TITANIC: An Expensive Nazi Movie

Just to clear up any confusion this blog post deliberately inspired, “Titanic” is not a reference to the highest-body count chick flick ever, but actually a German film made in 1943. While James Cameron’s “Titanic” (1997) might have overstated the authority White Star executives had on board, “Titanic” (1943) plunges the capitalist British straight into Mr. Burns-esque villainy. Seriously, they were about one scene away from eating narcoleptic puppies. While the German “Titanic” failed to woo a nation out of $600 million, nor contain cringe-inducing racism (ala Fred Astaire’s “Swing Time”), it still stands at a marker of cinematic and political history.

Okay, fine. First question: Are there boobs?

In the film, no. But that’s not to say boobs didn’t play a very prominent role in the film’s production.

I’m listening.

Part of the production took place on an actual ship in the Baltic Sea and required naval advisors during WWII. These sailors, as sailors are wont to do, frequently distracted themselves with the female crew members and extras. This enraged the director Herbert Selpin who then lambasted the German sailors. His un-patriotic comments traveled up the chain and went over about as well as bad-mouthing firefighters while your house is burning down. Selpin was immediately imprisoned and “hung himself” the next day.

Good thing James Cameron is only critical of America, right?

No kidding. To further the two films’ commonality, “Titanic” (1943) was already the most expensive movie in German history—before the director’s “suicide.” As far as being the most expensive production in history, that’s something Cameron accomplished in 1997 with his multi-troubled production of “Titanic.” Cameron though has, by most regards, made studios money after writing/directing the most expensive movie in history…four separate times. “T2: Judgement Day” (1991), “True Lies” (1994), “Titanic” (1997) and “Avatar” (2009). So when James Cameron reportedly said, “There are only five people in the world who can do what I do,”—he was really just being modest.

So is “Titanic” (1943) anti-Semitic?

Actually, no. While the film is unabashedly propaganda, it is anti-capitalist and really nothing more. The British White Star executives attempt to cheat the stock market by carefully releasing misleading (or withholding) information about the maiden voyage. Really the movie is just about insider trading. Hell, the movie ends with a title card saying, “the death of 1,500 people remains un-atoned, forever a testament of Britain's endless quest for profit.” For whatever reason, throughout the plot a German naval officer tracks all the background dealings and demands the ship not speed through “Death Alley.”

Really? “Death Alley”?

Okay, the German movie was a little difficult to follow during the exposition scenes, mostly because the Germans, British, Hungarians, Italians, Spanish and, possibly, Americans all spoke German—with provided subtitles. I don’t have much of an ear for accents, so maybe there were language subtleties I missed, but I doubt it. It did inspire a new appreciation for people around the world who have to watch Hollywood, globe-trotting films.

But about the movie…

Considerably more interesting than the insider trading and anti-capitalism diatribes, was the B-plot, wherein a young German soldier falls in love with a girl who is already engaged to be married to some rich jerk. At the height of their romance, the ship strikes the iceberg and they run around the bowels of the ship but get caught in the steerage deck with all the poor immigrants. Here the film took more liberties with history, as the immigrant extras are locked into the deck by the ship’s crew though such actions never actually happened on the real doomed freighter. In an ill-conceived attempt at quelling the chaos, one of the ship’s crew members shoots an immigrant. Our young lovers eventually get to the top deck and the girl is placed into a lifeboat and lowered in the sea while the young man longingly looks down at her from above. Just for the hell of it, I won’t spoil the ending except to say the entire story is a flashback, as recounted by one of the survivors.

So there are some similarities with Cameron’s film?

And how! Shortly after the ship hits the iceberg, a steward, bringing in lifejackets, interrupts a rich couple fighting over the women’s alleged infidelity. The rich, British, man demands information about the ship's condition and doesn’t get it. He then tries to bribe higher officers on the boat—originally successful, but not later. This is not to mention that during the chaos a little girl is left alone crying, presumably deserted by her British and, for whatever reason, capitalist parents.

Wow, that seems like a lot of coincidences to--

I wasn’t done yet! There is yet another plot where a rich guy frames a poor immigrant for stealing a unique blue-jeweled necklace. The accused immigrant is locked in an interrogation room while the ship is sinking and freed by a friend, using an axe, while cold water floods the hallway.

Holy shit!

Yeah, I know.

So how big of a deal was this movie?

Pretty big. The colossal budget only grew after the director (allegedly) killed himself in a jail cell. Also, the prop ship and several actors were sent to fight in the increasingly desperate war. Like several German endeavors during WWII, the film was a financial disaster. While originally made to criticize England and America, the film’s depictions of people running around amidst chaos was not productive to distracting audiences from the fact that their theater might be bombed at any moment by the Allied force. This is not to say the Allies hated German theaters, but rather the most accurate bombers had a success radius of about one-mile.

Okay, history is tragically hilarious, but what’s the point?

The movie was banned during war for its scenes of chaos and became a huge embarrassment for the German film industry in the post-war years. Curiously, because the movie is so anti-capitalist, it was actually banned in several Western countries for decades.

We were so terrified of a movie because of its politics that we, as a people, were unable to gauge its artistic value. While the film itself is nothing special, its place in several cannons (wartime films, Nazi films, Titanic films, etc.) broadens people’s understanding of one another. Essentially, this is just an incredible example of how people can over-state an ideology and the inevitable backlash of political extremes.

Also, it had some pretty good 1940s special effects.

But just awful title cards.