Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 12/4/2012)

Such was the public interest in the story that, within a few months of the tragedy, German director Mime Misu had produced In Nacht und Eis/In Night and Ice for Continental Film Studios in Berlin. Using a toy boat on an icy pond to recreate the events of 14-15 April 1912, this is an error-strewn effort (which can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube). But, running for 35 minutes, it was three times the length of the average motion picture produced in the days before features and some of the scenes depicting life on the liner may well have been shot on the ocean-going SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria in Hamburg docks.

In 1929, another German, EA Dupont, adapted Ernest Raymond's 1915 play The Berg as Atlantic (1929), an early talkie that was forbidden by the White Star line from making direct reference to Titanic in its story of a transatlantic calamity. Starring Madeleine Carroll, Franklin Dyall, John Longden, Monty Banks and Donald Calthrop, this film à clef had the field (or is that sea?) to itself until Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels commissioned Titanic (1943) to denounce British craftsmanship, seamanship and conduct under pressure at the height of the Second World War.

Then the most expensive film made in Germany, this proved to be as cursed as the liner itself, with director Herbert Selpin being arrested for criticising the behaviour of the womanising Kriegsmarine officers on set on the evidence of co-scenarist and supposed best friend Walter Zerlett-Olfenius. Having been interrogated by Goebbels himself, Selpin was found hanged in his cell the next morning and the shoot was completed by the uncredited Werner Klingler in an atmosphere of terror after complaints by the cast and crew were silenced by a uniformed presence. The misfortunes continued, however, as the theatre where the premiere was to take place was bombed with the answer print inside and a lacklustre launch in Paris several months later presaged a swift withdrawal, as it was deemed bad for morale to subject German audiences to scenes of death and distress in the midst of heavy Allied air raids.

The story is based on a falsehood, as Sir Bruce Ismay (EF Fürbringer) concocts a scheme to make a fortune from the voyage by withholding the ship's Blue Ribbon potential and repurchasing his discarded White Line shares at a bargain price to make a killing when the stock value soars. However, the focus is much more on the equally fictional heroics of First Petty Officer Peterson (Hans Nielsen), who responds positively as Captain Edward J. Smith (Otto Wernicke) dithers after running into an iceberg and joins with lover Sigrid Olinsky (Sybille Schmitz) and fellow Germans like manicurist Heidi (Monika Burg) and orchestra leader Gruber (Hermann Brix) to get the women and children into the lifeboats while toffs like John Jacob Astor (Karl Karl Schönböck), Lady Astor (Charlotte Thiele) and Lord Douglas (Fritz Böttger) look only to their own safety.

The life and times of Sybille Schmitz would later inspire Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Veronika Voss (1982) and Barbara Stanwyck would make an equally compelling pseudo-biopic subject. She co-starred with Clifton Webb, Robert Wagner and Brian Aherne in Jean Negulesco's Titanic (1953), which earned Charles Brackett an Oscar for his screenplay and rave reviews for Thelma Ritter for her performance as a socialite similar to the one played by Debbie Reynolds in Charles Walters's The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), which is surprisingly not showing here. Nor is `A House Divided', the 1973 episode of Upstairs, Downstairs in which Miss Roberts returns to 165 Eaton Place clutching Lady Marjorie Bellamy's jewellery box after she perished on the maiden voyage. However, the finest reconstruction of the Titanic saga is showing at the NFT and is also going on general release in a new digitally restored print: Roy Ward Baker's A Night to Remember (1958).

Scripted by Eric Ambler from a 1955 Walter Lord book of the same name and designed by Alex Vetchinsky using the blueprints of the ship, this engrossing tribute was given added authenticity by the technical advice of fourth officer Joseph Boxhall and ex-Cunard commodore Harry Grattidge, who had survived the sinking of RMS Lancastria on 17 June 1941. But it's the quiet sincerity and very British dignity of the Ward Baker's direction and the playing of a superlative ensemble that makes this so imposing and moving.

