Name: Titanic: Untold Stories
Genre: Documentary
Rating: 7.8
Cast: Margaret Brown, John P. Eaton, Charles A. Haas

Through a combination of submersible availability and James Cameron's film stirring the interest of cable channels such as Discovery, the mid-late 1990s was something of a golden era for Titanic documentaries. Finding a niche that presented the familiar tale of the 1912 disaster on the North Atlantic was always a challenge. One of the better efforts was Titanic: Untold Stories, shown on Discovery in 1998, which combined different approaches into a fascinating 50-odd-minute piece.

One of those approaches will be familiar to viewers of Discovery's other notable Titanic documentaries of the period. Like Anatomy of a Disaster and The Investigation Begins, part of Untold Stories focuses on the 1990s exploration of the wreck by RMS Titanic, Inc. And their recovery of artifacts from the ocean floor. Likewise, the computer animations of the yellow French submersible Nautile and the disaster itself to Michael Whalen's score come from those earlier documentaries and are well-used here. So far, so familiar.

Something else Untold Stories does is present personal accounts of the sinking. As the title suggests, the focus is on the lesser-known tales of the ship's passengers and crew. Those include a trio of Swedish passengers in steerage, including a newlywed couple whose fate becomes entwined with the liner. There are the below deck's experiences of stoker Frederick Barret and the then-recently publicized tale of Japanese passenger Masabumi Hosono. More well-known stories here, too, such as Second Officer Charles Lightoller and second-class passenger Lawrence Beesley. Their accounts are presented through voiceovers and reenactments, often well-realized despite what one suspects was a low budget. Indeed, the reenactments here often stand head and shoulders above many similar efforts in other documentaries, partly due to them not being overambitious but also via how their shot through tilted angles, affording them a dream or nightmare quality depending on events.

Tying together those approaches are Untold Stories narrators. Linda Hunt offers the more overt narration with her voice offering another dream-like quality to the documentary, taking viewers from the bottom of the ocean to the dives and back into the past. With Hunt giving the wider view, another voice comes to the fore from time to time in the form of Titanic historian Charles Haas. Focusing in part on his dive to the wreck site, Haas takes viewers on a tour of the Titanic's bow section to points in the human drama unfolding nearly a century before. Haas provides the historical context while offering a human angle, someone who has spent a lifetime delving into the disaster's human stories coming face to face with the stage where it took place. Haas and Hunt's narration neatly weave Untold Stories' various strands into a cohesive, even moving narrative of the disaster.

A disaster, we're reminded across 50 or so minutes, full of human beings with hopes and dreams. Lives forever changed across a handful of hours on a dark ocean. As much as the Titanic story can be about missed opportunities, the triumphs and failings of technology, and more, Untold Stories serves as a reminder across nearly 25 years that our interest in Titanic lies as much in the people who went through the unthinkable aboard a supposedly unsinkable ship.

The documentary is a form of non-fiction storytelling that aims to present factual information, insights, and perspectives on real-world subjects, events, issues, or people. Documentaries can cover a wide range of topics, including history, science, culture, social issues, nature, biographies, and more.

Dziga Vertov in Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

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Titanic: Untold Stories

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