Stubs - Parasite

Parasite (2019) Starring: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Chang Hyae-jin Directed by Bong Joon-ho Screenplay by Bong Joon-ho, Han Jin-won Produced by Kwak Sin-ae, Moon Yang-kwon, Bong Joon-ho, Jang Young-hwan Run Time: 132 minutes. South Korea Dark Comedy, Drama, Thriller, Foreign

It is rare to see a film for the first time with as much hype behind it as Parasite (기생충) does. Prior to my seeing it, the film had been lauded at the Cannes Film Festival, The Golden Globes, and Writer's Guild Awards. It is also nominated for a string of Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Production Design, and Best Film Editing. Quite a coup as the first Korean film to be so honored.

I recently had the opportunity to watch the film, though it was transactional rather than theatrical. While I like to see films for the first time in theaters, the way they are meant to be seen, sometimes compromises have to be made. And I wanted to see this film before the Academy Awards to see for myself what the hype was about.

Stubs - My Neighbor Totoro

My Neighbor Totoro aka Tonari no Totoro (1988; version viewed 2005) Voice Acting: Tim Daly, Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Lea Salonga, Frank Welker. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki. Produced by Toru Hara. Color. Japan. Animated, Fantasy, Foreign

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the great Japanese anime film directors of all-time, reaching International acclaim with films like Spirted Away (2001), Howl's Moving Castle (2004) and The Wind Rises (2013). A gifted storyteller, Miyazaki got his start as an in-between artist at Toei Animation in 1963 working on the theatrical feature anime Watchdog Bow Wow (1963) and the TV anime Wolf Boy Ken.

By 1968, Miyazaki was the chief animator on Hols: Prince of the Sun, though the film was directed by Isao Takahata. This would begin a collaboration between the two filmmakers that would eventually lead to their founding Studio Ghibli in 1985. It is at this studio where Miyazaki would direct his best-known films.

One of the studio’s early films was My Neighbor Totoro, released on the same day in 1988 as Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies. The production was influenced greatly by the Art Director, Kazuo Oga, who had previously worked on such films as Barefoot Gen (1983) and Wicked City (1987). My Neighbor Totoro would take his career to a new level and would begin his continued relationship with Studio Ghibli.

The film was originally released in Japan with Noriko Hidaka as Satsuki Kusakabe, Chika Sakamoto as Mei Kusakabe, Shigesato Itoi as Tatsuo Kusakabe and Sumi Shimamoto voicing Yasuko Kusakabe. The film’s U.S. release came via Fox home video, which released the film on home video in 1993 under the title My Friend Totoro. Miyazaki, who had previously been disappointed in how his films were transitioned into English, would not allow Fox to make any edits and they had to stay as close to the original screenplay as possible.

This release dubbed the film into English with Lisa Michelson voicing Satsuki Kusakabe, Cheryl Chase as Mei Kusakabe, Greg Snegoff as Tatsuo Kusakabe and Alexandra Kenworthy as Yasuko Kusakabe. If the first American cast doesn’t sound familiar, you are not alone.

When Fox’s rights lapsed, Disney picked them up. Why not, they have practically everything else? For their home video release, they re-cast the dubbed voices, bringing more recognizable actors to the lead roles. For Satsuki, they cast Dakota Fanning, at the time all of 11, but already an acclaimed actress. For the younger sister, they kept it in the family, casting Dakota’s younger sister Elle. The role of the father went to Tim Daly, who at the time was best known for his long-running role on TV’s Wings series.

While Lea Salonga, who was cast as the mother, might not be a household name in the US, the Filipina singer’s voice had already been used in Disney’s Mulan (1998) and its direct-to-video follow-up Mulan II (2005). The voice cast also featured Pat Carroll, Ursula from The Little Mermaid (1989), and the great Frank Welker, who has voiced just about everything but may be best known in some circles for his work on the Transformers franchise.

Satsuki (Dakota Fanning) and Mei (Elle Fanning) are excited about their new home in the country.

The film takes place in rural Japan and at a time that feels like the late 1950s. By then, a lot of wounds from World War II had healed or were healing. University professor Tatsuo Kusakabe (Tim Daly) and this two daughters, Satsuki (Dakota Fanning) and Mei (Elle Fanning), are moving out to the country. We don’t know from where, but judging by everyone’s reaction to their new surroundings, it must have been from a city.

