By Lee Pfeiffer
To tie in with the recent Titanic commemorations, the Criterion Collection has issued its special edition DVD of A Night to Remember on Blu-ray. As usual, it's a first-class presentation all the way around. The 1958 British film was a modestly budgeted production by Hollywood standards, but represented a major investment for the Rank Organization, which specialized in films that were less-than-epic in scope. The film was shot at Britain's legendary Pinewood Studios, where the famous water tank facility was put to extensive use. The movie's scope may pale besides James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster, but it has lost none of its emotional impact. It presents the disaster through the experiences of numerous passengers and crew members, each of whom is superbly portrayed by a cast of young actors that includes such stars-in-the-making as Honor Blackman and David McCallum. The star of the film is Kenneth More, the reliable British actor whose popularity in England was sadly never replicated in America. More gives an impressive performance as Charles Herbert Lightoller, the second-in-command on the doomed vessel. The script by Eric Ambler captures all the intrigue and excitement of the best-selling novel by Walter Lord upon which the film is based.
The Criterion special edition contains precious interviews with key participants who have since passed away including Walter Lord, producer William MacQuitty and Roy Ward Baker, who did yeoman work as director.The interviews are contained in a 1993 documentary titled The Making of A Night to Remember. Although crude by today's standards, such documentaries were quite rare at the time and this one has a quaint appeal in that the filmmakers don't go in for the kinds of rapid-fire editing and pretentious special effects that mar so many "making of" featurettes today. The documentary presents McQuitty's home movies of the film's production along with extensive behind the scenes production stills. It's a priceless look into the making of a classic movie. The Blu-ray also contains:
- Audio commentary by Titanic scholars and authors Don Lynch and Ken Marschall
- Original theatrical trailer
- An archival interview with Titanic survivor Eva Hart, who was a small girl at the time of the disaster who initially thought the entire event was a marvelous adventure.
- There is also a fine Swedish television documentary from 1962 that features interviews with other Titanic survivors including a mother and her two daughters.
- Rounding out the remarkable set is The Iceberg That Sank the Titanic, a stunningly filmed 2006 BBC nature documentary that explores how the deadly berg had been formed and how it ended up colliding with the ocean liner. It also features the one known photograph of the actual iceberg, taken the morning after the disaster.
Criterion has also included an excellent and informative collector's booklet with essays by writer Michael Sragow that is packed with vintage graphics pertaining to the film and the Titanic itself.
This is another Criterion release that should be classified as essential to any classic movie collection.
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