A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958) ** Would you set fire to your fine straw hat to gain attention from a passing ship after the Titanic had sunk? Nearly one hundred years later most of the questions have been asked and answered, and the biggest ones ignored. How can anyone have countenanced social class stratification after this? In cinematic terms the most interesting thing about it is picking out the scenes lifted by James Cameron, to be used to greater effect in the infinitely more compelling Titanic. What was once an all-star cast hardly glimmers as a bunch of no-names fifty years on, only Kenneth More has enough lines to salvage mainstream immortality here and he goes down with the ship, poetically speaking. Somehow misses the extraordinary scale of the disaster, the incredible arrogance to led to it, the miserable idiocy that botched the rescue, the greatness of a few individuals, and the metaphorical possibilities presented by the band. Of course in a world where skyskrapers are run down by jet planes, and single warheads endanger millions of people, it's difficult to get too upset about a boat sinking unless you really think about it. Maybe they should do a peripheral: "Vampires, Warlocks, and Aliens on the Titanic," or what great figures in history would have done-you know, people like Diogenes, and Marlon Brando, and James Bond...it's enough to make you think Hermann Hesse had it right, but that "Das Glaspelenspiel" is being used by Hollywood insiders as a formula for dilution and homogenization.
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