Granny (Pat Carroll) has been the caretaker of their house and watches after the girls as well.

Their closest neighbors run a rice farm and have a boy about the girls’ age, Kanta (Paul Butcher). The matriarch of the family, whom everyone calls Granny (Pat Carroll), has also been the caretaker of the Kusakabe’s house. She comes by soon after they move in.

The girls' father, Tatsuo Kusakabe (Tim Daly), bathes with them and their laughter rids the house of soot spirits.

But almost immediately, as the sisters explore the house, they become aware of dust creatures called susuwatari. They are for the most part harmless, but their presence sort of bothers the girls. That is until one evening while bathing with their father, they laugh so hard that the soot spirits leave the house, drifting in the wind looking for a new empty house to call home.

Tatsuo takes his girls on a bike ride to visit their mother in the hospital.

The three go to the hospital to visit the mother, Yasuko (Lea Salonga), who is still recuperating from some unknown malady.

The girls' mother, Yasuko (Lea Salonga), is happy to see them.

One day, Satsuki goes to school and father has some work to do. This leaves Mei on her own. While playing, she sees two rabbit-like ears in the tall grass and follows them. Under the house, she discovers two of the creatures and they lead her through a briar patch and into the hollow under a large camphor tree.

Left on her own, Mei follows after two rabbit-like creatures.

Under the tree, she discovers a much larger version of the same kind of magical spirit, which she identifies as “Totoro” based on the sounds it makes. Even though she falls asleep on the large Totoro’s belly, Satsuki finds her on the ground in a briar clearing. Try as she might, Mei can never find the hollow part of the trunk to show her family. But her father seems to already know about the Totoro, telling Mei that he is the keeper of the forest and only reveals himself when he wants to.

Mei meets Totoro, a large magical creature.

One rainy night, the girls go to wait for their father’s bus because they realize he’s forgotten his umbrella. But the bus is late and the girls grow worried when he’s not on the one they’re expecting him to be on. While they wait, Mei falls asleep, so Satsuki carries her sister on her back. Soon after, the Totoro appears, the first time Satsuki has been allowed to see him. Because he only has a leaf to use to shelter him from the rain, Satsuki offers him the umbrella they’d brought for their father.

Totoro shows up while the girls wait for their father's bus.

The creature enjoys not only the shelter the umbrella provides but also the sound of the raindrops hitting it. To show his appreciation, he gives Satsuki a bag with nuts and seeds inside. Not long after, a Catbus (Frank Welker) shows up and the Totoro boards, taking the umbrella with him. Soon afterward, the bus with their father arrives. He apologizes for being late and they leave.

The girls plant the seeds. A few days later, they awaken at midnight to find Totoro and his two miniature colleagues engaged in a ceremonial dance around the planted nuts and seeds. The girls join in, whereupon the seeds sprout, and then grow, eventually combining into a single enormous tree. Totoro, along with his colleagues, take the girls for a ride on a magical flying top. In the morning, the giant tree is gone, but the seeds have indeed sprouted.

The girls help perform a ceremony to get the seeds to grow.

A planned visit by their mother gets postponed because of an undisclosed setback with her health. Disappointed, Satsuki tells Mei the bad news, but Mei does not take the news well. The two sisters get into an argument, ending with Satsuki storming off. Mei decides to take her mom some fresh corn and decides to walk to the hospital by herself.

Mei runs away to give her mother fresh corn.

Satsuki and the neighbors search for Mei, but to no avail. Desperate, Satsuki goes to the camphor tree and asks for Totoro’s help. Totoro is delighted to be asked and summons the Catbus, which takes Satsuki to where Mei is. After the sisters are reunited, the Catbus takes them to the hospital where their father is visiting their mother.

The girls take the Catbus (Frank Welker) to visit their mother.

Sitting perched in the tree, the sisters eavesdrop on their parents’ conversation and hear their mother had been kept from visiting them by a minor cold, rather than something worse like they had feared. Their parents hear something outside her hospital room, but all they find is the ear of corn that Mei had brought for her mother. Meanwhile, the girls are taken back home by the Catbus, which disappears from sight as soon as they get off.

The parents find the ear of corn Mei left, but don't see the girls.

