The greatest love story of our time? Titanic’s Jack and Rose keep audiences sobbing, 20 years on
Two decades after Rose vowed to Jack she would ‘never let go’, Titanic director James Cameron talks about how they created a timeless story that some expected to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history
Part saturnine elegy to doomed youth, part exaltation of the transcendent power of love, blockbuster disaster movie Titanic is delivering that sinking feeling to a whole new generation of fans.
December 19 marks two decades since Rose vowed to Jack she would “never let go” in the United States (the film was released one day earlier, on December 18, in Hong Kong) – before spectacularly reneging on her promise, sending her frozen-to-death paramour to a watery grave and leaving “Titaniacs” worldwide sobbing into their popcorn.
The anniversary has been celebrated with screenings across the United States, and audiences are still swooning over the young lovers played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet – now both Oscar winners and Hollywood A-listers.
“The Titanic story itself has a timeless quality,” director James Cameron told fans at a Los Angeles screening to mark the milestone. “It seems to exist outside our daily lives. As this straight moral lesson, it’s something that fascinates us.”
INFOGRAPHIC: The Titanic
Winslet’s love-struck socialite and DiCaprio’s artistic drifter were fictionalised characters in a dramatisation of the real-life sinking in 1912 of history’s most famous ship after it hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic.