Titanic is a
1997 disaster film directed, written, co-produced and co-edited by
James Cameron about the sinking of the
RMS Titanic. It features
Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, and
Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, two members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ill-fated 1912 maiden voyage of the ship. The main characters and the central love story are fictional, but some supporting characters (such as members of the ship's crew) are based on real historical figures.
Gloria Stuart plays the elderly Rose, who narrates the film in a modern day
framing device.
Production of the film began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the real wreck of the RMS
Titanic. He envisioned the love story as a means to engage the audience with the real-life tragedy. Shooting took place at the
Akademik Mstislav Keldysh for the modern scenes, and a reconstruction of the ship was built at
Playas de Rosarito, Baja California. Cameron also used
scale models and
computer-generated imagery to recreate the sinking of the ship.
Titanic became at the time the most expensive film ever made, costing approximately
US$200 million with funding from
Paramount Pictures and
20th Century Fox.