Titanic epic romance & disaster movie

Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson and Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ship during its ill-fated maiden voyage. Titanic epic romance & disaster movie

Cameron's inspiration for the film was predicated on his fascination with shipwrecks; he wanted to convey the emotional message of the tragedy, and felt that a love story interspersed with the human loss would be essential to achieving this. Production on the film began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the actual Titanic wreck. The modern scenes were shot on board the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, which Cameron had used as a base when filming the wreck. A reconstruction of the Titanic was built at Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, and scale models and computer-generated imagery were also used to recreate the sinking. The film was partially funded by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox – respectively, its American and international distributors – and at the time, it was the most expensive film ever made, with an estimated budget of $200 million.

Upon its release on December 19, 1997, the film achieved critical and commercial success. It equaled records with fourteen Academy Award nominations and eleven Oscar wins, receiving the prizes for Best Picture and Best Director. With a worldwide gross of over $1.8 billion, it was the first film to reach the billion dollar mark, remaining the highest-grossing film of all time for twelve years, until Cameron's next directorial effort, Avatar, surpassed it in 2010. Titanic is also ranked as the sixth best epic film of all time in AFI's 10 Top 10 by the American Film Institute. The film is due for theatrical re-release in 2012 after Cameron completes its conversion into 3-D.

Synopsis:

In 1996, treasure hunter Brock Lovett and his team explore the wreck of the RMS Titanic, searching for a necklace called the Heart of the Ocean. They believe the necklace is in Caledon "Cal" Hockley's safe, which they recover. Instead of the diamond, they find a sketch of a nude woman wearing it, dated April 14, 1912, the night the Titanic hit the iceberg. Rose Dawson Calvert learns of the drawing, contacts Lovett, and tells him that she is the woman depicted. She and her granddaughter Elizabeth "Lizzy" Calvert visit Lovett and his team on his salvage ship. When asked if she knows the whereabouts of the necklace, Rose recalls her memories aboard the Titanic, revealing that she is Rose DeWitt Bukater, a passenger believed to have died in the sinking.

In 1912, 17-year-old first class passenger Rose boards the ship in Southampton, England with her fiancé Cal, the son of a Pittsburgh steel tycoon, and her mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater. Cal and Ruth stress the importance of Rose's engagement, because the marriage will solve the DeWitt Bukaters' financial problems. Distraught by her engagement to Cal and the pressure her mother is putting on her, Rose considers suicide by jumping off the stern of the ship. Before she leaps, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson intervenes and persuades her not to jump. Jack and Rose develop a tentative friendship.

Cal and Ruth forbid that Rose see Jack. She defies them, meets Jack at the bow of the ship, and decides that she prefers him to Cal. They go to Rose's stateroom and she asks Jack to sketch her wearing nothing but the Heart of the Ocean, an engagement present from Cal. Afterward, the two flee Cal's bodyguard into the ship's cargo hold, where they make love, and then to the ship's forward well deck. There they witness the ship's collision with an iceberg and overhear the ship's officers and designer discussing its seriousness; Rose tells Jack they should warn her mother and Cal.

Cal discovers Jack's drawing and a note in his safe along with the necklace, so he has the Heart of the Ocean slipped into Jack's coat pocket, framing him for stealing it. Jack is arrested, taken down to the Master-at-arms's office and handcuffed to a pipe. Cal puts the necklace in his coat but later gives the coat, and unwittingly the necklace, to Rose. Rose runs away from Cal and her mother (who has boarded a lifeboat) to break Jack free with an axe.

Jack and Rose struggle back to the deck where Cal and Jack persuade her to board another lifeboat, Cal claiming that he has made an arrangement that will allow both men to get off safely. After she boards, Cal doublecrosses Jack. Realizing that she cannot leave Jack, Rose reunites with him back on board Titanic. Infuriated, Cal takes a pistol and chases them into the flooding first-class dining saloon. After running out of ammunition, Cal returns to the boat deck and boards a lifeboat by pretending to look after an abandoned child.

As Jack and Rose return to the top deck, the lifeboats have all departed and passengers are falling to their deaths. The two take refuge on the stern as the ship sinks bow-first until they are washed overboard. Jack helps Rose onto a nearby wall panel that will only support one person’s weight. As he hangs onto the panel, he assures her that she will not die there and will instead die an old woman, warm in her bed. Jack eventually dies from hypothermia.

When a rescue boat returns to the site of the sinking, Rose blows a whistle taken from the uniform of a nearby deceased officer, and is taken by the RMS Carpathia to New York, where she gives her name as Rose Dawson. Hidden, she avoids Cal for the last time on Carpathia's deck as he searches for her. Old Rose mentions that Cal eventually commits suicide.

Her story complete, Rose goes alone to the stern of Lovett's ship. There she reveals the Heart of the Ocean has been in her possession all this time, and drops it into the ocean. Later, while seemingly asleep in her bed, the photos of her days surround her, a visual chronicle that she lived the life she wanted with Jack. The young Rose is then seen reuniting with Jack at the Grand Staircase of the Titanic, cheered and congratulated by those who perished on the ship.