began studying drama at the age of 11. The following year, she appeared in a television commercial for Sugar Puffs cereal, in which she danced opposite the Honey Monster.

Winslet's acting career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC children's science fiction serial Dark Season (Colin Cant, 1991). On the set, Winslet met Stephen Tredre, who was working as an assistant director. They would have a four-and-a-half-year relationship, and remained close after their separation in 1995. He died of bone cancer during the opening week of Titanic, causing her to miss the film's Los Angeles premiere to attend his funeral in London.

Her role in Dark Season was followed by appearances in the made-for-TV film Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (Diarmuid Lawrence, 1992), the sitcom Get Back (Graeme Harper, 1992), and an episode of the medical drama Casualty (Tom Cotter, 1993).

She made her film debut in the New Zealand drama film Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994). Winslet auditioned for the part of Juliet Hulme, an obsessive teenager in 1950s New Zealand who assists in the murder of the mother of her best friend, Pauline Parker (played by Melanie Lynskey). Winslet won the role over 175 other girls. The film included Winslet's singing debut, and her a cappella version of Sono Andati, an aria from La Bohème, was featured on the film's soundtrack.

The film opened to strong critical acclaim at the 51st Venice International Film Festival in 1994 and became one of the best-received films of the year. Winslet was awarded an Empire Award and a London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Actress of the Year.

Subsequently she played the second leading role of Marianne Dashwood in the Jane Austen adaptation Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995) featuring Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. The film became a financial and critical success, resulting in a worldwide box office total of $135 million and various awards for Winslet. She won both a BAFTA and a Screen Actors' Guild Award, and was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

In 1996, Winslet starred in Michael Winterbottom's Jude, based on the Victorian novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. She played Sue Bridehead, a young woman with suffragette leanings who falls in love with her cousin (Christopher Eccleston).

She then played Ophelia, Hamlet's drowned lover, in Kenneth Branagh's all star-cast film version of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1996).

In mid-1996, Winslet began filming James Cameron's Titanic (1997), alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. She was cast as the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat Rose DeWitt Bukater, who survives the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic. Against expectations, Titanic (1997) became the highest-grossing film in the world at the time and transformed Winslet into a commercial movie star.

Young girls the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet. Despite the enormous success of Titanic, Winslet next starred in two low-budget art-house films, Hideous Kinky (Gillies MacKinnon, 1998), and Holy Smoke! (Jane Campion, 1999).

In 1997, on the set of Hideous Kinky, Winslet met film director Jim Threapleton, whom she married in 1998. They have a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton (2000). Winslet and Threapleton divorced in 2001.


Vintage postcard. Photo: publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Since 2000, Kate Winslet's performances have continued to draw positive comments from film critics. She appeared in the period piece Quills (Philip Kaufman, 2000) with Geoffrey Rush and Joaquin Phoenix, inspired by the life and work of the Marquis de Sade. The actress was the first big name to back the film project, accepting the role of a chambermaid in the asylum and the courier of the Marquis' manuscripts to the underground publishers. Well received by critics, the film garnered numerous accolades for Winslet.

In Enigma (Michael Apted, 2001), she played a young woman who finds herself falling for a brilliant young World War II code breaker (Dougray Scott). She was five months pregnant at the time of the shoot, forcing some tricky camera work.

In the same year she appeared in Iris (Richard Eyre, 2001), portraying novelist Iris Murdoch. Winslet shared her role with Judi Dench, with both actresses portraying Murdoch at different phases of her life. Subsequently, each of them was nominated for an Academy Award the following year, earning Winslet her third nomination.

Also in 2001, she voiced the character Belle in the animation film Christmas Carol: The Movie, based on the Charles Dickens classic novel. For the film, Winslet recorded the song What If, which was a Europe-wide top ten hit.

Winslet began a relationship with director Sam Mendes in 2001, and she married him in 2003 on the island of Anguilla. Their son, Joe Alfie Winslet Mendes, was born in 2003 in New York City. In 2010, Winslet and Mendes announced their separation and divorced in 2011.

In the drama The Life of David Gale (Alan Parker, 2003), she played an ambitious journalist who interviews a death-sentenced professor (Kevin Spacey) in his final weeks before execution.

