L'hippocampe, ou 'Cheval marin'

For 1935, a reasonably good short documentary about such a unique creature, the seahorse. The footage of the male giving birth to hundreds of offspring by spasmodically squeezing them out of its pouch, while captured in an aquarium, is fascinating, and Painlevé does convey information in addition to reveling in how "exotic" they are. I'm not sure all of it was completely accurate, as he says the largest seahorses are two feet long and googling around says about one, but this was nearly 90 years ago after all. He also has a tendency to attribute human characteristics to the seahorse, e.g. It's upright posture giving it a pompous air, or its eyes having an anguished expression. Lastly, beware, there are also moments of dissection to show the internals of the seahorse which were a bit jarring, at least to this viewer.

The son of a famous mathematician and politician, Jean Painlevé started his film career while a natural history student at the Sorbonne. Both scientist and filmmaker, one of the first to plunge underwater with a camera to bring the sub-aquatic world to the screen, Painlevé captured the throes of a male seahorse giving birth in this short film. Painlevé was also a photographer (whose pictures are kept in some of the world's most famous art museums), a close friend to genius filmmaker Jean Vigo and belonged to the surrealist movement. His lyrical and instructive animal behavior films were frequently set to avant-garde scores composed by musicians like Darius Milhaud. Needless to say that his films are worth watching not only for their historical interest but also for their strange aesthetics acclaimed by some of his contemporaries like Luis Buñuel.

This is perhaps, Painlevé's masterpiece. He has moved squarely into the talkie era and has the backing of a major studio; his name appears before the title. He is the star and he uses his star power as the dry-witted professor to talk about and show us the seahorse. He is fond of the odd creature. He admires its looks. He compares it to other animals, like chameleons and monkeys and King Charles Spaniels. He talks about its oddities like how the male famously carries the eggs about and gives birth to them. He uses his microphotography and time-differentiated camera to tell the story effectively.

Most importantly, he makes it clear how interesting seahorses are to him, and imparts some of that interest to his audience. That's what all great teachers do: they don't just tell you stuff, they get you interested.

I've wanted to see this film for a number of years and finally caught it! This work wears several hats - a scientific film exquisitely photographed about seahorses, a musical comment by Darius Milhaud that - at least for me - is a bit too overstated - and a superimposition of a real horse race. The timing is excellent (at about 20 minutes) and these tiny creatures become almost abstract in their environment. In fact they are almost surreal. What a pleasure, this gem. I don't know whether it has been translated but the French is direct, instructive and easy to follow with a knowledge of the language. Actually the images themselves could easily stand on their own.

Curtis Stotlar