During the end credits, Yasuko returns home and the sisters are shown playing with other children. Totoro and his friends are shown as unseen observers.

This is a gentle film and I mean that in more ways than one. The story is more a slice of life for the Kusakabe family. Mom is in the hospital and the father and the children move to be closer to her. The big difference between their life and anyone else’s is that the Kusakabes lives in a forest with a giant magical spirit.

There does not seem to be much going on in the film. The biggest event in the film is really Mei running away from home, but she’s only gone for a matter of hours and she’s found safe and sound. The Totoro serves more like a Deus Ex Machina, sort of lying around waiting to be called upon to do good and give the story a happy ending.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re looking for something along the lines of American animated films, where there has to be some sense of the characters in danger, then you need to look elsewhere. Mei is really never in harm’s way and how bad can a situation be if a Catbus is what saves you?

While the film wasn’t colored with these, I came away thinking of it more like water colors than the computerized CGI that dominates modern animation. The color palette is nice, but the colors are never too vivid or wild, which seems to suit the story very well.

Obviously, the story takes place in Japan, but the characters are drawn with a certain universality that defies racial categorization. There are no ceremonial robes or “native” dress in the film, as there are no cultural roadblocks that might separate us from them. While I have a limited exposure to Japanese animation, this sort of style seems to permeate throughout what I have seen.

My Neighbor Totoro was very accessible and rather easy to watch. While I doubt very much that this is Miyazaki’s best work, it does seem to have many of the characteristics that have made him an Internationally acclaimed story-teller. While I’m not sure if these films stand up to repeated viewings, the way some of the best Walt Disney and Pixar films do, I would definitely recommend this film to anyone interested in or, like me, was interested in Hayao Miyazaki’s work.

Stubs – Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath aka I Tre volti Della Paura (1963) Starring: Boris Karloff, Mark Damon, Michèle Mercier, Susy Andersen, Lydia Alfonsi, Glauco Onorato,  Jacqueline Pierreux Directed by Mario Bava. Screenplay by Mario Bava, Alberto Bevilacqua, Marcello Fondato. Based on the short stories "The Drop of Water" Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Telephone" by F. G. Snyder and "The Wurdalak" by Leo Tolstoy. Produced by Salvatore Billitteri and Paolo Mercuri. Run time: 93 minuted. Italy/France. Horror, Foreign

Horror is not just an American genre, in fact, it’s worldwide. One example is Italy, which had its own “golden age” of horror, led in part by Mario Bava. While not a name that gets mentioned in most circles, Bava began his career as a cinematographer, working for the likes of Roberto Rossellini and helping to shape the screen presence of Gina Lollobrigida, Steve Reeves, and Aldo Fabrizi.

He started directing films in 1955 with Ulysses and I Vampiri (aka The Devil's Commandment or The Vampires or Lust of the Vampire). He began writing screenplays with Black Sunday (1960) (aka Mask of the Demon or La Maschera del demonio or Revenge of the Vampire or The Mask of Satan). Not all of his films are in the horror genre though, such as Erik the Conqueror (1961), a loose remake of the American film The Vikings (1958).

But it was another film that Bava worked on, Hercules (1958), which he worked on as a cinematographer, that brought AIP to Italy. Producer Joseph E. Levine had purchased the U.S. distribution rights to the film starring Steve Reeves and made it a box-office hit. Wanting to find similar properties, American International Pictures founders James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff hired European talent agent Flavio Lucisano to look for Italian commercial films for them.

In 1963, AIP struck a deal with Italian production company Galatea to co-produce nine films over the next eight years, one of which was Black Sabbath. Like many Italian films of the time, it had three to four short narratives that, when combined, would have a conventional film's run time. This was done to avoid high costs. The film also matched an up-and-coming actor or a much older actor with a European ingenue actress. This film would match both the up-and-coming with a European ingenue. And finally, the film was horror, which along with Westerns were a popular genre since they were cheaper than the sword and sandal fare Italian cinema had previously been famous for.

AIP secured the rights to Mark Damon and Boris Karloff, while the French co-production company Societé Cinématographique Lyre secured Michele Mercier and Jacqueline Pierreux, who appeared under the pseudonym Jacqueline Soussard. Galatea had Susy Andersen cast while retaining Mario Bava as the director.

