Misrepresented in the movie

[Svetlana Strezeva]

It seems to me that the movie "Titanic" didn't show the people of 1912 as they would have been.
I've looked at many photos from that time, and some short movie clips, and it strikes me how there is no one smiling anywhere. Once in a while a man will smile, but never a woman. (I think it was more towards the 1920's that women started to smile...)

But I guess the movie wouldn't have gotten the reaction that it got, if the characters didn't have the characteristics we see in people today. Maybe people wouldn't have identified with them then...

So I'm wondering... during Titanic's final hours, would there still have been the "connectedness" between the people onboard, that we see in the movie?

 

[Bob Godfrey]

Hallo Svetlana, and welcome to the forum. Here are a couple of photos of people smiling in 1912, jut to prove they could do it! I have many others, and documentary films as well, showing our great grandparents clearly enjoying themselves. The Edwardians had a great sense of fun and smiled and laughed no less than people anywhere or at any time, but people often do look very serious in old photographs. That had a lot to do with the fact that cameras were not the familiar everyday objects that they are now, and being photographed even informally was still something of an occasion which demanded a formal response. Even 40 years later, when I was a child, many holiday snaps show rows of children looking very serious and standing to attention like soldiers. The fun stopped for the camera!

 

[Inger Sheil]

I'd agree, Bob - women did indeed smile and laugh, physically expressing emotions as they have throughout human history. It might not have been thought polite to laugh to excess, but a sweet smile was thought an asset.

I think we've discussed in another thread how facial expressions often lapsed into solemn lines when the subject was photographed (with lovely exceptions such as the ones you've posted in this thread) - being formally photographed was a very serious business, and one had to have a suitably dignified expression! Candid photographs are more revealing - here's a lovely photo of Kathleen and the very proper Captain Scott:

 

[Bob Godfrey]

And here's a rare photo of a public appearance by a stately lady who was supposed never to have been amused!

 

[Martin Williams]

As for 'Titanic' personalities, I'm aware of great 'candid' photographs of Lady Duff Gordon, Elsie Bowerman, Edith Russell, R. Norris Williams and Karl Behr, all with great big grins pasted onto their chops.

It is worth remembering that, back in 1912, dentistry was quite primitive. I've seen a handful of studio portraits of the great beauties of the day and their teeth appear quite crooked and peg-like by our much higher standards. No wonder they kept their lips firmly together in front of the camera!

 

[monica e. hall]

Dentristry. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. People just didn't have the wherewithall to get their teeth fixed in Edwardian times. Actually, they might have been lucky in a way. It still costs a fortune these days, and it still doesn't always work, unless you might have a career in films. (Anyone seen Tom Cruise prior to major dentistry?).

I think that the perfect USA dentistry is a legacy of the immigrant Eastern European inheritance .. terrific wide jaws and terrific many teeth .. and the rest of you just follow, paying through the nose.

But I don't blame anyone - it looks good. Julia Roberts! Not perfect, but wonderful.

 

[Bob Godfrey]

"Florence Nightingale reporting. Check out this photo of me, looking as always as if my dog had just died. Back in the 19th century we were asked to keep absolutely still for several seconds when being photographed, so we tended to relax our facial muscles and adopt a blank stare while trying desperately not to move and not to look nervous. It's hard to 'freeze' a smile, or indeed any kind of spontaneous expression on your face for several immobile seconds without looking demented, so generally the best we could do was to adopt this strange vacant stare. So this is a photo of me, but in a way it's not really me. Hope that makes sense."

 

[Martin Pirrie]

Nothing changes! In the UK we are asked, when having a passport photograph taken, to adopt a neutral expression and without a smile!

 

[Martin Williams]

I recall reading in an etiquette manual of 1897 that the 'Bright Young Things' of late-Victorian Society affected blank stares because they thought a lack of expression denoted good breeding. I tried doing it myself...and only lasted about five minutes. Looking totally vacant requires a great deal of energy!

 

[Bob Godfrey]

Take heed of the wise words of Sarah Annie Frost in Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society. For those of good breeding, Ms Frost stresses the importance of 'smiling serenity' as the standard response to delights and disasters alike. But not too serene. The well-bred reader was cautioned to: strictly avoid anything approaching to absence of mind. There can be nothing more offensive than a pre-occupied vacant expression, an evident abstraction of self at the very time you are supposed to be listening attentively to all that is being said to you. Lord Chesterfield said: "When I see a man absent in mind. I choose to be absent in body."
.

 

[Alan James Gwinn]

This photo shows what happens to a 1911 pic when someone moves-[see child at right and infant- slightly out of focus]. Standing at the left rear is William Logan Gwinn, mail clerk aboard Titanic who lost his life in the disaster. Seated in front of him is his wife, Florence, with their son, Thurston on her lap. Others are Will's parents, his siblings, his sister-in-law and nephews. The boy down in front is my father, Alexander Stuart Gwinn. The photographer apparently insisted on the seriousness of the visages displayed- very out of character for this family, especially at Christmas time!

 

[Bob Godfrey]

Great photo, Alan. Thanks for posting it.

 

[Jason D. Tiller]

Hi Alan,

It's great to see that photo and being able to put faces to names for William, and Florence.

Thank you for sharing it.

 

[Inger Sheil]

What a tremendous photo, Alan! Christmas 1911?

Poor teeth would indeed encourage one not to go in for toothy grins - I think I've mentioned before that James Moody suffered from bad teeth (quite painful, it sounded), and I suspect that was the reason why a young man with such an excellent sense of humour refrained from much more than a slight, close-mouthed smile when in camera shot. Harold Lowe, on the other hand, had a wide grin that he was not at all adverse to showing - it even appears in a formal studio portrait in 1916 when he was briefly home from the war and had a photograph taken with his children.

 

[monica e. hall]

Teeth. Goodness. One wonders why we don't have the capacity, like sharks or crocs, to grow more teeth as time and troubles go on. Well, I suppose we just don't, and I have to say it certainly goes against Intelligent Design ... as indeed does my spine, not to mention having any woman's pelvic problems re children. But we have good dentists now, don't we, Inger? But James and Harold were in a dental lottery a century ago.