| Genre: | Drama History |
| Director: | William Hale |
| Starring: | David Janssen Cloris Leachman Susan Saint James David Warner Ian Holm Helen Mirren Harry Andrews Beverly Ross |
| Music: | Howard Blake |
| Country: | United States/ United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Executive Producer: | Roger Gimbel |
| Producer: | Lou Morheim |
| Location: | RMS Queen Mary - 1126 Queens Highway, Long Beach, California Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England The Waldorf Hotel, Aldwych, Strand, London, England |
| Cinematography: | Christopher Challis |
| Editor: | Rusty Coppleman |
| Runtime: | Unedited U.S. TV version 144 min. Edited European theatrical version 103 min. |
| Company: | EMI Films |
| Network: | ABC |
| Budget: | $5 million[1] 1979 $dollars |
S.O.S. Titanic is a 1979 drama disaster television movie that depicts the doomed 1912 maiden voyage from the perspective of three distinct groups of passengers in first, second and third class. The script was written by James Costigan and directed by William Hale (credited as Billy Hale). It is the first Titanic film to be filmed and released in colour.
First class passengers include a May–December couple, multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor IV (David Janssen) and his new wife Madeleine Talmage Force (Beverly Ross); their friend, Molly Brown (Cloris Leachman); another pair of honeymooners, Daniel and Mary Marvin (Jerry Houser and Deborah Fallender); and Benjamin Guggenheim (John Moffatt), returning to his wife and children after a scandalous affair.
One plot line relates the tentative shipboard romance of two schoolteachers, Lawrence Beesley (David Warner, later appearing in the James Cameron 1997 film Titanic) and the fictional Leigh Goodwin (Susan Saint James).
In steerage, the plot focuses on the experiences of eight Irish immigrants, who are first depicted approaching the ship from a tender in the harbor of Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland. These characters, all based on real people, include Katie Gilnagh (played by Shevaun Bryers), Kate Mullens, Mary Agatha Glynn, Bridget Bradley, Daniel Buckley, Jim Farrell, Martin Gallagher, and David Charters. During the voyage, Martin Gallagher falls for an unnamed "Irish beauty", played by Antoinette O'Reilly.
The cast also includes Helen Mirren in a small role (as Mary Sloan, a real-life surviving Titanic stewardess).[2]
One of the film's major themes is class distinctions. Second class passengers Beesley and Goodwin discuss their ambiguous position "in the middle" and debate whether class distinctions are uniquely British. Goodwin briefly encourages Beesley to pursue his apparent attraction to a young Irish beauty in third class, but he rejects this advice. The third class passengers, mostly from poor backgrounds, do not show any resentment at their meager accommodation—Katie Gilnagh comments that sleeping four-to-a-room is far more comfortable than the situation she experienced in her overcrowded childhood home—but on the night of the sinking, they struggle to evade the efforts of ship's personnel to keep them below decks and away from the lifeboats. Led by Jim Farrell, they successfully sneak up to the first class restaurant, where Farrell persuades the master-at-arms to allow the women—but only the women—to pass up to the boat deck.
Another major theme is the happy, hectic atmosphere aboard ship. Young Mary Marvin comments that many of the first class passengers are honeymooners, and that she does not want to land, but simply to go on sailing and dancing forever. In much simpler surroundings, the third class passengers also engage in music, dancing, winning, and whirlwind romances. Meanwhile, Beesley and Goodwin toy with the possibility of embarking on an illicit affair in an empty cabin but decide not to. Goodwin comments that shipboard romances, like shipboard friendships, are meant to end with the voyage.
A third theme is who deserved, or accepted, responsibility for the wrecking of the RMS Titanic. Captain Edward Smith, a veteran White Star captain nearing retirement, is depicted as a masterful leader who nevertheless failed to slow down in spite of being well aware that he was traveling into ice-laden waters. Shipbuilder Thomas Andrews radiates an almost saintly quality, seeing to the final details of construction and repairs himself, tenderly looking after passengers and crew, and even conversing with a young stewardess about their common hometown of Belfast. He fully understands the implications of the collision, and his knowledge that he cannot save the ship clearly breaks his heart. Meanwhile, White Star Line director J. Bruce Ismay wavers between a stance of command and an unwillingness to take responsibility for the sinking. Identifying himself as a passenger, he defiantly boards a lifeboat, only to experience a nervous breakdown later aboard the R.M.S. Carpathia rescuing ship. Ismay is the only one of these three men who survives, and it is clear that he will never fully recover from the psychological effects and blow to his reputation from the fabled sinking.
The film includes roles on the (particularly the radio operator, Harold Cottam) and shows this ship more fully than other film versions. It shows survivors boarding the Carpathia. The seascape is shown heavy with ice floes.
During Titanic sinking, rather than the sacred "Nearer, My God, to Thee", the ship band plays contemporary secular ragtime tunes. Howard Blake's soundtrack makes especially affecting use of the ragtime waltz "Bethena" by Scott Joplin.
Survivors discuss the silence of the disappearance of the ship and absence of screaming. Several philosophise regarding their losses.
The film was greenlit by Bernard Delfont of EMI Films, at the same time as Delfont's brother, Sir Lew Grade, was making a film based on Raise the Titanic.[3]
Producer William Filmore called it the "thinking man's disaster film".[4]
Several of the scenes on the exterior decks, as well as those in the ship's wheelhouse, were filmed on board the later British ocean liner from the 1930s, the retired in Long Beach, California.[4]
Some interior scenes were filmed at the Waldorf and Adelphi historic hotels in London and Liverpool, respectively. The town of Peel on the Isle of Man served as the Queenstown backdrop. Some external shots were filmed aboard, and of, the TSS Manxman which also appears as the R.M.S. Carpathia in some of the opening sequences and as the R.M.S. Titanic in a few shipboard scenes.