Titanic

Titanic must have been the great cause for discussion at the Propaganda Ministry in 1943. Ostensibly put out to show the kind of materialistic greedy people the Germans were fighting back then, it seems as though Joseph Goebbels felt the wrong message might still go out. The original director, Herbert Spelvin, was arrested mid production by the Gestapo and found hanging in his cell the next day. Of course suicide was the official reason given and ostensibly Goebbels was mighty put out about the scenes of panic shown on film. Yet there are certainly enough of them left in the product I saw.

What's showed here is nothing new. But that's the difference between a free society and Nazi Germany. The story has been told a whole lot in both British and American productions. What the Nazis did in this film was to create a wholly fictional second officer named Peterson who serves as the voice of conscience in the film. The villain of course is Ismay the head of the British White Star Line who is looking for the stock in White Star to go up if the much ballyhooed Titanic makes a record crossing in its maiden voyage. Peterson as portrayed by Hans Nielsson is as Aryan as they come, while Ismay looks vaguely like those people we're eliminating as played by E.F.Fuhwanger.

John Jacob Astor is here to represent American capitalism. Such folks as Captain Harry Guggenheim and Mr.&Mrs. Isidor Straus who died in the sinking are eliminated from the story. So is the plucky Denver millionairess Molly Brown.

For a movie that's supposed to show and criticize the British class distinction, very little time is spent on the huddled masses in steerage who were the bulk of the people killed. James Cameron in the recent Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet spent more time with them than this production.

I do however wish that more films of the Nazi era would become available now to view and study. If this one is available on DVD and VHS than this must be mild as compared to others.