While “The Odyssey”, a biopic devoted to Jacques-Yves Cousteau, out room this Wednesday, why not take the opportunity to (re)discover “The World of silence”, the documentary of the submarine, which had earned him a Golden Palm and an Oscar ?
In the dining room on Wednesday 12 October, The Odyssey is back on the fate of the one that the French have long called “the man with the red cap”, the commander Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Co-creator of the aqualung and compressed air for breathing under the water. A revolution absolute, which allowed divers – filmmakers venturing deep under the ocean and to capture a life hitherto unknown, starting with Cousteau himself.
the leader of The World of silence goes back to a decisive encounter that made the commander Cousteau in 1944, to the Liberation of France. Her path crosses in fact that of James Thomas Dugan, a reporter for the american magazine Yank. It is he who ends convincing him to embark in the popular bedford. Dugan will also later translate and publish his books in the English language, including the one that Cousteau, co-written in 1953 with another pioneer of the dive, Frédéric Dumas, who has the title The World of silence However, if the documentary film from 1956 of the same name, it focuses on the expeditions aboard the Calypso in 1954 and 1955.
It was in July 1953 that Cousteau began his project of journey marine exploration. He then addressed the IDHEC -the Institut des hautes Etudes Cinématographiques – a request for the assistance of a student who will help to film. The Institute then offers the services of a young assistant of 21 years : Louis Malle, the future director of Au revoir les enfants and Lacombe Lucien, which will make its first weapons of a director with The World of silence. After a diving course on the side of the island of Riou off Marseilles during the summer of 1953, He is ready to join the crew of the Calypso, who departed in 1954.
The Odyssey
Sailing through the Mediterranean sea, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, the team used no less than 25 Km of film, which will be reduced to 2500m for the final cut of the film. The underwater cameras were designed by André Laban, presented as the chemist on board the Calypso. Thanks to its cameras, The World of silence was the second film to show full-color images of the seabed, two years after Sesto Continente directed by Folco Quilici; but the film Cousteau was the first to offer to the spectators marveled at the images of the seabed taken at 75 m depth.
Presented in avant-premiere in Paris February 7, 1956 at the théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the film will be released on may 26, in full the Cannes film Festival. Timing could not be more happy : he won the Palme d’or at the 9th edition of the Festival, not to mention that it was also nominated for the Prix de la mise en scene as well as the special Prize of the Jury. The film shared, even at the present time, the privilege of being the only documentary film to be webbed, sides of the Fahrenheit 9/11 of Michael Moore. In the United States, he won the same Award for the Best foreign film award by the National Board of Review. The supreme accolade : in 1957, he won the Oscar for Best documentary. At the time, the Critical, positive, is unanimous, while the French public, he rushes in the room. The World of silence will attract over 4.6 million spectators. A figure still unrivaled at the Box Office for a documentary.
A film controversy… as early As the 1990s
more and more sensitized to the ecology and to the cause of animal over the years (and fortunately !), some will, however, not to point the finger at as early as the 1990s the documentary, which includes scenes actually shocking : laceration accidental killing of a young sperm whale by the blades of the Calypso, forcing the crew to complete the rifle; massacre of sharks, the destruction of a coral reef with dynamite, a member of the crew standing on the turtles back…
last year, the controversy is back, more beautiful. In the broadcast on the internet “down There, if I am” the site Slate is the echo, the novelist and filmmaker Gerard Mordillat has flingué the film point blank in a column where he felt the film “naively disgusting”. He finished his chronicle thus : “It was prophetic, The World of silence. Because it is the silence which today covers this massive destruction of coral reefs, the extermination of marine animals, the hunting, the pollution, the cynicism of all the governments in the name of science, research and profit. Movies shameful and despicable, when one of the reviews today, it is said that it was blind.”
Here is his column, in its entirety :
Contacted by Express, oceanographer François Sarano, scientific adviser to Cousteau for 15 years, says, obviously, about Mordillat : ” at the time, we were of course terribly naïve, but Cousteau has opened up the sea and became protector of nature (…). This reaction is normal, but it is necessary to submit the film in its context : our planet there were 2.7 billion people, the sea was an unknown, and to our eyes, it was a cornucopia of inexhaustible.”
Contacted by Nouvel Observateur in July 2015, the interested book also an interesting anecdote about the feeling of unease already present in the 1990s. Questioned on the possibility of a new distribution of the World of Silence on a public channel, the latter answered : “I understand that these images shock us, especially the youngest and those who have had the luck to be born into a society that is already sensitized to the issues of ecology and respect for animal life. This is why I’m one of those who argue for the film to be accompanied by a complementary document that would recontextualize the movie”. And to add : “I remember that in 1992, France 2 had wanted to share The World of silence on the occasion of the Earth Summit in Rio devoted to climate change. The chain had asked Cousteau to be able to cut the scene of the massacre of the sharks. Of course, He denied”.
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