Review

As mammoth an undertaking as the big ship itself, Cameron's epic story of the sinking of the Titanic is moviemaking on the grandest of scales. The story of the fateful night of April 14, 1912, has been told before, but never like this. Cameron has taken one of the most infamous chapters in 20th-century history and packaged it in the most spectacular effects and production design the cinema has yet to see. The story begins in the present when artifacts of the sunken ship are recovered. A Titanic survivor, 101-year-old Rose (played with great charm and class by '30s star Stuart), identifies them, and is whisked away to the North Atlantic. There she recounts the story of decades past, and her romance as a youth (Winslet as a 17-year-old Rose) with an adventurous, penniless artist named Jack (DiCaprio). She gets around to the sinking, eventually, too. Though three hours-plus, Cameron's film is so tightly edited and paced that it seems more like two. His dialogue isn't always the best, but everything else about it is first-class. The handsome DiCaprio is romantic and heroic, and the beautiful Winslet shades Rose with intelligence and verve. Titanic is a marvel of popular mainstream filmmaking, and Cameron has made a movie for all time. Winner of a record 11 Academy Awards, including Picture and Director.