Riding on the heels of the Titanic tragedy, Denmark's Nordisk Film "Atlantis," released in December 1913, eighteen months after the British boat's sinking, brought audiences realistic images of the real ocean calamity. The Danish producers denied the correlation, claiming their film was based on a Gerhart Hauptmann novel published pre-dating the Titanic launch by a month in 1912. But the popularity of the film, with its enactment of a passenger boat being evacuated in the middle of the ocean with great loss of life, could easily be directly linked to the Titanic.
"Atlantis" has a back story of a border-line insane husband of a dying wife who seeks respite in his travels, only to find love on a trans-Atlantic passenger boat. The liner Roland hits a half-submerged ship (not an iceberg) and sinks. "Atlantis," named after a dream our protagonist has right before the strike, brought the moving images of scrambling passengers loading into lifeboats or diving into the frigid waters to save themselves like no other "Titanic" film produced before. The film was so believable Norway banned it from being played citing poor taste in profiting from the liner tragedy a year earlier.
"Atlantis" eventually became Nordisk Films' most popular movie and was labeled a masterpiece by several reviewers, notably one film historian who was so bold to call it "one of the first modern movies." Besides the exciting 30-minute sequence of the sinking and rescue of the passengers, highlights include B-Roll of New York City pre-World War One and a lively exhibition of an armless entertainer who opens a bottle of wine on stage and pours it into glasses using his feet.
Future director of "Casablanca" and "Mildred Pierce" Michael Curtiz, listed as Mihaly Kertesz in the film as the main character's friend, was also an assistant director helping the production move along.