Hailed as unsinkable, the world's largest ship sets sail from Southampton to New York under Captain Edward J. Smith (Laurence Naismith) on 10 April 1912. White Star director J. Bruce Ismay (Frank Lawton) fancies a tilt at the record for the fastest Atlantic crossing, but naval architect Thomas Andrews (Michael Goodliffe) is keener to arrive safely and, with several ice warnings being received from other vessels in the mid-Atlantic, he urges caution.

On the night of 14 April, lookout Frederick Fleet (Bernard Fox) spots an iceberg in the ship's path and Captain Smith orders a hard turn to port. However, Titanic strikes the iceberg on the starboard side and Andrews quickly realises that the first five compartments below the waterline have been compromised and that his masterpiece is going to sink. Distraught at the realisation that there will not be enough lifeboat space to save the first and second-class passengers, let alone those in steerage and the crew, Andrews retires to one of the staterooms, while wireless operator Jack Phillips (Kenneth Griffith) and assistant Harold Bride (David McCallum) try to make contact with Cyril Evans (Geoffrey Bayldon) on the SS Californian, which can be seen on the horizon some 10 miles away. However, Evans is away from his station and the message is picked up by Harold Cottam (Alec McCowen) aboard the RMS Carpathia, whose captain, Arthur Rostron (Anthony Bushell), orders his crew to make full steam across the 58-mile distance to attempt a rescue.

The evacuation of Titanic is now under way, with first officer William Murdoch (Richard Leech) and second officer Charles Lightoller (Kenneth More) organising the lifeboat descents. Despite the priority given to women and children, several men (including Ismay) attempt to get into the boats, while the stewards struggle to keep the third-class passengers confined below deck. All attempts to release the final two collapsible lifeboats fail, however, and, with the ship entering the final stage of sinking, the steerage occupants are finally set free to take their chances in the frozen waters. As Captain Stanley Lord (Russell Napier) prevaricates on the Californian and with the Carpathia still some four hours away, Lightoller orders his crewmates to swim for it and some cling to an upturned collapsible while watching the great liner disappear beneath the waves.

At the end of the film, Lightoller, as the senior surviving officer, laments that more had not been done to ensure the safety of the passengers. However, Ambler's screenplay places as much blame on Captain Lord for his indifferent arrogance as anyone connected to the White Star company or aboard Titanic. Such an adjudication is clearly open to debate, but Ambler laudably eschews the sentimentality that would blight James Cameron's 1997 epic, which is also being reissued in manufactured 3-D to mark the anniversary. Moreover, he avoids the overt heroics that came to be a staple of the disaster cycle in the early 1970s.

Indeed, restraint is very much the watchword here, with Geoffrey Unsworth's monochrome photography, Sidney Hayers's editing, Harry Miller's sound design, Bill Warrington's special effects and William Alwyn's score all emulating the discretion of Ward Baker's direction. Kenneth More is typically magnificent as Lightoller and he is well supported by Michael Goodliffe, whose anguish at having so many souls on his conscience is deftly contrasted with the selflessness of John Merivale as Robbie Lucas, who puts his wife and three children into a lifeboat and steps away to accept his fate with a quiet courage that is infinitely more poignant than Leonardo DiCaprio's parting from Kate Winslet. Also worth noting are Honor Blackman as Mrs Liz Lucas and Tucker McGuire as Molly Brown, and see if you can spot an uncredited Sean Connery among the deck crew.

One of the most moving sequences in A Night to Remember depicts the band playing `Nearer My God to Thee' and there is plenty more beautiful music in René Féret's Mozart's Sister, an audiovisual masterclass that proves a more than worthy companion piece to Milos Forman's Amadeus (1984), as it eschews feminist cant to present a melancholic treatise on transient celebrity and wasted talent. Laudably resisting the temptation to taint the 1760s with modern sensibilities, this superior speculation on the Mozart family nevertheless exposes the folly of wilfully upholding tradition.

Riding in a coach through the snowy French countryside, Leopold Mozart (Marc Barbé) laments in a letter that life on the road is arduous and its rewards unreliable. He relates how a German nobleman had preferred to hunt rather than listen to his 11 year-old son Wolfgang Amadeus (David Moreau) and 15 year-old daughter Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia - known by her nickname Nannerl (Marie Féret) - run through a repertoire designed to showcase the boy's prodigious talent as a violinist and unique ability to amuse through displays of blindfolded ingenuity. However, a broken axle interrupts his train of thought and, along with his children and wife Anna-Maria (Délphine Chuillot), he seeks lodging for the night in a remote convent.

Despite the reluctance of the abbess (Dominique Marcas), the family is granted sanctuary until the coach can be repaired and Nannerl quickly befriends Louise (Lisa Féret), Sophie (Adèle Leprêtre) and Victoire (Valentine Duval), the daughters of King Louis XV, who were taken away from their mother as infants and raised in isolation to ensure they did not cause scandal at court or distract their brother, the Dauphin (Clovis Fouin), from his duties. Louise is particularly excited at finding a confidant and she shows Nannerl the book of blasphemies that the nuns confiscated from Victoire and urges her to burn it at the earliest opportunity. She also asks her to take a love letter to Hugues Le Tourneur (Arthur Tos), the Dauphin's companion to whom she lost her heart during a brief visitation.

Nannerl agrees to play messenger during her audition at Versailles and bids Louise a fond farewell as the Mozarts set off for the royal court. While Leopold and Wolfgang are making arrangements with the master of music (Nicolas Giraud), Nannerl is swept away by Isabelle d'Aubusson (Salomée Stevenin), a courtier in Louise's confidence, who explains that the Dauphin was recently widowed by the childbirth death of his young wife and that Nannerl will have to disguise herself as a man in order to pass the billet doux to Hugues, as his master is forbidden from consorting with females during his period of mourning.

Nannerl consents to the deception, but is distinctly uneasy at being left alone with the Dauphin, who is obsessed with music and is suitably impressed by both her exquisite singing voice and her mastery of the violin. He asks Nannerl if she composes and, when she admits to having produced a few items, he commissions her to write something that he can be the first to play. Despite being aware that Leopold disapproves of her doing anything other than accompany her brother, Nannerl accepts and begins seizing rare moments of privacy at the home of Madame Van Eyck (Mona Heftre) to work on a piece fit for a king in waiting.

With her performance with Wolfgang approaching, Nannerl realises that she cannot keep up the deception for much longer and the Dauphin is delighted to discover her true identity and smiles at her during the concert. Such is her excitement at being valued in her own right that Nannerl asks her mother if she can remain in Paris and take pupils while attempting her own compositions. Despite refusing to let her into his classes with Wolfgang, Leopold allows her to stay when the family departs for London and shows his love for her by playing violin at her bedside as she is nursed through a bout of fever (although his concern for his son is far more extreme when he breaks out in angry red spots and Leopold fears not only losing his child, but also his livelihood).

However, Nannerl quickly discovers the extent to which Leopold had sheltered her from the realities of life, as she is summoned to the convent to which the 14 year-old Louise had retired on discovering that Hugues is actually her half-brother and warned that she should not fall in love with the Dauphin, as he has a terrible fear of succumbing to the same womanising decadence that he feels has compromised his father's reign by allowing power to fall into the hands of his chief minister, Cardinal Fleury, and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Yet Nannerl is charmed by his enthusiasm for her music and overwhelmed with happiness when he assembles the court orchestra and hands her the violin to lead it through the premiere of her composition. But a nasty surprise awaits her when the Dauphin summons her back to Versailles to play for his new bride, Marie-Josèphe de Saxe (Océane Jubert), and, following a last meeting with Louise, Nannerl is relieved to be welcomed back into the bosom of her family, even though she knows she will never again escape her brother's shadow, especially as Leopold is now keen for him to begin producing operas.

Employing his son Julien as his assistant and wife Fabienne as his editor, René Féret tinkers with history in having Nannerl forge friendships with Louise and the Dauphin. But such is the brilliance of the Versailles setting and Marie-Jeanne Séréro's pastiche score that the fictive elements feel as authentic as the insights into Nannerl's life as a child prodigy, whose opportunities are limited by both her gender and the growing fame of her precocious sibling.