Bava is credited with writing the screenplay and the film credits the following stories as the sources: "The Drop of Water" by Ivan Chekov, "The Telephone" by F.G. Snyder and "Sem'ya vurdalaka" by Aleksei Tolstoy, but these credits might be an attempt to make the film sound more literate than it really is.

The film was shot in an eight-week period between February and March 1963. Karloff was to not only star in one of the sequences, but also serve as a host to tie the three stories together. Since the film was to be dubbed in many different languages, including English, the actors could not phonetically pronounce the words and had to speak rhythmically so as to match many languages. AIP also had Salvatore Billitteri on set to not only supervise dubbing into English but also to make suggestions to Bava that would make the film more palatable to an American audience, which meant less violence than originally intended.

Still, in post-production, AIP made more cuts to the English-language version of the film. Not only did they re-order the segments, but they removed plot elements of prostitution and lesbianism from The Telephone.

As stated previously, the film is an anthology with three set scenes: The Drop of Water, The Telephone, and The Wurdalak. None of them sound especially scary and what the heck is a Wurdalak?

Boris Karloff uses his hosting skills, developed on his on anthology TV show, Thriller, which ran for two seasons on NBC 1960-62, and his gravitas as he introduces each segment.

Bors Karloff plays host for the film, introducing the three segments.

Drop of Water leads us off with the story of a nurse, Helen Corey (per AFI, Helen Chester by everyone else) (Jacqueline Pierreux), who is called to the house of Miss Perkins, a medium who has just recently died. It is a dark and stormy night to set the scene. Helen had been giving her shots to prolong her life and now that she’s dead, her maid (Milly Monti) has called her to dress the corpse for the morgue. Miss Perkins has a green-ish complexion and a hideous expression on her face when Helen arrives. Despite the maid’s warnings not to touch anything of Miss Perkins’, Helen cannot help herself when she sees a sapphire ring on the deceased’s finger.

Helen is called in to make Miss Perkins presentable.

But no sooner does she pull it off then it drops to the floor. While she’s looking for it, Helen accidentally knocks over a glass of water which drips down on the floor. Then she is attacked by a persistent fly which lands on the dead woman’s ring finger where the ring had been.

The deceased's ring proves too tempting for Helen (Jacqueline Pierreux).

When she gets back home, Helen puts the ring on her finger. No sooner does she do that then the fly attacks again and all throughout her meager apartment, Helen finds all the faucets dripping. Next, Helen finds the woman’s body lying in her bed and then the dead woman rises and stalks Helen throughout her apartment, which also loses electricity during the storm that is still raging outside.

Helen freaks out when she sees Miss Perkins standing in her apartment.

With the deceased woman standing over her, Helen begs for her life to be spared but ultimately ends up strangling herself with her own hands, if that’s really even possible. The next morning, the concierge of the apartment house (Harriet White Medin) finds the body and calls the police. When the body is found, there is an obvious wound on her ring finger, as if a ring had been torn off. The concierge acts suspicious and we hear the sound of dripping water.

Boris Karloff tries his hand at comedy when he introduces "The Telephone".

After a little comedic introduction by Karloff, we’re introduced to The Telephone. In this story, a French call girl, Rosy (Michèle Mercier), returns to her apartment one night and begins to receive several phone calls which suggest the caller is not only familiar with Rosy, but is observing her now, knowing as an example, that she is dressed in a scanty dressing gown when she answers the phone.

Rosy (Michèle Mercier) receives several disturbing phone calls when she gets home.

Freaked out, Rosy calls her friend Mary (Lydia Alfonsi), who looks a lot like her. While the story supposedly calls for them to not only be prostitutes and lovers, there is really nothing in the film to suggest either. Mary agrees to come over that night. But the next time the caller phones, he promises Rosy that no matter what she does, he will get his revenge.

Mary (Lydia Alfonsi) comes over to keep Rosy company.

Mary arrives and calms Rosy down and sends her to bed, giving her a large knife she can use for protection. But soon after she’s asleep, a man enters Rosy’s apartment and strangles Mary in a case of mistaken identity.

Frank (Milo Quesada) strangles Mary, thinking she's Rosy.

When he approaches her, Rosy realizes that it’s Frank (Milo Quesada), a man who has been dead for years. He tries to attack her, but Rosy pulls out her knife and kills the dead guy. (Other recounts state that Frank was her pimp that her testimony had sent away to prison, but again, none of that is revealed in the American version of the film).

