Factual error: The lake that Jack told Rose he went ice fishing on when she was threatening to jump is Lake Wissota, a man-made lake in Wisconsin near Chippewa Falls (where Jack grew up). The lake was only filled with water in 1918 when a power company built a dam on the Chippewa River, six years after the Titanic sank. (00:39:05)
Titanic (1997)
Directed by: James Cameron
Starring: Kathy Bates, Bill Paxton, Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Billy Zane, Victor Garber, Bernard Hill
Factual error: At the end of the movie, the Straus' are seen lying in each other's arms on their bed with water coming into the cabin under the closed door as the ship is sinking. This is not true, their cabin was on C deck, but his body was found in the following days of the sinking. For his body to get into the open water it would have had to float through a closed door, and up several flights of stairs. Historically, they refused to leave the ship, and were last seen sitting in deck chairs. They were there when the ship sank on the boat deck. Her body was never recovered.
Factual error: Rose mentions Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's ideas on the male preoccupation with size to Bruce. However this is 1912, and Freud did not publish the work relating to this until 1920 in "Beyond The Pleasure Principle." Also, up until 1919, Freud relied solely on data from women. (00:33:40)
Trivia: Bernard Fox, who portrayed Colonel Archibald Gracie IV, also played Frederick Fleet in the 1958 film, A Night to Remember, another film about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Frederick Fleet was the first person to notice the iceberg and shouted the warning to the crew.
Trivia: Gloria Stuart was the oldest person ever to receive an Oscar nomination for her role in "Titanic". At 87, she was also the only person on the set who was alive at the time of the real "Titanic" disaster.
Cal Hockley: You're going to him? To be a whore to a gutter rat?!
Rose: I'd rather be his whore than your wife.
Lewis Bodine: We never found anything on Jack. There's no record of him at all.
Rose Calvert: No, there wouldn't be, would there? And I've never spoken of him until now. Not to anyone, not even your grandfather. A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets. But now you know there was a man named Jack Dawson. And that he saved me. In every way that a person can be saved. I don't even have a picture of him. He exists now, only in my memory.
Jack: That's one of the good things about Paris: lots of girls willing to take their clothes off.
Question: How did rats manage to get on board?
Question: What happened to Rose's mother after the sinking? I'm curious because she made it very clear while she was lacing up Rose's corset, that she was entirely dependent on Rose's match with Cal to survive. Whether she was exaggerating or not, she made the statement that she would be poor and in the workhouses if not for the marriage and Cal's fortune to support them. Obviously, since Rose is presumed dead after the sinking, she did not marry Cal and her mother was not able to benefit from his money. So would she then, in fact, end up poor and in the workhouses as she said? Rose didn't just abandon Cal and that lifestyle to start anew, she also had to abandon her mother. So did she leave her mother to be a poor and squandering worker? At the end of the movie, Rose gives her account of Cal and what happened to him in the following years, but never anything about her mother. I realize this question would probably be more speculation than a factual answer, but I just wondered if there were some clues at the end that I maybe didn't pick up on or if there were some "DVD bonus" or behind the scenes I haven't seen that answered this.
Chosen answer: Because she is considered, in a minor sense, a "villain" in this film for forcing her daughter into a loveless arranged marriage to satisfy her personal wants, most fans probably speculate that she became a poor and penniless seamstress and lived out her life working in a factory. Of course, this is possible, without the financial security of the arranged marriage between Cal and Rose. However, it is difficult to believe that a woman of such status, and who has so many wealthy and powerful friends, would be allowed to languish in abject poverty doing menial labors. I would tend to believe that she probably sold a number of her possessions for money (she did mention that as part of the humiliation she would face if Rose were to refuse Cal's affections), and probably lived off the kindness of others. Given that her daughter was betrothed to a Hockley, his family might have felt an obligation to assist her in finding a suitable living arrangement and a situation for employment. It is also possible that she re-married into wealth. However, this is more unlikely, mainly because back in 1912, it was considered scandalous to re-marry, especially at Ruth's age. However, since Ruth does not make an appearance after surviving the sinking of the Titanic in a lifeboat number 6 (next to Molly Brown), nor is she mentioned again, her fate is left unknown and subject only to speculation.
In that era, with Rose betrothed to Call, Cal would most definitely have provided for Ruth in the lifestyle she was accustomed to. As Cal angrily raged at Rose the morning after her excursion below decks, "You are my wife in custom if not yet in practice ", thus, society would have viewed him a villain had he not cared for Ruth once it was assumed Rose was dead.
Answer: I've wondered that too. I think it was easier to find out what happened to Cal because she said "it was in all the papers." As for her mother, it likely would have only been in the papers local to where she lived when she passed away. This was in an era before television and of course way before the internet. So I think the only way Rose would have been able to keep track of her mom would have been to live in the area or do some investigation. It seems unlikely she wanted to do either one, especially since it would have 'given it away" that Rose had survived in the first place. I agree with the other statements that Cal would have felt obligated to take care of her, and that the people she owed money to would have tried to collect on it as it would have been in "bad form" under the circumstances.
Answer: Her mother's big problem was a heap of debts. It would have looked badly on the debt collectors to go hovering around her after what was assumed to have happened, and in a society where one's reputation was valued highly. They probably simply gave her a degree of debt forgiveness in her bereavement, then Cal, insurance, and even her Mother herself taking a second (rich) husband could've taken care of what was left.
Question: During the lunch scene, Ismay says that Titanic was the largest moving object made by man. Was that true? At least, at the time?
Answer: Yes, it was. At the time, the big cruise lines were all trying to outdo each other with the largest and most opulent cruise ships. The Olympic class ships were the White Star Line's entry in the size race, with Olympic, the first built, taking the title in 1911, before losing it to her sister ship, the Titanic, the following year.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Chosen answer: During the several years it took to construct the ship probably, or in any of the supplies/food brought on board, or in the furniture brought on board. A single pregnant female rat can be responsible for thousands of rats in a very short space of time (the offspring are not too choosy about who they breed with).
Soylent Purple
A pregnant female rat could have made a home in a underneath a third class couch and had the other rats then all the females would have baby rats quickly.