Wednesday, February 19, 2020

A Night to Remember





As part of a downsizing project eight years ago I purged most of my pre-recorded VHS tape collection. I've never been a big collector of movies -- my DVD library is fairly small -- but the fact is I had accumulated around 70 tapes: 

A Night to Remember (1958) This "Titanic" nut considers the British film classic to be the finest of all the feature length dramatic films made about the famous disaster at sea. I first read Walter Lord's outstanding and absorbing book of the same name when I was 11 or 12 years of age. Seeing the motion picture adaptation a year or two later on television was a visceral experience for me, effectively cementing my interest in the R.M.S. Titanic.

The real story is not so much about a machine, but humanity. A culture of arrogance and vanity (along with bad luck) contributed greatly to the ship's sinking, resulting in the loss of many of its passengers and crew. A Night to Remember is almost documentary-like in its depiction of this tragic event.

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The above piece was first posted as "My VHS Purge: A Night to Remember" on January 21, 2017.

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