BEST BOAT MOVIES
“Lifeboat” (1944):
Co-written by novelist John Steinbeck, Alfred Hitchcock’s excellent melodrama loads the title craft with survivors of a ship that was targeted and sunk by a U-boat ... with one of the U-boat’s crew members also on the lifeboat. Turner Classic Movies presents the film (whose stars include Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Wagner) on Tuesday, July 2.
“The Caine Mutiny” (1954):
Though a good chunk of this drama takes place in a courtroom, a sizable amount of it also unfolds at sea, where said mutiny occurs — and Humphrey Bogart is chillingly great as Captain Queeg.
“The Old Man and the Sea” (1958):
It’s basically Spencer Tracy and the ocean in this adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel.
“A Night to Remember” (1958):
The British “stiff upper lip” is evident throughout this version of the Titanic saga, made all the more effective by its straightforward approach.
“The Last Voyage” (1960):
For this massively tense melodrama (which TCM also has on July 2), director Andrew L. Stone actually seemed to sink a ship, with Robert Stack playing a passenger trying to get his trapped wife (Dorothy Malone) off the vessel in time. And trust us, it turns out to be the nick of time.
“The Poseidon Adventure” (1972):
The film that really kicked off the disaster-movie craze of the ‘70s, producer Irwin Allen’s thriller bonds a group of passengers to climb upward to hoped-for rescue after their ship is overturned by a massive tidal wave.
“Jaws” (1975): The trio (Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss) that pursues a great white shark surely will “need a bigger boat.”
“Titanic” (1997): Well, of course. Though it incorporates fictionalized elements, director James Cameron’s Oscar-winning take on the disaster is the most visually stunning one to date, and it cemented the stardom of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.