Finally, Karloff introduces us to The Wurdalak, in which he has a starring role. It is 19^th century Russia and the young nobleman, Vladimir Durfe (Mark Damon), comes across a decapitated body with a knife through its chest. He removes the blade and, seeing as it’s getting late, seeks shelter in the first real house he comes to. The people living there aren’t particularly gracious at first, with Vladimir being held at sword point by Giorgio (Glauco Onorato). He sees the knife and tells Vladimir that it belongs to his father, Gorca, who has been gone for five days hunting and killing Alibeck, a bandit and vampire.

Vladimir is introduced by Giorgio to the other members of the family: his wife Maria (Rika Dialina), their young son Ivan, Giorgio's younger brother Pietro (Massimo Righi), and sister Sdenka (Susy Andersen). Vladimir develops one of those instant and deep loves for Sdenka. The family warns Vladimir that they are waiting for their father’s return. When he left he had warned them if he hadn’t returned in five days to consider him a wurdalak, or a Russian version of a vampire that only drinks the blood of close friends and loved ones. 

Vladimir (Mark Damon) has it bad for Sdenka (Susy Andersen).

They are told to kill him as soon as they see him. The five days expire at 10 that night and warn Vladimir that he should leave, but he insists on staying.

Boris Karloff plays Gorca, the patriarch of the family and now a Wurdalak.

Gorca (Boris Karloff) doesn’t return until after 10, but his family doesn’t kill him, though they are certainly scared of him and with good reason. When everyone is in bed, Gorca attacks Pietro and flees with Ivan. Giorgio takes chase, but is too late, returning to the cottage with Ivan’s corpse. He wants to behead his son to prevent him from returning as a Wurdalak, but Maria prevents him. As a compromise, they agree to bury their son’s body. But when Ivan shows up at the door, saying he’s cold, Maria’s maternal feelings go into high gear. When Giorgio tries to stop her, she stabs and kills him, but when she opens the door, it is Gorca at the door and he attacks her.

You only hurt the ones you love; Gorca kills his own grandson, turning him into a Wurdalak.

Meanwhile, Vladimir and Sdenka have fled the cottage and taken refuge in the ruins of a nearby cathedral. As Vladimir sleeps, Sdenka rises from the bed and goes outside. There she sees Gorca and is surrounded by her family members, who have all been turned into wurdalaks.

Sdenka wanders out into the ruins where her family, now all wurdalaks, wait for her.

When Vladimir finally awakes, Sdenka is nowhere to be found. Going back to the cottage, he finds her lying motionless in her bed. When she awakens, she accepts Vladimir’s embrace and then bites him on the neck, turning him into a wurdalak.

The film was released in two versions. First came the Italian which opened on August 17, 1963. Though I haven’t seen this version, it is my understanding it is somewhat more explicit than the American version, no doubt revealing more about Rosy and Mary's relationship and profession. The Wurdalak is also supposedly more violent than the American version.

Despite AIP’s edits to make the film more palatable to American audiences, the film was, for the most part, panned when it was released on May 6, 1964. The Boston Globe's review referred to the film as "three short films botched together". More recent reviews have been more complimentary with one by Entertainment Weekly referring to The Telephone story as "Bava's most simply frightening work.” They must have seen a different movie than I had.

Perhaps the film’s most long-lasting legacy is that it inspired a rock band in England named Earth to change their name. With another group already with that name, the band was looking for a new name and persona. With the theater near their studio playing the film and noticing the long lines of people waiting to be frightened, Earth became Black Sabbath. The band recently called it quits and, as of this writing, is on its final tour, The End.

The metal band Black Sabbath actually took its name from this movie.

The rock band aside, Black Sabbath is more a study in melodrama than real horror. The opening story, Drop of Water, is sort of obvious. You know as soon as she’s told not to touch anything that the nurse will. While it may be hard or impossible to strangle yourself to death, I’ll let others work that out for themselves, when the ring is missing from the nurse’s finger, you also know the pattern will continue with the concierge who has obviously taken the ring. A better twist would have been the ring to be back on the corpse’s finger.

