Aside from the fact that Titanic is a tale of love the director, James Cameron, portraits a very precise picture of class difference among people in early 19’s. There are tons of signs and compression scenes between the higher-class and lower-class from the very beginning of the movie. In the beginning of the movie when passengers are boarding the ship the higher class is treated with a lot of respect and are assisted with their luggage while the lower class get body inspections in a very insulting way.
If you pay enough attention you can even find obvious semiotics of it in the dialogs, for example when Spicer is ordering a ship crow where to carry their luggage to, he gives him the address “Pales rooms B52 – 54 and 56”. Since the letter “B” is second in the alphabet you can assume that these rooms are more luxurious and high-class than the others coded with the rest of the alphabet. Jack and his friend Fabrizio’s room on the other hand is a “G”. The twist of the story however happens when a typical wealthy young girl from higher-class, Rose DeWitt meets with Jack Dawson, a typical poor young American boy, from lower-class.
As the movie goes on Mise-en-scene plays a great deal in helping the audience to see both kind of life styles simultaneously.
As jack gets invited to join Roses family for dinner a very important fact comes to notice that, all the luxurious, pride and arrogance these higher-class people carry in their attitude, is just like a coat that can be put on by any one. James Cameron has shown this fact in a very clever scene where Jack is standing by the stairs all dressed up just like a gentleman and Cal (Rose’s finance) passes by and does not recognize him at all, although they had already met before, and when Rose introduces Jack properly, the surprised face of Cal completes the massage.
Later that night same thing happens in reverse, where Rose puts all that uptight, high class manners aside and joins Jack in the party with lower class people, they treat her like one of their own.
By the time when Titanic is half in the water none of that high-class, low-class order makes sense any more, everybody is trying to find a way to survive.
