Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy: You, Your Mom, and Everyone Else Saw Kate Winslet's Boobs in 'Titanic'

<< Blog | Editorial Features Tuesday, December 17, 4:00 PMTue, 17 Dec 2019 @ 4:00 PM by Thrustin' Hoffman

In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, we're going back in time to 22 years ago when the box office behemoth Titanic was seen by everyone, including your mom, and that meant that everyone, including your mom, saw Kate Winslet's boobs!

This coming Thursday will be the official 22nd anniversary of the release of Titanic, and anyone who was alive and breathing for the six months following its release can probably distinctly remember heading to the theater to see this thing for themselves. It was truly one of those situations where everyone and their mother went to seethe movie, which made for some awkward viewing just before the ninety minute mark when Kate Winslet dropped her robeso that Leonardo DiCaprio could draw her "like one of his French girls."

If you happened to be 18 at the time—as I was—and attending with your mom—as I was—the struggle over what to do became real. On one hand, you could get up and go to the bathroom, this was a three and a half hour movie after all, and the midway point is as good a time as any to go relieve yourself. However, doing so meant you would miss seeing Kate Winslet nude, and as a teenager who had a thing for her since Heavenly Creatures, this became quite the Sophie's Choice. Staying in the theater meant you got to see Kate's boobs and a hint of bush, but it also meant that you were seeing it while sitting right next to the woman who birthed you.

For some background, there were concerns leading up to the film's release that it would be a disaster. The film's production was plagued by delays and budget overruns that had driven the budget higher than any other film in history up until that point. James Cameron's last film set in and around water, The Abyss, was well-received but didn't come close to recouping its budget, and all of these red flags pointed toward another disaster in the making. The film obviously became a phenomenon and those concerns seem quaint in retrospect, but as the Twilight movies conclusively proved, teenage girls can drive some major box office when they're motivated to see a film multiple times.

In an attempt to throw both of his lead actors into the deep end—pun only semi-intended—the nude scene was the first scene Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio shot for the film. Cameron claims that the reason for this was that the sets for the film were not yet finished, but it's hard to miss theintentionalityon Cameron's part, helping break the tension between Winslet and DiCaprio by throwing them right into the turning point of their on-screen relationship. In a conversation withthe website industrycentral.net, Cameron said...

"It wasn't by any kind of design, although I couldn't have designed it better. There's a nervousness and an energy and a hesitance in them. They had rehearsed together, but they hadn't shot anything together. If I'd had a choice, I probably would have preferred to put it deeper into the body of the shoot, but we were just trying to find things to shoot because the big set wasn't ready for months, so we were scrambling around trying to fill in anything we could get to shoot."

While it has entered into legend at this point, Cameron himself was the one who sketched the nude picture of Winslet shown in the film. The sketch was done before principal photography commenced, so in a move of almost uncharacteristic chivalry, Cameron allowed Winslet to wear a bikini for the session. When it came time to film the scene, however, Winslet went the full monty so that Cameron could better illuminate his point about her character breaking free of the social constraints placed on women during that time period. From the same interview cited above...

"You know what it means for her, the freedom she must be feeling. It's kind of exhilarating for that reason."

Because he was contractually obligated to deliver a PG-13 rating for the film, Cameron strategically shoots Winslet's nude scene, constantly cutting back to DiCaprio's reaction and artfully obscuring most of her nude body. The longest continuous stretch of nudity from Winslet in the scene is just under five seconds as she sinks onto the couch and we see her left breast the entire time...

The entire scene lasts two and a half minutes, however, so those were two and a half super uncomfortable minutes for anyone seeing the film with their mom, or dad, or grandmother, or anyone else that saw the film during its almost unparalleled theatrical run. During the 1997-1998 release of the film, itmade just over $600 million in North America—and twice that amount overseas—crushing every film that had come before it, which included many films that had multiple re-releases. Thenext highest grossing movie with nudity on the all-time list is 2016's Deadpoolwhich made $363 million in its initial release, nowhere near the cultural phenomenon of Titanic.

The only other films in top 200 highest grossing movies domestically with female nudity are The Hangover, Jaws, Logan, A Star is Born, Wedding Crashers, and 300, none of which—save maybe Jaws—had a similar sort of earth shattering impact on the box office. It's probably fair to say that more people have seen Kate Winslet nude than any other single actress in history. It's insane to think about, but my mom and your mom have seen Kate Winslet's boobs, though it's safe to say that probably none of themenjoyed it as much as we did.