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Before James Cameron s 1997 blockbuster, the Hollywood Titanic of 1953, and the 1958 British film A Night to Remember, there was the Nazi German film Titanic. Begun in 1942, this production nearly sank as decisively as the doomed ocean liner, after the film s director, Herbert Selpin, was overheard making remarks damning the German army. Reported to the Gestapo, Selpin was arrested and later found hanging in his prison cell, the victim of an arranged suicide. In April, 1943, the film was banned by the Berlin censors because of its terrifying scenes of panic, all too familiar to German civilians undergoing nightly Allied bombing raids. After extensive cutting, Titanic was released in occupied Paris and a few army installations. It wasn t until late 1949 that it was seen in Germany, though it was banned, a few months later, in the Western sectors. Technically, this Titanic is an excellent catastrophe film; its shots of the ship sinking were later used by the 1958 British film without credit. Somewhat true to the facts though peppered with fictional good Germans both on and below deck the film ends with a trial scene that acquits the White Star Line management, followed by a final slide denouncing England s eternal quest for profit. These packed a powerful propaganda punch; cut from the postwar prints, they have been restored for this Kino Classics edition.
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