This isn't actually the first "Titanic" dramatisation ever made - the unfortunate actress Dorothy Gibson, who had the misfortune to travel on board the liner, was apparently rushed into a hasty reconstruction almost without being given time to change out of the clothes she had been shipwrecked in - but it is the oldest now surviving. And considered as a drama, it has most of the features that tend to make films of this era heavy going today - title cards that narrate what is about to happen before the cast proceed to act it out for the viewer, windmilling gestures in place of reaction shots (moreover, the director clearly had very little idea what occurred on the bridge of a ship beyond sweeping the horizon with binoculars), and some very primitive special effects.
What makes it interesting is the fact that it was, in fact, made at the era of the disaster, and hence preserves details that other films laboriously reconstruct: in 1912 they *knew* how a trans-Atlantic liner boarded her passengers and loaded her luggage, and what the cast would be wearing - because they were simply their everyday clothes. There are some fascinating pieces of (naturally) German archive footage spliced into the opening of the film, as well, including a shot of a full-rigged ship supposedly approaching the "Titanic". And the contrast between the early exterior shots, apparently using a real ship faked up to resemble the "Titanic" more closely, and the obvious model-work required to represent the iceberg is instructive.
Ironically I found this film to be of most interest before the iceberg came into view, at which point - as a story - it becomes rather ineffective.
What makes it interesting is the fact that it was, in fact, made at the era of the disaster, and hence preserves details that other films laboriously reconstruct: in 1912 they *knew* how a trans-Atlantic liner boarded her passengers and loaded her luggage, and what the cast would be wearing - because they were simply their everyday clothes. There are some fascinating pieces of (naturally) German archive footage spliced into the opening of the film, as well, including a shot of a full-rigged ship supposedly approaching the "Titanic". And the contrast between the early exterior shots, apparently using a real ship faked up to resemble the "Titanic" more closely, and the obvious model-work required to represent the iceberg is instructive.
Ironically I found this film to be of most interest before the iceberg came into view, at which point - as a story - it becomes rather ineffective.