As our chart rambles on we reach number eight and the 1997 box office smash Titanic, which went on to win eleven Academy Awards in including Best Picture.Beginning with an undersea expedition in the 1990s, in which scuba divers are searching the sunken ship for lost relics, a painting of young Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) is found. Through flashbacks, memories of an old woman, who tells of her experience aboard the doomed ship. After winning a trip on the RMS Titanic during a dockside card game, American Jack Dawson spots the society girl Rose DeWitt Bukater who is on her way to Philadelphia to marry her rich snob fiance Cal Hockley. Rose feels helplessly trapped by her situation and makes her way to the aft deck and thinks of suicide until she is rescued by Jack. Cal is therefore obliged to invite Jack to dine at their first-class table where he suffers through the slights of his snobbish hosts.
In return, he spirits Rose off to third class for an evening of dancing, giving her the time of her life.
Deciding to forsake her intended future all together, Rose asks Jack, who has made his living making sketches on the streets of Paris, to draw her in the nude wearing the invaluable blue diamond Cal has given her.
Cal finds out and has Jack locked away. Soon afterwards, the ship hits an iceberg and Rose must find Jack while both must run from Cal even as the ship sinks deeper into the freezing water.
Whether or not the love story between Jack and Rose is believable isn't really the point as Cameron doesn't want to tell a plausible love story he wants to tell an exceptional love story that is as exceptional as the history of the R.M.S. Titanic itself.
By keeping the focus firmly on Rose and Jack the director avoids the major problem with disaster movies: to many characters that aren't developed and we don't care about and too many stories.
And since everyone knows the story of the Titanic a story within the story had to be developed to keep an audience interested for the three hours and the doomed romance is the perfect foreground for the sinking ship.
When released Titanic stayed at number one at the US box office for fifteen consecutive weeks and still holds the record for the highest-grossing film of all time in North America, with $600 million.
The film also hold the title of highest grossing film at the global box office with a staggering $1.8 billion.
With fourteen Oscar nomination it tied with All About Eve as having the most nominations in history, going on to win eleven.
An old fashion romance epic that will bring a tear to your eye.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw