You probably remember the scene from “Titanic” in which Cal, Rose DeWitt Bukater’s abusive fiancé, presents her with the Heart of the Ocean.
Cal and Rose are in their first class stateroom, where he gives her the engagement gift earlier than planned in an attempt to buy her love, or at least her obedience. He tells her that the 56 ct. diamond used to belong to Louis XVI and asks her to open her heart to him (gag). As a salesperson, I appreciate him illustrating the value of the piece with that nifty detail. But just before this, Rose had almost thrown herself off the back of the RMS Titanic because she felt so trapped. Timing is everything, Cal.
To afford a blue diamond of that size, you would have to be, as James Cameron described Cal’s character in the “Titanic” screenplay, “rich beyond meaning.” Sure enough, this fictional diamond’s back story, which borrows from that of the very real Hope diamond, reveals just how coveted it is. Apparently, Louis XVI ‘s diamond was cut into a heart shape after the French Revolution. Cal picked it up just before boarding the ship. Must be nice.
This piece of jewelry drives the entire plot of the movie. It’s the reason old Rose gets in touch with the treasure hunters and tells her story. It symbolizes young Rose’s bleak future chained to Cal. It’s even planted in Jack’s pocket, which is how he ends up handcuffed to a pipe with water rising all around him, remember? But I’m unable to sit back and enjoy this movie without one pesky little intruding thought.
Blue diamonds don’t look like that. Ever.
You see, the Heart of the Ocean looks like a sapphire. Blue diamonds are simply never that saturated. Saturation refers to the relative strength or weakness of a color. This is not to be confused with tone, which refers to how light or dark a color is.
Cameron’s screenplay describes the diamond as “a malevolent blue stone glittering with an infinity of scalpel-like inner reflections.” In diamond form, that’s gonna look something like this:
Now, diamonds come in light blue and dark blue (these are tones), but even in the dark blue diamond above, you’re not getting the velvety saturation that a blue sapphire has.
But in this GIF, you can see that the stone looks a lot like the example sapphire above.
Asprey London, the royal jewelers, created the prop for the film after Paramount approached them. The blue stone is cubic zirconia, a solid choice considering that the synthetic material sparkles much like a diamond. The large culet* is also a nice touch when you think about the provenance of the stone in the movie. The color is my only issue. I have no hard feelings, though. Even with imitation and synthetic stones, getting the color exactly right is quite the task. Overall, it’s a gorgeous piece.
This movie prop of all movie props is kept in the Twentieth Century Fox archives and is not on display to the public at the time of this writing.
How much do you want to go watch “Titanic” right now? Yeah, me too.
*I’m going to let you Google “culet” for now, but eventually, this site will have a glossary.