The performances are also delightful, with the director's daughters Marie and Lisa capturing an aura of deferential solemnity that is nicely punctuated as they run around the convent cloister and as Marie improvises at the keyboard or engages in a joyous pillow fight with the equally impressive David Moreau. Recalling Roberto Rossellini's historical dramas in its bid to suggest the past caught on film rather than painstakingly reconstructed for it, the action benefits greatly from the muted photography of Benjamin Echazarreta and the striking, but subtle production design and costume of Veronica Fruhbrodt and Dominique Louis. But what most captures the imagination is the immediacy and intimacy that few period pictures ever come close to achieving and that makes this enchanting fiction feel entirely plausible.

Having made such a strong impression with her autobiographical debut, The Alcohol Years (2001), and subsequently demonstrated herself to be a major documentary talent with Dreams of a Life (2011), Carol Morley stumbles with her first feature drama, Edge, which was partially inspired by stories taken from the headlines and also by the suicide death of her own father when she was 11 years old. Despite willing performances and the evocative use of a snowy landscape on the Susses coast, this struggles along on schematic plotting and shallow characterisation before collapsing into contrivance in a denouement dependent upon a coincidence that is so crass as to beggar belief.

As Julie T. Wallace attempts to complete a jigsaw while sitting on reception at the Cliff Edge Hotel, waitress Keeley Forsyth reads a self-help book and Polish maid Ania Wendzikowska sits in her cramped room fretting over a decision she believes will estrange her from her mother forever. Watching the taxis pull up outside the entrance, teenager Joe Dempsie shivers in the cold and rushes over to greet Internet contact Nichola Burley as she pulls up in the wake of pensioner Marjorie Yates and thirtysomething Maxine Peake. As they check into their rooms, musician Paul Hilton slides into a table in Forsyth's bar and picks idly on his guitar.

Over the course of the next few hours, Wendzikowska will provide companionship to Yates, Hilton will seek to help Peake come to terms with a tragedy and Dempsie will help Burley realise that not all lads are the same. None of the storylines is particularly original, but each is played with an integrity that elicits viewer sympathy without necessarily engrossing or convincing.

Yates has brought pills, a rope and a hairdryer to keep her suicide options open after discovering that she has a terminal illness. But she already feels she has nothing to live for, as her husband left her for another man and her daughter thinks she was a terrible mother. But Wendzikowska, who is stricken with guilt after having an abortion, talks her into appreciating what she has and watches over Yates as she has her first decent night's sleep in months.

On reaching their shabbily cosy room, Burley and Dempsie chat awkwardly about likes and dislikes before he decides to go for a walk. Having tossed the packet of condoms she finds in his case out of the window, Burley is all set to storm off. But she returns and produces a homemade soldering iron and threatens to brand Dempsie on the face after accusing him of getting her drunk and raping her at a club. He protests that he would never do such a thing and is still a virgin and Burley calms down and allows him to prove the kindness of strangers.

Dempsie has scars of his own, as his father killed himself when he was a kid and he still remembers a snatch of the song that his dad was always whistling. Peake overhears the tune and, overcoming her initial irritation at Hilton's efforts to be friendly, and asks if he can identify it, as they sit together in the bar. He sheepishly boasts that he once had a Top 40 single with his band, but Peake refuses to disclose the source of her melancholy until Hilton finally wears her down after a couple of drinks. Yet, while she knows that a student friend fell to her death off the nearby cliff, Peake cannot recall whether or not she pushed her and the lingering doubt has ruined her life.

Nothing quite rings true about any of the vignettes and neither Morley's structuring nor Fiona DeSouza's editing succeeds in binding them into a coherent whole. However, the spurious ease with which the tetchy Yates and the vengeful Burley come to trust the kleptomaniac Wendzikowska and the nerdy Dempsie feels more credible than bond that forms between Peake and Hilton after some drunken fumbling and gauche soul-searching. But, even at its most melodramatic, this never exhausts viewer patience or empathy, while Mary Farbrother's contrasts between the icy seascapes and the cosily shabby interiors is subtly assured. In many ways resembling Julian Kerridge's feature bow, Seamonsters (which was filmed along the coast in Brighton), this suggests better things to come despite disappointing in itself.