ironhorse_iv Review of The Silent World

The Silent World (1956)

It's time to break my silence. I kinda dislike this Jacque Costeau's documentary.

[6/10 · 11 October 2019]

Although this 1956 live action adaptation of the 1953 book, 'The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure' is one of the first motion pictures to use underwater cinematography to show the ocean depths in color. The documentary contained so much animal cruelty that I felt I was watching a vicious snuff film rather than a conservation piece. Shot aboard his ship the Calypso. The environmental damage done to the ocean and sea life during the two years of filming was just disturbing. First off, divers use dynamite on a coral reef knowing full well that it's deadly and illegal. Their excuse of making a more complete census of the marine life in its vicinity is lame. Even for the 1950s, it's better off to use autonomous reef-monitoring structures (ARMS) to study the species that inhabit coral reefs than blasting them to kingdom come. I get that these structures take nearly a year to form wildlife, but using dynamite prevents adjacent coral colonies to recover in the long run. I just surprised that the crew didn't get arrested or fine for such an act. Another scene that really bug me is how the divers use sea turtles as transportation, holding onto them and riding as the turtles struggle to break free and get to the surface to breathe. Even on land, Cousteau's men are jerks, as they ride around on the turtles and use them as stools. You can clearly see that the animals is distress. Yet the movie plays it off as silly fun. However, the worst thing the crew did has to be accidently driving the ship to close to a pod of sperm whales; injuring one and causing the death of another by lacerating its skin. All because they wanted a closer view. This is downright incompetence. They didn't follow any of the rules of whale watching such as keeping down to a minimize speed, avoiding sudden turns & most of all, do not pursue, encircle or come in between the whales. I should had saw this ineffectiveness coming from a mile away. After all, the crew of the Calypso did coerce dolphins into bow-riding earlier in the film. To make it worst, in the following scene, Cousteau's seamen massacre a group of sharks that were drawn to the carcass of a baby whale, just because the school was hungry for meat and the crew viewed them as pest. Those graphic and bloody beat down scenes kinda remind me of 2009 documentary 'The Cove'. It's hard to watch as the animal clearly didn't do anything wrong. Sharks are not a nuisance. They help the environment by ensuring species diversity and keeping the carbon cycle in motion. It's really wrong to kill them like that. Thank goodness later Cousteau gain a more environmentally conscious, as his following films 1964 'World Without Sun' & 1976 'Voyage to the Edge of the World' were a lot less destructed. Regardless, I still surprised that Cousteau won a Palme d'Or award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival & an Academy Award for this movie. The documentary has some really awkwardly funny staged moments with really bad acting with really tight and short swimwear. A good example of this is the lobster hunting scene. It felt like a softcore gay porno at times with all the scenes with the men with their shirts off. It was hilarious looking. Don't get me wrong, the film does have some amazing not sexual gorgeous moments as well, such as scouting the shipwreck and the scenes with the friendly grouper. However, the sequence with the rapture didn't really show much. As for being informative. The documentary has its moments. Nevertheless, I would like more of Cousteau's men to demonstrate the effectiveness of scuba gear over old-timey diving suits. That's probably one of the best moments in the film. I like how there is two versions of this French film. One is with English dubbing, while the other has the subtitles. Either way, overall: 'The Silent World' didn't make quite a splash with me. Nevertheless, I do see its appeal with audience members to the point that it was the basis for the acclaimed 2004 Wes Anderson movie 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou'. I just like his later works better. In the end, this is one silent world not worth revisiting.