Cameron’s epic a `Titanic’ success> Big-budget, old-fashioned film captures grandeur of ill-fated 1912 voyage

Written and directed by James Cameron. Running time: 194 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for mild language, brief nudity and sexuality).

For film audiences to set sail once more with Titanic, that magnificent, ill-fated ship that departed Southampton, England, 85 years ago only to sink in the icy waters of an unforgiving sea, director James Cameron knew his film had to not only be as big and as lush as the world’s collective memory and imagination, but also as big and as tragic as the event itself.

To tell this particular story, he knew he had to raise the cinematic stakes (much as D.W. Griffith did at the beginning of the century with “Birth of a Nation” and “Intolerance”) by telling a spectacular, intelligent and moving story that would first be about the ship’s people — and then about the disaster itself. He knew there would be skeptics and critics eager to condemn him if anything was historically amiss, and he knew that unless audiences cared deeply for the Titanic’s passengers, his film would have the emotional impact of a clam when the ship made its final, dramatic plunge into the abyss.

That it took three and a quarter hours and the combined financial powers of Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox to achieve what ammounts to cinematic greatness is superfluous.

Never forget that art is timeless — and that it knows no price.

“Titanic” begins precisely where the ship’s voyage ended — about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, and two and a half miles beneath the north Atlantic Sea. Still facing west, mired in nearly a century’s silt, the real Titanic looms green-blue in the flickering light of two small, computerized submarines maneuvering with the delicate pluck of crabs along the ship’s rusted hull.

From one of these submarines a motorized camera emerges into the gloom to begin its flight through rooms once occupied by aristocracy and now inhabited — quite fittingly — by writhing eels.

In one of these rooms is a safe, which is quickly hoisted aboard ship by members of an expedition in search of jewels. But no jewels are found here. Indeed, the only item uncovered is a drawing of a naked young woman named Rose, who is found to be alive at the age of 101 and who eventually joins the ship’s crew to tell her harrowing story of love, betrayal and survival.

It is at this moment that Cameron’s enormous, $200 million budget comes fully and irrefutably to screen. As elderly Rose (here portrayed by Gloria Stuart) gazes at the boat’s video monitor that displays the ruined ship that almost took her life, the years melt magically away as she — and we — are transported back into another time, a different world, that is jaw-dropping in its grandeur.

Suddenly, it is the spring of 1912 and we are looking at a long shot of the Titanic as it must have appeared on the afternoon of its only voyage. The effect is seamless, mesmerizing — especially when you consider that we are looking at nothing more than a custom-built, $40 million set Cameron had constructed specifically for him on 40 acres in Rosario, Mexico. The ship we see is not a ship at all but a replica of the Titanic built to 90 percent scale. The glimmering ocean in which the ship rests is not a glimmering ocean either, but a six-acre, 17-million-gallon tank that is 30 feet deep at the ship, and 3 feet deep elsewhere.

But the illusion is stunning, the moment, crucial. If we don’t believe this ship is that ship, this ocean is that ocean, the film fails.

It succeeds. At the dock, thousands of people are teeming, some of them boarding, many of whom spent enormous sums on what amounts to their last lavish party. It is a shot so epic in its scope, so technically difficult, yet brilliantly achieved, it beckons back to scenes in Selznick’s “Gone With the Wind” and Griffith’s “Intolerance,” where crowds were shot in a similar grand scale.

Cameron’s camera soars through these jubilant crowds to find the unhappy face of young Rose (Kate Winslet), who is boarding the ship with her stuffy mother, Ruth (Francis Fisher), the unmistakable Molly Brown (played smashingly by Kathy Bates), and Rose’s cruel fiance, Cal (Billy Zane), whose Philadelphian blood may be as blue as the ice that eventually destroys this ship — but whose heart is just as hard.

Elsewhere, the film’s hero, Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) — a scraggly, likable artist who has drawn naked women throughout Europe (the drawings were actually done by Cameron) — has just won tickets for himself and a friend to board the ship, where he meets and falls in love with the upper-class Rose.

In scene after scene, hour after hour, Cameron’s old fashioned film builds upon their love while in our minds, the silent drumming of their fate quickens. It is at once thrilling and wrenching to watch their bond strengthen, to see how absolutely right they are for each other, to believe in the purity of their love, for we know what awaits them even while they don’t.

When the ship does strike ice, it does so as a direct result of their love — the men in the crow’s nest, too busy watching Jack and Rose kissing on deck, were unaware of the mountain that lay before them until it was too late.

And so the ship sinks, slowly, loudly, water rushing in with an unimaginable force that rips apart walls, smashes through closed doors, and boils down hallways, forever destroying all that was once beautiful. Inch by inch the Titanic descends, steadily, unceasingly, giving all on board ample time to understand the gravity of their situation before the rush for human life begins in a mad, scrambling crash accompanied by a string quartet playing “Nearer My God to Thee.”

And here is where Cameron’s great moment comes, with the ship’s huge propellers lifting out of the water like three iron phoenixes — only to come crashing down on top of the drowning as the ship breaks in half.

Of the 2,200 passengers who boarded, more than 1,500 perished. This unsinkable ship, you understand, had lifeboats for only a privileged few.

Grade: A

Video of the Week

“Cold Comfort Farm,” directed by John Schlesinger. Screenplay by Malcolm Bradbur based on the 1932 novel by Stella Gibbons. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated PG.

When socialite Flora Post (Kate Beckinsale) loses her parents, she finds herself in bit of a quandary. “I’ve only a hundred pounds a year and I can’t play a bridge!” she frets to her close friend, Mrs. Smiling (“Absolutely Fabulous” Joanna Lumley), who suggests that Flora might try living with relatives. Thus, it is to relatives that Flora flees for a place to lodge, but the relatives she chooses are not of the same high social standing as Flora. Indeed, they are a wild bunch of untidy sorts who run a foul farm in desperate need of repair — which Flora does with great wit, pluck and style.

With its bizarre, eccentric cast of characters, this mischievous film is great fun and proves the perfect video to rent during Christmas week. After viewing it, your own family might seem tame in comparison.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith, a writer and critic who lives in Brewer, reviews films each Monday in the News.