Titanic
1943 Directed by Werner Klingler, Herbert Selpin
Synopsis
This little-known German film retells the true story of the British ocean liner that met a tragic fate. Ernst Fritz Fürbringer plays the president of the White Star Line, who unwisely pressed the Titanic's captain (Otto Wernicke) to make the swiftest possible crossing to New York. Interestingly, director Herbert Selpin was arrested by the Gestapo during this film's production, and German censors banned the film for its scenes of panic and terror.
Recent reviews
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the ending just enforces "britain sucks" but at its core it's a movie about tragedy and avarice, and that's honestly the perfect way to sum up this event
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The propaganda machine of Nazi Germany had a field day with this entertaining but very biased view of the problems that beset the world's largest, unsinkable ship. The upper-class British and American passengers are depicted as greedy thugs, whores, and lechers (some truth to those qualities may be found in some of them) but the production races past the sublteies of the actual incident to milk as much anti-Allied sentiment as possible from the story. The ship is nothing like the real Titanic (all four smokestacks spew smoke), the Astors are fighting over jewelry and steamship stock, a "Baltic woman" appears to be the biggest wheeler-dealer onboard, and the sole hero is the single German officer on the ship. I…
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German propaganda film from 1943 casts a fictional German officer as the lone hero of the Titanic, surrounded by sniveling British aristocrats out to make a profit, whose recklessness dooms the ship. An impressive production, but woefully historically inaccurate, offensively misrepresenting real life characters. By 1943, Nazi Germany as its own sinking ship, and Goebbels decided not to release the film.
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This piece of Nazi propaganda is only worth watching as an historical curiosity. It cynically takes a human tragedy and exploits the loss of life to make the point that the sinking of the Titanic was an "eternal condemnation of England's quest for profit." Technically less impressive than other films about the event, the cinematography is still solid and the acting is fine, but the story so transparently works to undermine the British it is impossible to feel any sympathy for the characters involved. This film exists as further evidence as to why the Nazis were up to fuck all.