The first major colour film about underwater exploration made by Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle, on board the laboratory ship "Calypso". The team of divers led by Captain Cousteau show us the strange beauty of this "silent world", the new conquest of the 20th century.
EN
“The scene of vibrantly coloured torches descending into the sea that opens Le Monde du silence has been compared, most notably by Cousteau himself, to a Promethean gesture.' Man brings light and colour to the dark, opaque underwater space, displaying his ability to expand the limits of his knowledge and his mastery of the planet. The sea is a new area of 'conquest for Man, and Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle emphasise the human adventure embodied by the Calypso's expeditions early in the film with the introduction of the ship and its crew – from the divers and the first mate to the galley (Reflets de Cannes, 1956). ”
“In The Silent World, it is a baby whale injured by the ship's propeller that bears the brunt of the sharks' voracity, introducing a sacrificial third party between the men excited by danger and the sharks by blood. The sharks in this film have a more threatening profile, filmed in close-up along the side of the cage. The dramatisation is thus intensified from one film to the next, particularly as we now know that the second accident with the whale pup was deliberate, in contrast to the random nature of the first (see Machu 2011: 79-81; 95-6). 18 Cousteau had the final say on The Silent World, contractually, " and agreed with the editor Georges Alépée's suggestion to edit the sequences in the style of 'a line-up of circus acts (see Grégoire 2006: 44; Machu 2011: 98).20 "This is a scripted film', asserted Cousteau.? The commentary styles of the two directors were also very different, Cousteau having created his own style, that of a smooth-talking conference speaker, post-war (see Machu 2011: 50), whereas Malle's voice was much more interior and understated, as we will see in La Fontaine de Vaucluse. Starting from the same basic mold, that of the underwater adventure film, Cousteau and Malle make their distinctive, and diverging, marks.”
Guillaume Soulez2
- 1Guillaume Soulez, “Malle Before Malle.” In The Cinema of Louis Malle: Transatlantic Auteur, edited by Philippe Met, 19–33. (Columbia University Press, 2018).
- 2Guillaume Soulez, “Malle Before Malle.” In The Cinema of Louis Malle: Transatlantic Auteur, edited by Philippe Met, 19–33. (Columbia University Press, 2018).
