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Saved From the Titanic

Saved from the Titanic
SavedFromthetitanicposter.PNG
Directed by Étienne Arnaud
Starring
Distributed by Eclair Film Company
Release date
May 14, 1912 (1912-05-14)
Running time
10 min. (300 m)
Country United States
Language Silent (English Intertitles)

Saved from the Titanic is a 1912 American silent motion picture short starring Dorothy Gibson, an American film actress who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912. Premiering in the United States just 29 days after the event, it is the earliest dramatization about the tragedy.

Gibson had been one of 28 people aboard the first lifeboat to be launched from Titanic and was rescued about five and a half hours after leaving the ship. On returning to New York City, she co-wrote the script and played a fictionalized version of herself. The plot involves her recounting the story of the disaster to her fictional parents and fiancé, with the footage interspersed with stock footage of icebergs, Titanic's sister ship Olympic and the ship's captain, Edward Smith. To add to the film's authenticity, Gibson wore the same clothes as on the night of the disaster. The filming took place in a New Jersey studio and aboard a derelict ship in New York Harbor.

The film was released internationally and attracted large audiences and positive reviews, though some criticized it for commercializing the tragedy so soon after the event. It is now regarded as a lost film, as the last known prints were destroyed in an Éclair studio fire in March 1914. Only a few printed stills and promotional photos are known to survive. It is Gibson's penultimate film, as she reportedly suffered a mental breakdown after completing it.

The 22-year-old Gibson was a passenger aboard Titanic's maiden voyage, joining the ship at Cherbourg in France on the evening of April 10. She had been on vacation in Europe with her mother when her employers, the Eclair Film Company, recalled her to New York City to participate in a new production. On the evening of the sinking, she was playing bridge (this would have been bridge whist, a predecessor to today's game) in a first-class saloon before retiring to the cabin that she shared with her mother. The game was later credited with saving the lives of the players who had stayed up late to finish it, despite it being (as one American writer put it) "a violation of the strict Sabbath rules of English vessels." The collision with the iceberg at 11:40 pm sounded to Gibson like a "long, drawn, sickening scrunch". After going to investigate, she fetched her mother when she saw Titanic's deck beginning to list as water flooded into the ship's boiler rooms.


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