Next, Winslet appeared with Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004). In this neo-surrealistic indie-drama, she played Clementine Kruczynski, a chatty, spontaneous and somewhat neurotic woman, who decides to have all memories of her ex-boyfriend erased from her mind. The film was a critical and financial success and Winslet received rave reviews and her fourth Academy Award-nomination.

Finding Neverland (Marc Forster, 2004), is the story of Scottish writer J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) and his platonic relationship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Winslet), whose sons inspired him to pen the classic play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. The film received favourable reviews and became Winslet's highest-grossing film since Titanic.


British postcard by Heroes Publishing Ltd, London, no. SFC 3312.


British postcard by Anabas, Essex, no. AP647, 1998.

The Reader

In 2005, Kate Winslet played a satirical version of herself in an episode of the comedy series Extras by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. While dressed as a nun, she was portrayed giving phone sex tips to the romantically challenged character of Maggie. Her performance in the episode led to her first nomination for an Emmy Award.

In the musical romantic comedy Romance & Cigarettes (John Turturro, 2005), she played the slut Tula, and again Winslet was praised for her performance. In Todd Field's Little Children (2006), she played a bored housewife who has a torrid affair with a married neighbour (Patrick Wilson). Both her performance and the film received rave reviews. Again she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and at 31, became the youngest actress to ever garner five Oscar nominations.

Commercial successes were Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy The Holiday (2006), also starring Cameron Diaz, and the CG-animated Flushed Away (2006), in which she voiced Rita, a scavenging sewer rat who helps Roddy (Hugh Jackman) escape from the city of Ratropolis and return to his luxurious Kensington origins.

In 2007, Winslet reunited with Leonardo DiCaprio to film Revolutionary Road (2008), directed by her husband at the time, Sam Mendes. Portraying a couple in a failing marriage in the 1950s, DiCaprio and Winslet watched period videos promoting life in the suburbs to prepare themselves for the film. Winslet was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance, her seventh nomination from the Golden Globes.

Then she starred in the film adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008) featuring Ralph Fiennes and David Kross in supporting roles. Employing a German accent, Winslet portrayed a former Nazi concentration camp guard who has an affair with a teenager (Kross) who, as an adult, witnesses her war crimes trial. While the film garnered mixed reviews in general. The following year, she earned her sixth Academy Award nomination and went on to win the Best Actress award, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, a Screen Actors' Guild Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2011, Kate Winslet headlined in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, based on James M. Cain's 1941 novel and directed by Todd Haynes. She portrayed a self-sacrificing mother during the Great Depression who finds herself separated from her husband and falling in love with a new man (Guy Pearce), all the while trying to earn her narcissistic daughter's (Evan Rachel Wood) love and respect. This time, Winslet won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Roman Polanski's Carnage (2011) premiered at the 68th Venice Film Festival. The black comedy follows two sets of parents who meet up to talk after their children have been in a fight that day at school. Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz co-starred in the film.

In 2012, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In Jason Reitman's big screen adaptation of Joyce Maynard's novel Labor Day (2013), she starred with Josh Brolin and Tobey Maguire. Winslet received favourable reviews for her portrayal of Adele, a mentally fragile, repressed single mom of a 13-year-old son who gives shelter to an escaped prisoner during a long summer week-end. For her performance, Winslet earned her tenth Golden Globe nomination.

Next she appeared in the science fiction film Divergent (Neil Burger, 2014), as the bad antagonist Jeanine Matthews. It became one of the biggest commercial successes of her career. This year, Winslet also appeared alongside Matthias Schoenaerts in Alan Rickman's period drama A Little Chaos (2014) about rival landscape gardeners commissioned by Louis XIV to create a fountain at Versailles.

Next she can be seen in the crime-thriller Triple Nine (John Hillcoat, 2015), the sequel in the Divergent series: Insurgent (Robert Schwentke, 2015) and in The Dressmaker (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 2015).

Since 2012, Kate Winslet is married to Ned Rocknroll, a nephew of Richard Branson. The couple has a son, Bear Blaze Winslet. They live in West Sussex.


Kate Winslet sings What If. Official Music Video. Source: Chris Horton Productions (YouTube).


Trailer for The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008). Source: Associated Press (YouTube).

Sources: Tom Ryan (Encyclopedia of British Film), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.