JACK’S ICY END IN TITANIC

It’s a much debated cinematic moment – could the tissue-inducing ending of James Cameron’s three-hour blockbuster have been different for third-class passenger Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), had he escaped the icy water by fitting on the floating door with upper-class posho Rose (Kate Winslet) after the titular ship sank? Well, it was the least of Cameron’s worries during filming in 1996 on a film so staggeringly over budget and schedule that studio heads were panicking.

Budgeted for $110 million, by the time Rose and Jack were bobbing along with their door, the cost had risen to $200m thanks to Cameron’s exacting determination to recreate every nuance of the doomed liner (a deep dive to the real wreck pre-filming clocked in at $2m alone). Its planned summer release date was pushed back to December and by the time this key scene was filmed in the tank of a bespokebuilt studio in Rosarita, Mexico - on Winslet’s 21st birthday, no less (DiCaprio turned 22 during the seven-month production) - the lead actors were exhausted. Floating in cold water for hours, Winslet recalled later that she and DiCaprio would take turns swimming to the other end the tank to pee in the water, while the long night shoots and being pummelled with water cannons took their toll on the duo. Though the nights were chilly, the crew were not working in the icy temperatures of the real Titanic sinking so SFX house VIFX were brought in to create icy breath for the actors. The effects team built a cold room and shot real breath from a stunt double covered in black velvet – the vapour clouds were then digitally added. Crystals that reacted with water were added to the twosome’s face to create ice, and wax was applied to their clothing to ensure they looked consistently saturated.

The resulting scene is heart-wrenching in its icy doom as Jack slips into the inky depths, something Cameron was adamant would happen throughout filming and test screenings. He spent two days tinkering with the piece of wood to make it just buoyant enough to carry one person, and calculating the hours Rose would survive out of the water in order for her to make it to that returning lifeboat. For the movie to work, he reasoned, Jack had to not get on that door. “By feeling the fear, the loss, the heartbreak of Jack and Rose, we finally can feel for the 1,500,” Cameron noted. JC