Question: I know that scenes in this movie weren't filmed in chronological order. Which scene was the first one to be shot and which scene was the last one to be shot?
raywest
16th Jan 2024
Titanic (1997)
3rd Jul 2023
Titanic (1997)
Question: When Jack and Rose encounter Thomas Andrews in the smoking room, he gives Rose a life jacket and says, "Good luck to you, Rose." Does he not really care whether Jack lives or dies? Why not wish them both good luck?
Answer: Would add to the other accurate answer that Andrews would have little concern about Jack because he is a male third-class passenger. It's unlikely he knew about Jack and Rose's romance. Andrews also knows there are not enough lifeboats, and women and the first-class passengers will get top priority in leaving the ship. He would consider Jack's fate already sealed, while Rose can be saved.
21st Jun 2022
Titanic (1997)
Question: How can Jack carry around a case of drawings without them rubbing together, and smudging the graphite or charcoal? Many modern artists will spray those mediums with hairspray or art fixative, but I don't think those were available in 1912.
Answer: Artists at that time could use fixatives to protect graphite or charcoal drawings. I had a small foldable metal sprayer for my drawings. The small metal tube is inserted into a bottle of fixative. The hinged top of the sprayer is bent at a 45-degree angle. As the liquid is wicked up through the tube, you blow through the bent part and it sprays the fixative onto the paper. It's a little hard to explain, but it works. There were also hand-pumped misting sprayers and atomizers (like the old-fashioned perfume bottles). Artists made their own fixative with shellac and isopropyl alcohol and also used clear casein (made from diluted egg whites) to paint over drawings.
15th Mar 2022
Titanic (1997)
Question: Is this true that Kate Winslet almost drowned when working on this movie?
14th Feb 2022
Titanic (1997)
3rd Feb 2022
Titanic (1997)
Question: Does anyone know if during filming the cargo hold scenes, did they use a real Renault car or was it just a prop made to look like one?
Answer: Online sources indicate that the 1912 Renault Type CB Coupe de Ville seen in the film was an exact replica vehicle that James Cameron had specially built. It is a copy of the one that was known to be in the Titanic's cargo hold.
26th Nov 2021
Titanic (1997)
Question: Pardon me for asking a "what if" question, but this confuses me: what did Rose intend to do *before* the ship sunk? She had changed her mind about Jack, choosing him instead of Cal. However, she and her mother needed the security from Cal. They were in debt. Jack was poor. If Rose married Jack, Cal and his family would be offended by the broken engagement. They would not help Rose's mother. Would Rose just marry Jack and abandon her financially-burdened mother in New York?
Answer: Rose was strong-minded and determined but was thinking "in the moment" and had no real plan or idea about what to do if she'd left with Jack, had he survived. It's unknown if they would have stayed together and married. Rose had only told Jack she was going with him. At some point she might reconnect with her mother. Cal Hoxley probably would be so humiliated by Rose deserting him for a penniless artist, that he would have hushed it up and invented some story about the broken engagement. He likely had already paid off the DeWitt Bukater debts to clean-up any lingering complications or embarrassments before marrying Rose. He probably would also have made some minimal financial arrangement for Ruth, not from compassion but for appearances sake. As we saw, Rose faired quite well on her own once she did escape Cal and her mother.
Answer: Due to historical times, the "love birds" may have lucked out (had they survived). They would not have known WWI would start in 1914 (two years after the Titanic sank), but they would have hoped that their financial situation improved. Women were needed in the labor force.
Answer: That was her plan, assuming she would have been able to follow through with it. This would have left her mother high and dry, but that didn't seem to be a very big concern for her. However, in reality, between Cal, Lovejoy, and Ruth, Rose would find it very hard to even see Jack, much less marry him, if the Titanic had made it to New York in one piece. Women had very few legal rights in 1912, so once the marriage was performed, Cal could pretty much keep her imprisoned, for all intents and purposes, and Jack could do nothing about it, even if he wasn't a penniless vagrant...which he was.
Your last statement about Cal pretty much being able to keep Rose imprisoned has no factual basis. Women still had many legal rights, and while some states had more liberal divorce laws, by 1915, 1 in 7 marriages ended in divorce. By the 1920's, it had risen to 15%. Not to mention that in 1917, New York had given women full suffrage.
"Imprisonment" might be too strong of a word to use, but cultural norms at the time (such as those regarding marriage, the role of the wife/ homemaker, and divorce - taboo) didn't give women much freedom. Divorce statistics are notoriously inaccurate and, depending on the method used to calculate the number, percent, or rate, different figures are derived. Instead of 15%, the RATE of divorce (per 1000 PEOPLE) was 1.7 in the 1920s. Women's suffrage is hardly an indication of freedom, rights, or equality. [Just think how "effective" the 14th Amendment (1868) was in granting equal legal and civil rights.].
