El mundo del silencio

Louis Malle directs Jacques-Yves Cousteau in a nature documentary. He follows Cousteau and his crew on the Calypso as they explore the underwater world. This would win many awards. It's the first full length theatrical movie for Cousteau and quite frankly for Louis Malle as a director. It's informative but it is the spectacular ocean footage that truly amazes. They still don't know about the different layers in the water column at that time. I would do something slightly different with the music. The dynamite and dead fish are distressing. They keep running over whales. It's bad. The baby whale is bad. The shark slaughter is even worst and has not aged well at all. Sometimes, these guys act like drunken frat boys. All I've got to say is that it's a different time and they don't do that anymore. In the end, this sets the bar high for future nature documentary.

I was looking forward to finally catching up with this old documentary and was saddened to see that despite the advances in underwater photography (in 1955), which brought the undersea life vividly to the screen, that every other aspect of the film was embarrassingly dated. I am referring specifically to the appalling behavior of the crew of the Calypso who bear scant resemblance to any naturalists and scientists we know of today, without an ounce of respect for the animals they encounter. Who in their right mind would set off dynamite in a lagoon, destroying coral reef and killing countless numbers of fish?? The only wildlife that gets off unscathed are the dolphins in the early part of the film – otherwise, everything else that gets in the path of the "explorers" is eaten, tormented, or killed outright: when they see a whale they rush on deck to harpoon it; when sharks start to work on the whale carcass, the men haul shark after shark on deck and feverishly beat them to death under the (highly scientific) rationale that "everybody hates sharks"; when they find a giant sea turtle they clutch on to it for a ride without any concern that it is struggling to the surface to breathe; when they find a group of tortoises on an island their only thoughts are to first stand on them and then use them for stools while they have lunch. Even good old Cousteau gets into the spirit of things by bringing his rifle on deck and shooting a whale in the head (well, it was probably suffering after they ran over it with the boat and then later harpooned it).

These guys would be up on criminal charges if they'd made this film today. Worth watching only as a historical curio to see how unenlightened people were back then.

"The Silent World" is an Academy Award-winning documentary from directors Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle. It helped to introduce many around the world to ocean exploration and for that we should be grateful. That being said, as a certified diver, I realize that the groundbreaking film will no doubt horrify many viewers today, as sensibilities have definitely changed. The nice conservation-oriented crew of the Calypso from the 1970s and 80s is no where to be found! Instead, this earlier version of Cousteau and his team are at best irresponsible! As you see them travel the world, they commit atrocity after atrocity all in the name of science!! If you think I am being overly sensitive, try justifying them dynamiting a coral reef in order to 'get an accurate count of the fish', running over a baby whale and then harpooning and shooting it and THEN murdering the many sharks that then come to feed on the whale carcass!!! By today's standards, it's completely insane and I must say I had to speed through the shark-killing orgy as seeing crew members with axes bashing the crap out of the creatures was upsetting! You also see the crew destroying stretches of turtle grass, harassing a sea turtle, riding atop tortoises, petting fish, you name it...all the things they now tell people NEVER to do!

In addition to all this senseless violence, the film also lacks a cohesive plot as well as scientific rigor. The bottom line is that the film is seriously passe now....and you'd be a lot better off watching the much more responsible and interesting reruns of "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" from the 1960s and 70s.

MUST-SEE viewing for any 'adult' that caught Wes Anderson's send-up of the Cousteau crew earlier this year in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." If anything, this early documentary proves that the actual Cousteau crew was even more outlandish than Bill Murray's gang.

One politically incorrect scene in particular shows the crew pulling sharks out of the ocean and beating them to death with clubs, while nightly dining includes plenty of fresh SEAFOOD! The major project of the expedition is the mapping of the ocean floor using advanced sonar, but in between the crew stays busy exploring the ocean and occasionally 'interfering' with the habits of the local sea creatures.

You'd never see this kind of disrespectful attitude in a National Geographic docu today and in a way it's kind of refreshing to see that these guys are not infallible.

One note to those with sensitive stomachs, there is a scene where the Calypso 'accidentally' runs over a baby whale and the resulting wound turns the ocean bright red forcing the crew to capture the whale and administer a 'kill shot' in order to put it out of it's misery.

Parents might want to think twice about bringing kids to see this rather graphic look at ocean research and some of its inherent dangers.

As he travels aboard his floating laboratory "Calypso", we follow the exploration of renowned marine adventurer Jacques Cousteau as he and his crew travel the world exploring the depths of the sea. He takes his kit to the deepest part of the water where neither man nor camera have ever been before, nowhere near the bottom but still as black as pitch and only slightly illuminated by their bright lamps. The photography would have offered many their first glimpse of whales, porpoises, giant turtles, sharks - and many in a natural environment that isn't always so easy to watch. Neither, it has to be said, are some of his methods. "In the name of science" would have been a defence for dynamiting fish so they can count the species, or leaving many on the beach to suffocate to death before they are photographed or dissected for the specimen jar. Whilst there can be no doubting this team had a respect and admiration for the natural world, they still had that superiority complex of mankind towards it and at times I simply didn't like the man nor his approach. That said, it was made at a time when the quest for knowledge was more along the lines of the end justifying the means and doubtless some of his astonishing discoveries will have informed a more enlightened touch to investigation in later years. Cousteau was a ground-breaker, no doubt, and his adaptation of technology to take us deeper and deeper in safer ways delivers us an fascinating look at what has long existed without the intervention of man. By no means how Sir David Attenborough would make it now, but of it's time it is an interesting and cleverly photographed look into the unknown.