Titanic

Titanic, American romantic adventure film, released in 1997, that centers on the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The film proved immensely popular, holding the all-time box-office gross record for more than a decade after its release.

The film begins with the robotic exploration of the Titanic’s wreckage by treasure hunters who hope to locate a fabled massive blue diamond, known as the Heart of the Ocean, that was supposedly lost when the ship sank. They recover a safe that contains some papers, including a drawing of a nude woman wearing a necklace with the gem in it. After the illustration is aired on television, the team is contacted by an old woman (played by Gloria Stuart) who tells them that she is the one depicted in the drawing, Rose DeWitt Bukater, thought to have died in the accident. Hoping that she can help them find the jewel, the treasure hunters bring Rose to their expedition ship. Most of the film’s story is then told in flashbacks as she recounts the Titanic’s fateful 1912 voyage.

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Upper-class Rose (now played by Kate Winslet) boards the ship with her mother (Frances Fisher) and her well-to-do fiancé, Cal (Billy Zane), whom she is marrying for financial reasons. Distraught by the pressure of her arranged marriage, Rose contemplates suicide on the ship’s stern. She is talked down by third-class passenger Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a handsome but penniless artist. Over the course of the voyage, she becomes increasingly attracted to Jack. Meeting in secret, Rose asks him to draw her wearing the Heart of the Ocean necklace, which was a gift from Cal. Rose and Jack subsequently make love, and Rose tells Jack that she will go with him once the ship docks. Later that night, however, they witness the Titanic’s fatal impact with an iceberg.

As the ship begins to sink, the couple seeks out Rose’s mother and Cal, who has discovered Rose’s romantic entanglement. He frames Jack for theft by having the necklace placed in Jack’s coat pocket. Jack is arrested, and Cal later puts the necklace in his own pocket. Though she initially hesitates, Rose comes to believe Jack’s claims of innocence, and she eventually finds him in the master-of-arms’ office, handcuffed around a pipe. Using an axe, she is able to free him as water floods the room. The lower-deck gates are locked, but Jack helps break down the one trapping them. He and Rose return to the upper deck, where Rose is placed in a lifeboat by Cal, who wraps his jacket around her—still containing the necklace. Cal lies to her, saying Jack will be able to leave the Titanic safely, but she refuses to leave Jack behind and jumps back onto the ship. Cal chases them in a jealous rage but eventually gives up to board a lifeboat, using a crying child as an excuse for passage. Rose and Jack are left on the ship as it breaks apart and sinks, the lifeboats having all been launched. Jack helps Rose onto a floating piece of the wreckage so that she can later be rescued by a returning lifeboat, while he himself dies of hypothermia. Onboard the Carpathia, the ship that rescued Titanic’s survivors, she adopts the name “Rose Dawson” and discovers the necklace in Cal’s jacket. The film returns to the present day, and centenarian Rose is revealed to still have the jewel in her possession. Her story told, she drops the famous necklace into the ocean.

Though much of the film’s plot deals with the fictional romance between Rose and Jack, writer/director James Cameron put a great deal of work into the historical accuracy of the sets and story. Many real-life figures are featured throughout the film, including Capt. Edward J. Smith (Bernard Hill), J. Bruce Ismay (Jonathan Hyde), and “Unsinkable” Molly Brown (Kathy Bates), and actual underwater footage of the wreck was used for the opening scenes. Cameron himself went on several dives to explore the sunken ship, and he designed an almost-to-scale replica of the Titanic for the film’s production. At the time of its production, Titanic was the most expensive film ever made, costing some $200 million. However, it recouped its expenses several times over. The film was somewhat of a phenomenon, especially among teenage girls and young women enamored with DiCaprio, and the media widely reported on instances of individuals seeing the movie dozens of times in the theater.

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Titanic was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, tying the record set by All About Eve (1950), and it won 11, equaling the record set by Ben-Hur (1959), which was later matched by Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). In addition to winning Oscars for best picture and director, Titanic also received an Academy Award for the song “My Heart Will Go On,” performed by Céline Dion. A 3-D version of the film was released in 2012, shortly before the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking.