Titanic

In 1996, treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) and his team explore the wreck of the RMS Titanic, searching for a necklace set with a valuable blue diamond called the Heart of the Ocean. They believe the diamond to be in Caledon "Cal" Hockley's safe, which they recover easily. However, when searching the safe they do not find the diamond, but a sketch of a nude woman wearing the famed diamond. The drawing is dated April 14, 1912, the night the Titanic hit the iceberg. One-hundred-year-old Rose Dawson Calvert (Gloria Stuart) learns of the drawing, and contacts Lovett to inform him that she is the woman in the drawing. She and her granddaughter Elizabeth "Lizzy" Calvert (Suzy Amis) visit Lovett and his skeptical team on his salvage ship. When asked if she knew the whereabouts of the necklace, Rose recalls her memories aboard the Titanic, revealing for the first time that she is actually Rose DeWitt Bukater, a passenger believed to have died in the sinking.

In 1912, the upper class 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) boards the ship in Southampton, England with her fiancé Caledon "Cal" Hockley (Billy Zane), the son of a Pittsburgh steel tycoon, and her mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater (Frances Fisher). Both Cal and Ruth stress the importance of Rose's engagement to Cal, since the marriage will mean the eradication of the Dewitt-Bukater debts; while they have the outward appearance of being upper-class, Rose and her mother are experiencing severe financial troubles. Distraught and frustrated by her engagement to the controlling Cal and the pressure her mother is putting on her to go through with the marriage, Rose attempts suicide by jumping from the stern. Before she leaps, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) intervenes. Initially, Cal, his friends, and the sailors, overhearing Rose's screams, believe Jack attempted to rape her. She explains Jack saved her life, hiding her suicide attempt by explaining she slipped after trying to see the propellers. Jack supports the claim, although Hockley's manservant, former Pinkerton agent Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner), is unconvinced. Jack and Rose strike up a tentative friendship as she thanks him for his corroboration, and he shares stories of his adventures traveling and sketching. Their bond deepens when they leave a stuffy first-class formal dinner of the rapport-building wealthy for a much livelier gathering of Irish dance, music (provided by Gaelic Storm) and ale in third-class.

Cal is informed by Lovejoy of Rose's partying in steerage and, during breakfast the following morning, flips the table in rage as he angrily forbids her to meet Jack again. However, after witnessing a woman encouraging her seven-year-old daughter to behave like a "proper lady" at tea, Rose defies him and her mother and meets Jack at the bow of the ship. It is there where they go up onto the rail and Rose finally learns to let go and open herself up to Jack, sharing a passionate kiss. The couple go to Rose's stateroom where she asks Jack to sketch her nude and wearing only the Heart of the Ocean, an engagement present from Cal. Afterwards, the two playfully run away from Lovejoy, going below deck, into the boiler room, and into the ship's cargo hold. They enter William Carter's Renault and proceed to make love in the backseat, before moving to the ship's forward well deck. Rose decides when they arrive in New York, she will leave the ship with Jack. They then witness the ship's fatal collision with an iceberg. After overhearing the ship's lookouts discussing how serious the collision is, Rose tells Jack they should warn her mother and Cal. Meanwhile, Cal discovers Rose's nude drawing and her taunting note in his safe, so he frames Jack for stealing the Heart of the Ocean by having Lovejoy plant it in Jack's pocket. Jack is arrested and taken down to the Master-at-arms's office. Cal slaps Rose across the face due to his anger. Rose runs away from him (spitting in his face as Jack taught her to earlier) and her mother (who is in a lifeboat) to rescue Jack from imprisonment. With his "cell" being at the bottom of the ship and the ship sinking, the office slowly begins to flood. Rose eventually gets to him and frees him with an axe.

Jack and Rose return to the top deck. Cal and Jack, though enemies, both want Rose safe, so they persuade her to board a lifeboat by Cal telling her that he had an arrangement with a man working the boats, and that he and Jack would get off safely. After Rose is on the boat and out of earshot, Cal admits that there was an arrangement, but he would not use it to help Jack. After realizing that she cannot leave Jack, Rose jumps back on the ship and reunites with him in the ship's first-class staircase. Infuriated, Cal takes Lovejoy's pistol and chases Jack and Rose down the decks and into the flooded first-class dining saloon. When Cal runs out of ammunition, he sarcastically wishes them well in their last moments and then realizes he left the Heart of the Ocean in Rose's overcoat. Cal abandons Lovejoy and returns to the boat deck, where he boards Collapsible A by pretending to look after an abandoned child, as the officer he had previously bribed into letting him onto a lifeboat throws the money in his face, telling him his money can't save him anymore. When Jack and Rose return to the top deck, the lifeboats have gone and they take temporary refuge on the now vertical stern, which washes them into the freezing Atlantic Ocean. Jack and Rose manage to grab hold of a carved oak door, which can only support one person. Jack suffers from severe hypothermia, and dies in Rose's arms.

Rose is rescued when a lifeboat returns, and is taken by the RMS Carpathia to New York, where she gives her name as Rose Dawson (adopting Jack's surname, leading everyone to believe Rose DeWitt Bukater died on the Titanic). She also sees Cal for the last time on Carpathia's deck, looking for her.

Having completed her story, the elderly Rose goes to the stern of Lovett's ship. After she steps onto the railing, it is revealed she still has the Heart of the Ocean in her possession. She drops the diamond into the water, sending it to join the remains of the most important event of her life. The film ends with a shot of Rose in bed. Around her are pictures of her doing everything she said she would do with Jack throughout her life. The final shot of the film is where the young Rose is reunited with Jack at the Grand Staircase of the Titanic, surrounded and applauded by those who perished on the ship, as they kiss passionately.