Titanic

Brock Lovett is heading up a crew of people searching for some kind of treasure in the wreck of the legendary Titanic. They find a case, thinking that the things they want are in it, but it's empty. However they do find a drawing of a woman apparently wearing what he's looking for: a very large diamond. An old woman sees him and gives him a call because she's the woman in that drawing. The old woman is Rose, one of the first class passengers. At first Brock is not interested in what Rose says, but when she tells him that she's the one in the drawing Brock is convinced.

She start telling the story where Jack Dawson won third class tickets for the Titanic in a poker game. He is with his friend Fabrizio. Rose is with her mother and her fiancee Cal - her mother arranged the marriage to protect her status and wealth. Unhappy with this decision, Rose attempts to commit suicide by throwing herself into the ocean. She is confronted by Dawson, who convinces her to come up from the railing. Rose invites Jack to dinner as a thanks, and afterwards Jack spirits her away to a third class evening of dancing. Rose decides to decide her own future and asks Jack, who is an acclaimed artist, to draw her nude wearing only the Heart of the Ocean. The two then find their way to the cargo hold and find a rich man's car waiting for them. They proceed to make love in the back seat before the ship hits an iceberg.

As people begin boarding lifeboats, Jack is arrested, accused of stealing the Heart of the Ocean necklace, and is locked in the master at arms' office. Instead of boarding a lifeboat, Rose goes back to help Jack, using an axe to chop the handcuffs apart. Cal finally convinces her to board a lifeboat, and assuring her that he has made arrangements to get both men off the boat safely. Rose jumps from the boat because she can't stay there while Jack is suffering: 'you jump, I jump' staying on her mind. Cal shoots at both of them but misses. Both escape the shipwreck alive, and end up in the water. Jack helps her onto a door that can only support the weight of one person.

While Jack is in the freezing water, they exchange loving words, and Jack dies. Rose gives her name as Rose Dawson to hide from her mother and Cal. She sees Cal one more time frantically looking for her but hides her face in a blanket just as he looks in her direction. Rose then proceeds to do everything that her and Jack promised to do together, and lives her life. When she's done telling the story she goes to the side of the ship and she drops the diamond into the water. In her dream, or possibly in death, she is with Jack standing at the staircase of the Titanic while waiting for her. They both kiss and are applauded by those who were lost in the disaster.

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.

More mistakes in Titanic

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.

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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.

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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.

lblinc

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.

Michael Albert

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.

dizzyd

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