Titanic 1997. Aibu to not realise how young Ruth was and that I don’t think Cal was that bad?

[phatt]

So it’s been a few years since I watched Titanic and always assumed that Ruth was in her 60s but she’s actually late 30s/early 40s. So she could have also got re-married (less likely but still a possibility.)

I know I’ll get flamed for this but I don’t think Cal was an outright villain. He did attempt to connect with Rose and love her but for his fiancé to be socialising with people in third class (when social standing was huge) and to blatantly cheat on him very openly then you can see why he’d be pissed off.

Also I’m judging him by Edwardian standards and not modern day. Obviously he did acts that made him a “bad” person as well.

There was a joke passed around at the time, or soon after, that you should always avoid a quick shag because then your character would become disposable and probably die before the end of the film.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-Thought-Knew-About-Titanic-ebook/dp/B007TCQGNM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3JNHU3NRAF7S2&keywords=tim+maltin+titanic&qid=1687788222&sprefix=tim+maltin+titanic%2Caps%2C91&sr=8-1

This one was excellent.

I think you've missed the point that the suggestion is that she could have pawned the necklace, not sold it.

Well, I guess Rose disproved that one, though Jack didn't.

It sounds a bit like the trope that, as an actor, you never want to be the salt-of-the-earth soldier who starts showing round pictures of his fiancée, wife or baby the night before the big attack, because your character will the the first to get mown down. You might get a quick cameo later when they roll your body over to discover you clutching the photo.

Only one of the couple would die - usually the man. DH and I called it the ‘life affirming shag’ because the purpose of the quickie - and the ill-fated character - seemed to be to re-affirm the survivor’s will to live.

Iamstilltheeggman
Diana did.

I thought the Titanic was a load of rubbish. How did it get all those Oscars?

To be fair the visual effects are pretty good for a film that was released in 1997.

There's an alternate ending, where Rose says she could never sell it because she couldn't be rich off Cal's money, so the hardest thing was to be poor with the means to be rich but not being able to utilise it (or something along those lines)

That alt ending is so rubbish! 😂

Also, as soon as the sun comes up, Lovett is totally getting back in the sub with the little robotic arms and going back down to pick up the necklace.

She wasn't poor, though. That final scene showing all the photos of her well-lived life suggest she travelled extensively and had numerous hobbies.

@DrSbaitso I assume was poor after the sinking of the Titanic, with a new identity, no money, family, starting somewhere new, and maybe fell back on her feet after marriage and building her acting career

We know she became an actress, using the name of Rose Dawson. Whilst walking on the boat deck with Jack - this was in a deleted scene - she enumerates all the many ways in which she can be a useful, productive member of society instead of simply looking decorative. We see her on deck posing in front of a movie camera.

She has some big ambitions relating to her own potential capabilities, which the gilded cage she's living in would never allow her to fulfil.

It's a funny irony that Nathan Hockley, Cal's old man, files an insurance claim for the diamond only days after the sinking. He's given the trinket to Rose, so surely it's hers? But he gets the value back, whilst Rose determinedly doesn't get rich off the back of it. Added to which, this isn't your run-of-the-mill necklace. Had she auctioned it (you don't 'pawn' a priceless diamond) then that could surely have led to a divulgence of the fact that its owner was still alive, thus alerting Cal to Rose's whereabouts.

An irony indeed that she lives a rich and full life, whilst he offs himself in the wake of the Wall Street crash.

The deleted scene / alternate ending:

Flashback to her finding the necklace in the jacket pocket - "The hardest thing about being so poor was being so rich. But every time I thought about selling it, I thought of Cal. And somehow, I made it without his help."

Oh my goodness that alternative ending is awful!

Yeah, that's really bad. Cal's money was the only good thing about him. You can bet I'd sell a valuable jewel of his if I were stuck in the Great Depression without money. Think how much it would have pissed him off, especially after he lost everything in it. Besides, if it was good enough to use to pose nude, it was definitely good enough to set yourself and your family up for life.

I’ve never really questioned this before but why were those present day people trying to find the diamond?

I assume just to get rich. But I’m wondering maybe there was a deeper reason I missed.

Because it was worth a fortune.

They knew there was a huge claim on the insurance by Hockley after the diamond was supposedly lost on the Titanic. So they wrongly thought it would be in Cal's safe aboard the wreck.

I assume to get rich too.

But one of the many reasons the alt ending doesn't work is that, by that time, it's obvious that if anyone had a claim to that diamond, it's Rose.

There is no way they be able to claim it for themselves.

Thanks yeah that alternative ending makes no sense it is truly awful

I’d assume the necklace was a gift upon marriage but as they weren’t married yet it wasn’t technically hers. So Cal still owned it and his next of kin collected on insurance.
The premise of film is the modern day people think necklace is in safe in Cal’s bedroom.

But Cal realised when the ship was sinking that it was in the pocket of the coat he’d given to Rose so why did they all think it was in the safe?

Because Cal wouldn't have told the insurance people that? And if he did, how would the present day guys know it was put in the jacket - the logical answer is the safe.

You can't just "pawn" or sell a unique several-million-dollar diamond. No pawnshop is going to touch it, rightly assuming that the wrath of God in the form of insurance agents and police would descend. Insurance paid out on it, so they would have been all over any "reappearance" of it.