The Silent World

Le monde du silence

France, Italy

1956

86 Min

Color

French

Currently 3.6/5 Stars.
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DIR Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Louis Malle

DP Philippe Agostini, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Louis Malle, Edmond Séchan

CAST Frédéric Dumas, Albert Falco, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, François Saout, André Bourne-Chastel

Cannes (In Competition): Palme d'Or

Director

Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997).

Captain Cousteau’s fascination with film began when he was very young. Shooting films was his favourite activity. Some sailors like to keep a journal while they are on board. He preferred to take notes with images. His desire to share his images with the vast public and to make them care about the marine world was very important to him. Beginning in the 1940’s, when the Captain first began making films, a lot of work has gone into developing cameras, filters, lenses and lighting for underwater filming.

Jacques Yves Cousteau among films he shoot during all his expeditions Cousteau films have received international recognition. The Silent World (1956), produced by the Captain with Louis Malle, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. The documentary was seen around the world, at the time, and was the first colour film of the underwater world.

Together with the divers, scientists… read more

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997).

Captain Cousteau’s fascination with film began when he was very young. Shooting films was his favourite activity. Some sailors like to keep a journal while they are on board. He preferred to take notes with images. His desire to share his images with the vast public and to make them care about the marine world was very important to him. Beginning in the 1940’s, when the Captain first began making films, a lot of work has gone into developing cameras, filters, lenses and lighting for underwater filming.

Jacques Yves Cousteau among films he shoot during all his expeditions Cousteau films have received international recognition. The Silent World (1956), produced by the Captain with Louis Malle, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. The documentary was seen around the world, at the time, and was the first colour film of the underwater world.

Together with the divers, scientists, cinematographers and photographers who accompanied him, the Captain was already worrying that human activities were harming the wonders of the planet. The first television films broadcast in the 1960’s testify to a precocious awareness of environmental problems. Later, his films The Golden Fish (with Edmond Séchan) and World Without Sun (1965), also received Oscars. The World Without Sun retraces the one-month life of the Oceanauts in an undersea base, the Houses under the Sea and Conshelf II built at Sha’ab Rumi (Sudan) in the Red Sea.

In 2004, the Cousteau Society returned to the Red Sea with the Cousteau ship Alcyone to explore again the sites where Jacques Cousteau shot the films Silent World and World without Sun and pay homage fifty years later. This extraordinary expedition entitled Le Monde du Silence Revisité (Silent World Revisited) has been filled with adventure, emotions and encounters and results in the last Cousteau Society’s filmed.

His television series, among which The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, Oasis in Space, The Cousteau Odyssey, North American Adventures, won numerous Emmys in the US. They retrace Cousteau’s fabulous expeditions and discoveries around the globe.In fifty years of exploration, with more than a million miles sailed over the planet, 144 films were produced that revealed to millions of families life on expeditions and in the oceans, engraving forever memories of fabulous images. These images taught the public about the mysteries of an underwater world, until then virtually inaccessible. This understanding gave rise to a global awareness of the fragility of the marine environment and motivated each person to feel a responsibility to respect and protect the environment. —cousteau.org

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Louis Malle

Louis Malle (born October 30, 1932, Thumeries, France—died November 23, 1995, Beverly Hills, California, U.S.) French motion-picture director whose eclectic films were noted for their emotional realism and stylistic simplicity.

Malle’s wealthy family resisted his early interest in film but allowed him to enter the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris in 1950. After studying at the institute, he worked as an assistant to filmmaker Robert Bresson and codirected the documentary Le Monde du silence (1956; The Silent World) with underwater explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

Malle’s first feature film, Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1957; Frantic), was a psychological thriller. His second, Les Amants (1958; The Lovers), was a commercial success and established Malle and its star, Jeanne Moreau, in the film industry. The film’s lyrical love scenes, tracked with exquisite timing, exhibit Malle’s typically bold and uninhibited treatment of sensual themes. Social alienation… read more

Louis Malle (born October 30, 1932, Thumeries, France—died November 23, 1995, Beverly Hills, California, U.S.) French motion-picture director whose eclectic films were noted for their emotional realism and stylistic simplicity.

Malle’s wealthy family resisted his early interest in film but allowed him to enter the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris in 1950. After studying at the institute, he worked as an assistant to filmmaker Robert Bresson and codirected the documentary Le Monde du silence (1956; The Silent World) with underwater explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

Malle’s first feature film, Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1957; Frantic), was a psychological thriller. His second, Les Amants (1958; The Lovers), was a commercial success and established Malle and its star, Jeanne Moreau, in the film industry. The film’s lyrical love scenes, tracked with exquisite timing, exhibit Malle’s typically bold and uninhibited treatment of sensual themes. Social alienation and isolation was the subject of Le Feu follet (1963; The Fire Within), which was acclaimed by critics as Malle’s most mature and sophisticated work. The sombre and keenly observed story of the last days of an alcoholic contemplating suicide demonstrated his versatility as a filmmaker. In Malle’s next major film, Le Voleur (1967; The Thief of Paris), a gentleman is driven to become a thief out of hatred of himself and his bourgeois origins. Malle’s other films of the 1960s include the zany comedy Zazie dans le métro (1960) and the musical satire Viva Maria (1965).

Malle’s six-month-long stay in India resulted in a feature-length documentary, Calcutta (1969), and a seven-part television series, L’Inde fantôme (Phantom India), which was broadcast internationally to great acclaim. Two of his films of the early 1970s were notable for their moving simplicity: Le Souffle au coeur (1971; Murmur of the Heart), a tenderly treated comedy about an adolescent boy; and Lacombe, Lucien (1973), about a bored teenager who becomes an informer for the Gestapo during the German occupation of France.

Malle moved to the United States in 1975. In 1978 he directed Pretty Baby, the story of a 12-year-old resident of a brothel in New Orleans. His later films include the critically acclaimed Atlantic City (1980), a comedy-drama about the emotional renewal of a small-time criminal; My Dinner with André (1981), an unusual film consisting almost entirely of a dinner-table conversation between two characters; and Au revoir les enfants (1987; Goodbye, Children), an autobiographical reminiscence of life in a Roman Catholic boys’ school in occupied France during World War II. Malle’s last film was Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), in which a theatre ensemble gives a reading of Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya. —bio.

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