Regardless of any restrictions on "married" women, Rose was not yet wed to Cal. They were only engaged, and he had no legal right to impose anything on her at that point. If Rose wanted to walk off the ship with Jack, there was nothing Cal or her mother could legally do to stop her. If they tried to interfere, Rose could have the ship's officers or the White Star Line's personnel intervene.
19th Jul 2021
Titanic (1997)
Question: Rose and her mother need the financial security from Rose's marriage to Cal. What were they probably expecting after the wedding? Was Cal aware of Rose's father's debt? Did they think he would pay it off, or did they hope he would never find out? I would expect Cal, being from a stable, wealthy family, to have his choice of suitable (to him) women who did *not* come with the burden of debt.
Answer: Cal, who was quite rich and prominent, would have fully investigated the family's debts or other concerns. To avoid any social embarrassment, scandals, or lingering complications, he would likely pay off the remaining debts. Despite Cal's despicable character, he loves Rose, and that is the price of marrying her. In this era, women had many restrictions and few legal rights, so even as Cal's wife, Rose would have no direct access to her husband's money. She would probably receive a small monthly allowance and her expenditures would be closely monitored. Rose and her mother may not have had any money, but they are socially prominent and respected, and that would be an asset to Cal.
17th Nov 2005
Titanic (1997)
Question: How did rats manage to get on board?
Chosen answer: During the several years it took to construct the ship probably, or in any of the supplies/food brought on board, or in the furniture brought on board. A single pregnant female rat can be responsible for thousands of rats in a very short space of time (the offspring are not too choosy about who they breed with).
A pregnant female rat could have made a home in a underneath a third class couch and had the other rats then all the females would have baby rats quickly.
8th Apr 2020
Titanic (1997)
Question: Would everyone have been saved if the lifeboats had been filled to capacity properly? Mr Andrews yells at one of the officers about the boats not being full and how they were tested with the weight of 70 men, so won't buckle under the weight of only 15 or 20 people. So since women and children don't weigh as much as men would, if they had filled the boats properly, would everyone have been saved in the actual tragedy?
Answer: Not everyone, no. Even with all the boats at full capacity they still couldn't hold all of them. It had 20 lifeboats in total that could carry a maximum of 1178 people, at full capacity. The ship was carrying 2208 people (passengers and crew). Even if you would cram as much people in them, you still couldn't fit them all in and there will be risk of sinking. The 2 major problems were that they measured lifeboat capacity in cubic meters rather than number of people, if the ship was in full lifeboat capacity (64 instead of only 20) it could take everybody twice over. Secondly it wasn't considered necessary according to the safety regulations to have more lifeboats because of the tonnage of the ship, regulations that maxed ships at 10,000 tons (whilst the Titanic was over 46,000 tons). Eventually only 710 people were saved, because of incompetent evacuation procedures and panic. Almost all first and second class women and children were saved, third class and crew were not so lucky.
Answer: In a word, no. More lives would have been saved, but as an earlier scene points out (and accurately reflects what happened in real life), there was only enough lifeboat capacity for roughly half the people onboard, even if they were filled to capacity.
Answer: There were not enough life boats for all passengers, and it was because it was never believed everyone needed to be in them at once during an emergency. While it's true that cruise lines didn't want too many boats blocking passengers' view, their intended use was to ferry passengers in turn from a stricken vessel to a rescue ship. After the disaster, new maritime regulations were enacted, including enough lifeboats for all passengers.
Answer: Also, even if there were enough boats, there was not enough time to get all the boats filled and lowered.
Yes there was. It took over 2 hours for Titanic to sink. Plenty of time to get everyone on the lifeboats, if they had known the urgency.
In one of James Cameron's documentaries that he did after making the movie, they timed him lowering a lifeboat, and it took him twenty minutes to get it swung out and lowered while it was empty. Add additional time to actually fill them would bring launching one to at least 30 minutes. So no, even if they had enough lifeboats, there wouldn't have been time to launch them all. They didn't even launch all the ones that they did have.
They weren't launched one by one, you know.
25th Feb 2019
Titanic (1997)
Question: Over the course of the film we learn all the middle portion of Rose's life, but how did she get through life without any paperwork such as a birth certificate? Getting married, driving/flying, all need documentation the "renamed" version of herself wouldn't have.
Answer: Record keeping at the turn of the 20th century was still incomplete and inaccurate. Many people were born without a birth certificate being issued. Tens of thousands of immigrants entering the country often lacked those types of papers, and many had their surnames changed when they arrived. It was also much easier to get alternate documentation to prove one's identity or, in certain situations, may not have required proof, as it does now.
5th Apr 2004
Titanic (1997)
28th May 2011
Titanic (1997)
Question: When Cal goes down to where the Steerage passengers from the Titanic are, on the Carpathia, is he looking for Rose? And if he is, then 1) how does he know she is alive?, and 2) why would he care if she was, considering he got angry because she chose Jack over him, and had attempted to kill them whilst still on the Titanic?