The Telephone is rendered almost unfathomable by the edits. Not sure why I’m supposed to care about Rosy or why Frank is out for revenge; sort of crucial for the story to succeed. We’re left with a mess of a story that no one cares about.

The Wurdalak runs too long. It’s one of those stories that if the family had just done as they were told, then none of this would have happened. Also note, when you’re fleeing a vampire, don’t stop for the night at the first place you come to. Keep riding. Oh, lessons that are learned too late.

But to keep riding, you'll need a real horse, which this film apparently lacks.

The acting is rather blah, not helped by the fact that everything appears to be dubbed. Even Boris Karloff can only carry the film so far. Too bad he’s not a better actor, but even then I doubt anyone could have really saved the film. While Karloff had considerable gravitas with horror films thanks to his starring roles in Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932), it is sadly wasted here. Perhaps the Italian is better, but like self-strangulation, I’ll leave that for others to discover.

Most of the women in the film seem to have one thing in common, they are well endowed, which has nothing to do with their acting skills. Michèle Mercier, who had previously appeared in Francois Truffaut's’ Don’t Shoot The Piano Player (1960), is perhaps best known as Angelique in Angelique, Marquise des Anges (1964). It’s really hard to judge her acting skills from The Telephone, but surely she is better in other films, she has to be.

Jacqueline Pierreux had been appearing in Italian films since the early 1940s. Sadly, Black Sabbath is her best-known role, so it’s really hard to judge her acting. Suzy Andersen, despite the Americanized sounding name, is really an Italian actress born Maria Antonietta Golgi. She had a very short film career, which included the role of Tamar in Thor and the Amazon Women (1963) (original title: Le Gladiatrici aka Women Gladiators), a sword and sandal film Italian cinema had been known for prior to the early 1960s. Nothing in her filmography to really brag about either.

If you’re looking to be bored this Halloween, I could definitely recommend this film. It is sadly like the other AIP horror films, and I’ve seen a few, more costume drama than real shake in your boots horror. And the films' budgets make them feel more claustrophobic than anything else, which for some, I suppose, can be scary. Trying to appeal to American sensibilities is a difficult thing to do, as standards do change over time. But it’s hard to imagine a time when this mess would have really appealed to anyone.

Be sure to check out other Horror films in our Horror Films Review Hub.

Stubs – Titanic (1943)

Titanic (1943) Starring: Ernst.F. Fürbringer, Kirsten Heiberg, Karl Schönböck, Sybille Schmitz, Otto Wernicke, Hans Nielsen. Directed by Werner Klinger, Herbert Selpin. Produced by Willy Reiber. Screenplay by Herbert Selpin, Walter Zerlett-Olfenius. Run Time: 85 minutes. Germany  Black and White  Drama, Historical, German Propaganda

So the title seems right, but the year seems wrong. It might surprise some, but James Cameron’s film was not the first depiction of the sinking of that ocean liner on its maiden voyage. But while Cameron made his movie to make money, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels commissioned the German’s movie to discredit the English and the Americans, blaming the tragedy on English capitalist greed, rather than human judgment.

Bruce Ismay (E.F. Furbringer), Captain Smith (Otto Wernicke) and First
Officer Petersen (Hans Nielsen) discuss the running of the Titanic.

This film shares more than just a title with Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster. Like the latter film, this also tells the story of the Titanic sinking in 1912, mixing both real life people with fictional characters. Chief among these additions is German First Officer Herr Petersen (Hans Nielsen). No surprise, but the German officer is the hero of this picture. It is Petersen who is concerned about the ship’s speed and begs the rich owner Sir Bruce Ismay (E.F. Fürbringer) to slow the liner down.

First class was shown to be opulent, but its passengers as cowards.

But Ismay is driven by the stock market. Because of the ship’s cost overruns, the stock price for White Star Line has plummeted. And this, for Ismay and the board of the White Star Line, is a good thing. They want to drive the stock price down, even selling their own shares, so that they can swoop in and buy back the stock at bargain basement prices. They plan to buy the stock back just before announcing that the Titanic had set a speed record for an Atlantic crossing, a feat they’re convinced will drive the stock price to new heights. Ismay, who is onboard the maiden voyage, promises Captain Edward J. Smith (Otto Wernicke) a $5000 bonus for arriving on time and an extra $1000 for every hour he’s early. Smith, feeling trapped by the confrontational president of the company he works for, has no choice but to comply with Ismay’s orders.

