The Sea Around Us

Adaptation of Rachel Carson's book about the sea. I've never read the book so I don't know how faithful it is but some of this is fascinating. It starts out pretty badly with ponderous narration describing how the Earth (and sea) came into being. After that it lightens up pretty quickly and shows us various creatures of the sea including some incredible microscopic views of sea life. There's an interesting (and non-bloody) fight between a shark and an octopus. It also shows various occupations men have dealing with the sea like a shark walker and crab herder. The part showing different ways to capture fish (so they can be killed and eaten) might be troubling to some viewers but it's more of a sign of the time it was made than anything else. Narration aside this should be seen for visuals alone. Also the ending seems to predict global warming before it was discovered! I give it an 8.

This is probably the first documentary made on life that makes its home under the water. Today, it doesn't really look like much, but for its time, there were really no other resources for learning more about undersea animals, other than going to the sea yourself or having a book. The film shows a number of extremely beautiful wonders that exist beneath our oceans, but few people have had the pleasure of seeing, such as tremendously tall growths of seaweed that can be over 100 feet in length, resembling a submerged jungle, coral reefs, and sea anemones. The film doesn't just focus on underwater things though. There's also a segment that shows how turtles hatch on land, then attempt to make a dash for the shoreline on the beach. Sadly, many of them die and are eaten by birds in the process. Also shown are seals and gannet birds. The reason why I say it's a little disturbing is because of how the interactions between the divers and some of the animals go in the movie. In particular, there's one moment when someone grabs a small shark and cuts open its midsection with a knife in only a matter of seconds, leaving it to die of blood loss. Even one of the posters I saw for the movie depicts this. Nowadays, this type of behavior would be unacceptable and divers would only take the animal's life as a last resort if it was threatening to attack a diver. Other than that, it's pretty good. If looking at the vibrant and stunning life of the ocean interests you, try to find a copy of this. The ocean is so huge and vast there are things in it we still don't know about.

This won an Academy Award for Documeentary Feature and most definitely deserved to win. The whole project is well-executed and the underwater camerawork is particularly worthy of mention. Holds up very well after almost fifty years. Turner Classic Movies usually shows this a few times a year. Highly recommended.

This is from a well known book by Rachel Carson, so I don't know why this film is not well-known. It took home the Academy Award as best documentary. I suppose the later work of Cousteau just eclipsed it. Never the less, this is a well done film, well worth watching.

The film is based on "The Sea Around Us," the extraordinary book published by Rachel Carson in 1952. She signed away rights to the title and got a little bit of money. She was appalled by early scripts and did not like the finished product.