Answer: He was going down there on the off-chance that she was alive, and probably looking in steerage in particular, because he was anticipating that if she had survived alongside Jack, then they would, together, have boarded the Carpathia as steerage passengers. And that if Jack were in fact dead, he might be able to 'reclaim' her.
Answer: Cal was looking for Rose simply to recover his precious Heart of the Ocean.
I think he wanted Rose back, partially because of pride. He still felt a need to "win" by keeping her. As he said to Jack: "I always win...one way or another." If he could find Rose and still marry her, then the deceased Jack would "lose" after all. Also, Cal is a wealthy, upper-class man with a certain social image. Proceeding with the wedding would be ideal.
Answer: Cal was looking among the steerage survivors to see if Rose was among those who'd been rescued. If she was alive, he assumed (correctly) that she'd probably be there rather than with the first class passengers. Cal, despicable as he was, really did love Rose, and he'd still have wanted to marry her. He did not attempt to kill her while still on the Titanic. In the heat of the moment, he was aiming only for Jack, wanting to permanently eliminate his rival and reclaim his fiance.
Answer: He was hoping that she might still be alive because, as said in a commentary, he still had feelings for her. Because of this, maybe he was taking a chance on either them or just apologizing for his actions; you can be the judge.
15th Nov 2017
Titanic (1997)
Question: If Rose is recalling her story on the Titanic to everyone, it's one thing where the scenes involving Rose herself or anything she witnessed could be retold... but how is it all the rest of the scenes (not involving Rose) be shown accurately in her story when she was not there (other passengers, crewmen conversations, etc.)?
Answer: Of course, Rose couldn't possibly relate incidents and conversations that she didn't personally witness. Rose's story merely serves as a dramatic conduit by which the audience is transported back in time to experience the last days of the Titanic.
I read somewhere that the scenes that Rose didn't specifically witness may have been filled by other eye witnesses and recorded in the inquiry after the sinking. Eg: when the Captain is told by Ismay to light the remaining boilers to get into New York on Tuesday and surprise the press there is a women in the background drinking tea who glances up and towards the Captain and Ismay apparently over hearing the conversation. She could have survived and told the inquiry what she overheard.
Answer: While we can accept that the scenes involving Rose are accurate (or as accurate as can be after 85 years) the rest is just shown to be for entertainment purposes.
While parts are fictionalized, much of what was depicted in the movie was based on the recorded narratives of the Titanic survivors, both crew and passengers.
12th Aug 2017
Titanic (1997)
Question: Why did Rose want to commit suicide by attempting to jump off the ship?
Answer: Because she was so unhappy. She did not love Cal, nor did she want to marry him (her mother had pushed her into it because they were poor). Rose did not want a stultifying life as a "trophy" wife and knew she'd be little more than a "bird in a gilded cage." It is highly unlikely she would have gone through with killing herself. She was just extremely upset at the time and desperately wanted to find a way out.
7th Aug 2017
Titanic (1997)
3rd Apr 2017
Titanic (1997)
22nd Sep 2007
Titanic (1997)
Question: Before dinner, when Rose is telling Jack the name of people who are gathered downstairs, she points out a man who has a wife who is Rose's age, and says that his wife is in "delicate condition", that she's trying to hide it, and it's "quite the scandal." If the couple is married, why does the woman want to hide her pregnancy?
Answer: At this time, and particularly in higher society, most personal matters concerning women, and particularly a pregnancy, was considered something extremely private. This would be never be discussed openly with strangers. The man in question is John Jacob Astor IV, and the woman is his second wife, Madeleine, who was 29 years his junior, hence the possible source of the "scandal."
Answer: At the time, it was a big scandal surrounding John Jacob Astor's divorce then marriage to Madeline, even his grown sons were in opposition. It wasn't until after the sinking that the sons met with her in support.
20th Mar 2014
Titanic (1997)
21st May 2012
Titanic (1997)
Question: I have two questions about this film. Firstly who was the guy who tries to drown Rose after the Titanic sinks? I couldn't see his face properly and wondered if anyone knew who it was. Secondly, given how possessive Cal was of Rose, why didn't it seem to bother him when Jack leads her arm in arm into the dining room. It's almost like he just doesn't care in that scene.
Chosen answer: The guy who nearly drowned Rose was just a random panicked passenger who needed something to hold on to, like a life ring. As for dinner, at this time, it was actually customary in higher society for a man to escort someone other than his own wife or fiance to the table at a dinner party, and always arm-in-arm. Husbands and wives (and fiances) were also not seated next to each other at the dining table, primarily to mix up the group dynamics and stimulate conversation. Being as Jack is the invited guest for having saved Rose, it would be acceptable that he should have the honor of escorting her into the dining room. At this point, Cal would hardly consider Jack a serious threat to his relationship with Rose, and would have no reason to object.
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Answer: I only found general info, but the first scenes filmed were of the Titanic passengers boarding the ship. Also, early on was the scene of Jack sketching Rose in the nude. I'd guess the Titanic sinking was filmed at the end of the shoot.
raywest ★