The Germans from steerage prove to be courageous, what a surprise!

However, when it is apparent that the boat is sinking, Ismay demands that Smith get him on a lifeboat. When Smith refuses, Ismay, sounding very much like a Nazi officer, commands his subordinate to make it so. While Smith is ineffectual, Petersen promises to get Ismay on a lifeboat, if only so Ismay can stand in judgment for the tragedy his greed has caused.

The iceberg rips a hole in the side of the boat, flooding it with sea water.

Like Ismay, when push comes to shove, the first class passengers, mostly British and American rich, become cowardly, while the Germans in steerage, as well as Petersen and his ex-lover Sigrid Olinsky (Sybille Schmitz), are shown to be courageous. Sybille, a recently impoverished Russian aristocrat, helps Petersen save other passengers before Petersen orders her onto one of the last lifeboats. As an officer, he tells her, he has to stay with the ship. And after Sybille’s gone, Petersen hears the cries for help from a young girl, left to die in her cabin by her British capitalist parents. With the ship about to go under, Petersen leaps from the deck with the girl in his arms. He swims out to a lifeboat, the same one Sybille is on, and the two are pulled aboard.

Those who managed to get to the lifeboats survive, including Ismay.

Petersen and Sybille watch as the Titanic finally goes down, albeit in one piece, as opposed to breaking in two as we have been taught is what actually happened.

In this version, the Titanic sinks in one piece.

The film ends with the British maritime inquiry into the tragedy, where Petersen appears to be the only witness against Ismay. Despite Petersen’s condemnation of Ismay’s actions, the inquiry finds Captain Smith to be responsible for what happened to the ship under his command. Ismay is cleared and not held responsible. But as the epilogue text points out “the deaths of 1,500 people remain unatoned, forever a testament to Britain’s endless quest for profits.”

Part of the problem with viewing this film as effective propaganda is that I don’t know anyone who doesn’t think Bruce Ismay was a villain. Maybe no previous film about the Titanic sinking, and there had been several by the time this one was made, concentrated as much on the business side of the tragedy. Certainly, Cameron’s version of the story, which is the one everyone is most familiar with, did not make Ismay out to be a hero. He pushes Captain Smith to go faster, though I don’t remember the stock market shenanigans of the White Star board getting as much screen time as it gets in this film. In both films, Ismay, unlike most of the male passengers, survives the sinking by getting aboard a lifeboat reserved for women and children. Certainly, this is not the actions of a heroic man.

Titanic seems like an odd film to make, given Germany’s situation at the point in the war it was being made. The tide was already turning against them, so why spend the time and money on a film like this? The goal of such an endeavor seems to have failure written all over it from the get-go. What could Goebbels have expected would happen after someone watched the film? The Germans weren’t fighting the Allies to end corporate greed.

In the end, Goebbels banned the film from being shown in Germany, since by then the Allies were already bombing almost nightly and the German people weren’t in the mood for a film about mass death and panic. Further, undercutting the film’s effectiveness was that seeing steerage separated from the rest of the passengers by locked gates was similar to the situation going on in Germany’s many concentration camps at the time. Desperation to survive against all odds was nothing new and not escapist fare.

The movie did get released in German-occupied Europe, but at the end of the war was considered lost. Found in 1949, the film was almost immediately banned in most of Western-Europe, but dubbed in Russian by the Soviets and screened across the Eastern-bloc as a sort of “trophy” film from the war.

It’s hard to view a Nazi propaganda film with an attitude better than detached disinterest. Obviously, I don’t condone Nazi atrocities or their goals and aims. But when I heard this film existed, I had to admit I was curious about it. I can’t really comment on the film’s production values without sounding like this is a film I would take seriously. However, footage from this Titanic did find its way into 1958’s A Night to Remember, including two clips of the engine room flooding.

I would say that this is not a film you need to watch. I’m not sure which, if any, Titanic-based films I would really recommend. The ones I’ve seen, and I’ve not seen them all, have their pluses and minuses. While one may have way better special effects (Cameron’s Titanic), another may do a much better job concentrating on the actual events and the people involved. 1514 people perished when the RMS Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. There is no need, in my opinion, to mix in fictional characters with real people in order to show the breadth of the tragedy.