Titanic-inspired films which escaped

Shelley Dziedzic

Shelley Dziedzic

Member
Well I hate to be the last in the know about films which have a Titanic thread embedded- but this one caught me cold. I found out about it on a French Titanic website (which is actually a great place to drop in for nice lobby cards and posters from the flicks). The film starred Hugh Grant (cannot believe I missed this one!) and Elle McPherson (yawn...) and is supposed to have begun right after the collision with the berg- Elle having flashbacks and bad dreams, etc. It's called SIRENS- what's the scoop? Oh- do visit this site http://perso.wanadoo.fr/titanic/page37.htm
French not needed to navigate.
 
Shelley, 'Sirens' is an Aussie film by John Duigan (The Year My Voice Broke, Flirting), probably best known for featuring Elle 'The Body' McPherson in her birthday suit. Hugh Grant and Tara Fitzgerald play a young English reverend and his wife, who are sent by the Bishop of Sydney to visit the fairly notorious artist Norman Lindsay (Sam Neill) to dissuade him from continuing with rather salacious works on religious themes featuring voluptuous naked women (you get the idea). Lots of sensuality and nudity in natural bush settings (enter Elle McPherson and a couple of attractive others as artists models), as the previously repressed Mrs Reverend starts finding herself in a very physical sense.

I saw a few minutes of the film on the telly once, so am not able to advise on the degree of Titanic content. However, after running the web site's information through a machine translator (never the most elegant prose result) there's nothing there reviving any memories of what I did see. I'm also certain it's set in the early 1930s, another aspect that doesn't gel with our young heroine being on Titanic in 1912.... But as the film's only loosely based on the real Norman Lindsay, perhaps this Titanic exists in a slightly different timeline?

Anyway, I 'collect' Titanic references like this, so will have to borrow the video some time soon just to be certain one way or the other.
 
After surfing for info on this flick, I see several mentions of "turn of the century"- so maybe there is a flashback. Well troops- only one thing for it- SOMEBODY is just going to have to rent this movie and have a look. Yes, I know it is a dirty job- all that naughtiness and feminine exposure... maybe Cookster will volunteer and give us a full report. How we suffer for research!
 
I seem to recall this cropped up somewhere else...Simon Mills' book on Titanic movies? I did try to catch it once as Norman Lindsay was one of my earlier artistic influences - he prompted me to take up etching when I had access to an etching press. Sans voluptous nudes, I might add (quite the little prude). I would never have caught the Titanic references had they not been pointed out wherever I saw this - I think there was supposedly a scene with Elle or one of the other nymphettes was playing with a model or toy ship in a pool that supposedly resembled the Titanic, and there was another reference to it earlier that slips my mind. So all very tenuous. As an aside, one of my early art mentors was a restorer who had a family member who had been a close friend/associate of Lindsay in his heyday. He had a number of letters Lindsay had written, and mentioned to me once that he had 'rather gone off' the artist as the letters were so utterly racist and vile. Having seen some of Lindsay's WWI cartoons (you'd recognise his enduring image of the hideous primate/hun used in early film propoganda) and some of his cartoons with editorial commentary on the issue of rape, it didn't particularly suprise me.
 
Hmmm...now this is odd (and makes me wish I'd watched the thing from the beginning!) I've found it suggested elsewhere on the net that the entire Lindsay interlude is actually an hallucinogenic episode that takes place while Estella is drowning when the Titanic went down, and that there are visual references to the ship throughout the movie. Shades of Ambrose Bierce's 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'?

Off to google in earnest now!
 
Well, Shelley, I clicked on the link and thought that my MP3 player had broken - it was Strawberry Fields Forever, and suddenly it was overcome by this terrible noise. I turned off my music, and do you know what I got?
The most depressing piece of music ever written done in some electronically synthesised pan-pipe sort of thing! AAARRGH!!!!!!!
Thanks for the link, anyway; there were a few films in there that I never knew existed. I shall be keeping my eye out for them.
Regards, Ryan.
 
Here's a translation of the french web site:

Sirens, an australian film directed by John Duigan in 1994.

This romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Elle MacPherson, starts a few seconds before Titanic's collision with an iceberg. The female lead, a survivor, is traumatized and regularly, throughout the movie, we get to see pictures of the ship, models, etc...

The irony for me is that I collect Titanic movies / references and that I used to own this movie but never watched it. I threw it away a couple of years ago in a great clean up because I hate Hugh Grant and now I have to buy it again.
 
Bought and watched. Here's my report:

The movie starts with a very short flashback (at least we assume it's a flashback because the sequence is in black & white) with a wide shot of the Titanic that looks like it was taken from the 1943 German movie. It then cuts to Tara Fitzgerald on the deck of the ship - a man tries to seduce her with a smile but she quickly looks away. There's no dialog but a song:

"The finest ship that sailed the sea
Is still a prison for the likes of me
But give me wings like Noah’s dove
I’d fly up harbour to the girl I love…"

The movie then switches to color and it's 1933. A young minister (played by Hugh Grant) and his wife (Tara Fitzgerald, on the deck earlier) visit an artist (Sam Neil) and the three sexually playful models living with him. The DVD cover and the taglines would have you believe the movie's a light hearted romantic comedy but it's actually an erotic drama about a reverend's wife finding her own repressed sexuality.

In it the Titanic is used as a clumzy metaphore for her "morality" that sirens will lure to an iceberg of lust and "sink" into an ocean of decadence. Except it's not really the Titanic since it sank in 1912 and the movie takes place 21 years later.

Here's a couple of screenshots:
img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-3/688227/tn_Sirens1.jpg
img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-3/688227/tn_Sirens3.jpg
img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-3/688227/tn_Sirens5.jpg

Not that bad a movie - a couple of interesting "thought provoking" scenes and Portia de Rossi and Elle Macpherson naked make this worth seeing. You can buy it for $9.99 on amazon or for as little as $3.50 thru some of their resellers.
 
Etienne Michel said:
Bought and watched. Here's my report:

The movie starts with a very short flashback (at least we assume it's a flashback because the sequence is in black & white) with a wide shot of the Titanic that looks like it was taken from the 1943 German movie. It then cuts to Tara Fitzgerald on the deck of the ship - a man tries to seduce her with a smile but she quickly looks away. There's no dialog but a song:

"The finest ship that sailed the sea
Is still a prison for the likes of me
But give me wings like Noah’s dove
I’d fly up harbour to the girl I love…"

The movie then switches to color and it's 1933. A young minister (played by Hugh Grant) and his wife (Tara Fitzgerald, on the deck earlier) visit an artist (Sam Neil) and the three sexually playful models living with him. The DVD cover and the taglines would have you believe the movie's a light hearted romantic comedy but it's actually an erotic drama about a reverend's wife finding her own repressed sexuality.

In it the Titanic is used as a clumzy metaphore for her "morality" that sirens will lure to an iceberg of lust and "sink" into an ocean of decadence. Except it's not really the Titanic since it sank in 1912 and the movie takes place 21 years later.

Here's a couple of screenshots:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-3/688227/tn_Sirens1.jpg
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-3/688227/tn_Sirens3.jpg
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-3/688227/tn_Sirens5.jpg

Not that bad a movie - a couple of interesting "thought provoking" scenes and Portia de Rossi and Elle Macpherson naked make this worth seeing. You can buy it for $9.99 on amazon or for as little as $3.50 thru some of their resellers.
Click to expand...
I know I’m decades late, but the stock footage in the opening is actually from the 1953 20th Century Fox version with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck.
 

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