Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

ags123 The best Titanic film is undoubtedly 1958's "A Night To Remember," particularly for its more realistic depiction of events, but 1953's "Titanic," while fictionalized, focuses on the human drama. The climactic father/son reckoning is far more moving than the maudlin Rose/Jack story in James Cameron's overblown 1997 extravaganza. This version better conveys the era of the voyage and spends less time on special effects of people drowning. Barbara Stanwyck looks like a John Singer Sargent portrait, whether donning an elegant evening gown or dripping in fur. She never looked better. And who can resist a movie with the inimitable Thelma Ritter?

Leofwine_draca One of the three big Titanic films made over the years, alongside A NIGHT TO REMEMBER and James Cameron's TITANIC. TITANIC (1953) loses points for being more than a little dated. Instead of focusing on the nitty-gritty details of the famous disaster, for much of the running time TITANIC is content to offer turgid melodrama and worst of all, romance. It's hardly gripping stuff.The viewer is required to wait a full two thirds of the running time before we get on with the disaster itself. When it finally takes place, it's admittedly exciting, shocking, and moving as you could hope for, but it's that first hour which really tests the patience. The likes of Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Wagner are fine actors, but you're not watching to see the husband and wife bickering or to watch the young guy fall in love. You're here for the disaster, and everything else feels like a distraction. This is why A NIGHT TO REMEMBER remains my all-time favourite retelling of the Titanic story.

MARIO GAUCI Knowing that the definitive cinematic depiction of the tragic events – Roy Ward Baker's A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958) – was only a few years away, always seemed to me an indication that this major Hollywood studio version was a redundant production. It has been shown a few times on Italian TV over the years but I never bothered with it, and I had even recorded it on VHS off a Saturday night local TV screening; seeing it being given the prestigious "Fox Studio Classics" treatment on DVD made me prick up my ears somewhat (though still not enough for me to purchase a copy!) but, chancing upon it as a DVD rental, I eventually relented. Still, it has taken this month-long Oscar marathon to arrive at an actual viewing; incidentally, this is now the fifth screen retelling of the historical nautical disaster that I have gotten under my belt: apart from the aforementioned British classic, there were the archaic Atlantic (1929), the propagandist 1943 German version, S.O.S. TITANIC (1979; TV) and the undeservedly Oscar-laden 1997 romance. Tellingly, while this version of TITANIC did emerge an Oscar winner, it was not in the expected Special Visual Effects category – for which George Pal's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS was the sole nominee and eventual winner that year – but the soap opera-like screenplay courtesy of producer Charles Brackett (Billy Wilder's former collaborator), Walter Reisch and Richard L. Breen! Learning that Vincente Minnelli's THE BAND WAGON and Anthony Mann's THE NAKED SPUR were also competing in that category, makes TITANIC's win all the more ludicrous (the Leslie Halliwell Film Guide opines that it was "an excellent example of studio production is squandered on a dim script which arouses no excitement"!); for the record, the film also received a deserving Oscar nod for its production design and director Negulesco an unaccountable one for the Director's Guild Award. Indeed the all-important shipwreck takes up less than a third of the film's typically lean 98-minute running-time and, for the previous hour-plus, we are regrettably treated to the class- conscious disintegrating marriage between "common" Barbara Stanwyck and snobbish Clifton Webb and the blooming romance between 'common' Robert Wagner and snobbish Audrey Dalton (the legitimate offspring of the Stanwyck-Webb union – there is also much eye-rolling emoting over the younger son's attachment to a father who has chosen to disown him!). A measure of the film's ickiness is having the latter repeatedly calling her father "angel"(!) and the former teaching his newfound girlfriend the newest American dance craze "The Navajo Rag"! Apart from the obligatory lush production values, what remains to tickle the viewer's flagging interest is the fine cast assembled to impersonate the fated vessel's crew (stolid captain Brian Aherne and concerned second officer Edmund Purdom – who is surprisingly uncredited despite the amount of screen time and the importance of his role!) and passenger list (defrocked alcoholic priest Richard Basehart, indomitable Molly Brown stand-in Thelma Ritter and cowardly cad Allyn Joslyn); the film's concluding morose statistical narration is provided by a similarly unacknowledged Michael Rennie.

ObieReturns The special effects are lacking compared to the superior, more finely detailed A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, but it's the snappy dialogue and superb performances by Stanwyck, Webb and Thelma Ritter that keep this soap- opera-at-sea afloat. Story-wise, it's superior to James Cameron's version. Stanwyck is Julia Sturges, a socialite wife on the lam from her controlling husband Richard, played to prissy perfection by Clifton Webb. She has decided to take their children, Annette and Norman (the Liz Taylor clone Audrey Dalton and an uncredited Harper Carter) back to America, as she has grown weary of the international social circuit she has married into. Richard follows her, but can only get a third class ticket (one of the films many inaccuracies), and sneaks into first class to force Julia's hand and bring his family back to Europe, where he can hopefully marry his daughter off to a titled nobleman. He manages to convince his daughter to return with him once the ship docks in New York, but before he can do the same with his son, Julia has a "high trump" that she plays to chilling effect, that will change all of their lives forever. Of course, the ship sinks before the chips can fall, but I like how the tension builds toward that moment in their cabin before they head down to the captain's table for dinner. Stanwyck plays it for all that its worth as only she can – bitter, world-weary and sad. Thelma Ritter is Maud Young, a character clearly based on the real-life Molly Brown who sailed onboard the real ship. She's a loud, brassy, slightly vulgar delight as she challenges the male passengers to a marathon poker game that only ends when the ship makes that infamous rendezvous with a certain iceberg. Also sailing with them is Robert Wagner as Giff Rogers, a healthy corn-fed All-American college student who falls for Annette. Brian Aherne is a rather dapper Captain Smith, Edmund Purdom (a Fox contract player best known for THE Egyptian) is the Second Officer Lightoller. Director Jean Negulesco maintains a proper amount of drama, humor and tension, but the screenplay by Frances Hackett and Albert Goodrich, despite its snarky dialogue, plays fast and loose with the facts of the disaster in the name of those aforementioned elements.