A Reel Opinion: The Top 10 Best Films at Sea

On this day 108 years ago, the RMS Titanic foundered in the North Atlantic Ocean after striking an iceberg and took with her over 1,500 souls to the depths. Less than a month after the disaster, the silent motion picture SAVED FROM THE TITANIC, starring a survivor of the sinking, premiered in the United States. That film is now lost, but it was one of the earliest voyages that cinema would take to the seas; voyages that continue to this day reaching across all film genres; adventure, fantasy, historical, war, romance…and even horror. Man’s fascination with our oceans has led to a rich legacy of sea stories in cinema…and that leads us to Reel Speak’s Top 10 Best Films at Sea. 

Going all the way back to Homer’s Odyssey, the sea has provided a stage perfect for storytelling. Cinema has capitalized on this for well over 100 years, using the mystery and danger and romance of the oceans as backdrops and story elements. The best films at sea are the ones that utilize the oceans the best, and make good use of all the dangers, mystery, and beauty to be found out there. 

So, anchors aweigh…

10. MOBY DICK (1956)

It’s hard to have a nautical storytelling conversation without mentioning Herman Melville’s 1851 classic Moby Dick. This version, directed by John Huston, may take one too many liberties from the book and suffers from dated visual effects, but the core of the idea is there. Gregory Peck plays the obsessed Captain Ahab to great effect, and this version would become the launching point for many sea stories to come. 

9. THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972)

The 1970’s had its own little genre of disaster films, telling stories of human resiliency against earthquakes, high-rise fires, and airline catastrophes. Ronald Neame’s adaptation of the book of the same name has a luxury liner overturned by a tsunami, leaving its passengers to traverse the upended ship seeking a way out. The film has an ensemble cast; including Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, and Ernest Borgnine…but the real star of the film is the set design; with the filmmakers having to build upside-down interiors. The central theme at work; rich people and middle-class suddenly finding themselves as equals…is a theme that a certain James Cameron would also take to sea years later. 

8. DAS BOOT (1981)

Wolfgang Petersen’s WWII submarine film follows a German U-boat and its crew on a hazardous patrol mission in the famed Battle of the Atlantic. Using the ocean as a battlefield, DAS BOOT had outstanding sequences of high tension and excitement but didn’t lose focus on its characters; characters making up a crew living and working in harsh conditions all for the love of country. Often regarded as one of the definitive submarine movies, its six Academy Award nominations to this day holds the record for a German film. 

7. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN – THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL (2003)

We simply cannot talk about sea adventures without mentioning pirates, and we can’t talk about movie pirates without mentioning Captain Jack Sparrow…as played by Johnny Depp. This Disney-produced, Gore Verbinski-directed swashbuckling ride brought all the familiar, age-old elements of pirates to life, and combined it with the maritime legends and myths in a perfect balance. Loads of fun and gorgeous to look at. 

6. THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (2004)

Bill Murray plays documentary filmmaker and oceanographer Steve Zissou, who goes off on a mission to hunt down a mysterious “jaguar shark” who ate his best friend in Wes Anderson’s quirky, stylistic, and surprisingly emotional journey. Anderson paints a picture of man in a mid-life crisis; feeling like he has lost his talent and consequently the end of his career and life as he’s known it. But in a brilliant move, Zissou discovers that the ocean is full of life, in more ways than one…and through that he finds a way. Lovely to look at and packed with an ensemble cast, this is an ocean journey that evokes just as many laughs as it does tears. 

5. THE ABYSS (1989)

A crew of deep-sea oil-drillers are stranded in their damaged rig miles underwater and encounter a non-terrestrial intelligence in the film that solidified James Cameron’s reputation as the most ambitious filmmaker of our time. Cameron built an underwater set and required his cast to learn how to scuba-dive, while designing special diving masks and helmets so the actors' faces could be seen. Aside from the technical achievements, which included some of the earliest uses of CGI, THE ABYSS is a clever mashup of real-world deep-sea hazards and science fiction and reminds us that there are more mysteries in the deep oceans than there are on the Moon. A towering achievement that Cameron would use as a stepping stone for something even bigger down the road. 

4. MASTER AND COMMANDER – THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003)

The only reason Peter Weir’s Napoleonic Wars sea adventure didn’t win more of its many Oscar nominations (including Best Picture), was because it had the bad luck of going up against the kraken-sized monster that was THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Russell Crowe plays the captain of a British warship on the hunt for a French vessel which has him outgunned and outmaneuvered. A battle of wits and resolve, the film gives us a genuine feel of what it was like to fight, eat, drink, and live on the sailing ships of old…with enough hardships to make any of us change our minds about the romance of old sailing ships. Beautifully shot and edited, the sea had never been presented so beautiful and deadly at the same time. 

3. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (1990)

In this adaptation of the Tom Clancy novel, Alec Baldwin plays the first screen-version of Jack Ryan; a CIA analyst on the hunt for a Russian submarine with stealth capabilities and an arsenal of nuclear missiles…commanded by a captain (Sean Connery), with unknown intentions. Directed by John McTiernan of DIE HARD and PREDATOR fame, RED OCTOBER is a thinking-man’s thriller, with each side playing an intricate game of find-the-needle in the mighty Atlantic. The ocean isn’t presented as a battlefield as much as the haystack and has a grounded reality that makes the escalating stakes feel real.  

2. TITANIC (1997)

Director James Cameron’s Oscar-winning, cultural-smashing, money-making monster that retained the title of all-time best box office for over a decade. By filming the actual wreck of the famed ship, and painstakingly re-creating interiors and exteriors right down to the rivets and dining room china, the Titanic is brought back to life in stunning detail. The storyline of Romeo and Juliet on the doomed liner worked for audiences, and themes of man’s ego trying to conquer nature gives it even more weight. Class distinction is also at work here; where no amount of wealth held by the powerful could save them from the leviathan that Titanic would slip into. The definitive telling of the greatest true story at sea. 

1. JAWS (1975)

It may seem unfair to drop one of the greatest films of all time into a sub-genre, but Steven Spielberg’s JAWS does utilize the oceans in a way that has to be considered to be the best. Based on Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel about a shark that terrorizes a summer resort town, less than half of JAWS actually takes place on the ocean; the outstanding third act with Chief Brody (Roy Schieder), Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and Quint (Robert Shaw), hunting down the shark in a boat that’s not big enough. Despite the first two acts taking place on land, we see first-hand how a terror of the ocean can affect people on shore, and we can get a wave of fear just by looking out at the sea. JAWS also uses elements from classic sea stories such as Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea, giving it a familiar spin and a timeless nature. The ocean is beautiful, but it is also formidable, and to this day John Williams’ simple shark-theme of just two notes reminds of us that. No other sea story has that claim. 

REEL SPEAK'S TOP 10 BEST FILMS AT SEA

1. JAWS
2. TITANIC
3. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER
4. MASTER AND COMMANDER - THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD
5. THE ABYSS
6. THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
7. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN - THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL
8. DAS BOOT
9. THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE
10. MOBY DICK