Titanic

L. deCaprio, Kate Winslet

I saw this on opening day in 1997 and last night. It held up very well...although I had forgotten all the melodrama involving Kate and Leo after the ship hit the berg.

The staging of the crash and sinking was superb, sets and models have never been topped. The cross-class story worked fine until the crash when it stepped into absurd land and became steadily more aggravating. But I enjoyed the framing device with Gloria Stuart, the class war details, in particular the coda which outlined the life Rose had after the tragedy.

It became fashionable to sneer at this film after its initial overwhelming success but the reactionaries cheated themselves out of a first-rate cinematic experience.

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