Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Jacques Cousteau (1967, via) wearing the aqualung, the first commercially successful SCUBA set, which he co-invented with Emile Gagnan In the following excerpt from his 1954 book, The Silent World, Cousteau describes his first dive with the aqualung, which allowed him to swim underwater as freely as a fish for the first time (prior to the aqualung, standard deep sea diving dress looked like this): “To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.) I thought of the helmet diver arriving where I was on his ponderous boots and struggling to walk a few yards, obsessed with his umbilici and his head imprisoned in copper. On skin dives I had seen him leaning dangerously forward to make a step, clamped in heavier pressure at the ankles than the head, a cripple in an alien land. From this day forward we would swim across miles of country no man had known, free and level, with our flesh feeling what the fish scales know. I experimented with all possible maneuvers of the aqualung -loops, somersaults, and barrel rolls. I stood upside down on one finger and burst out laughing, a shrill distorted laugh. Nothing I did altered the automatic rhythm of air. Delivered from gravity and buoyancy I flew around in space.”

Jacques Cousteau (1967, via) wearing the aqualung, the first commercially successful SCUBA set, which he co-invented with Emile Gagnan

In the following excerpt from his 1954 book, The Silent World, Cousteau describes his first dive with the aqualung, which allowed him to swim underwater as freely as a fish for the first time (prior to the aqualung, standard deep sea diving dress looked like this):

“To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.)

I thought of the helmet diver arriving where I was on his ponderous boots and struggling to walk a few yards, obsessed with his umbilici and his head imprisoned in copper. On skin dives I had seen him leaning dangerously forward to make a step, clamped in heavier pressure at the ankles than the head, a cripple in an alien land. From this day forward we would swim across miles of country no man had known, free and level, with our flesh feeling what the fish scales know.

I experimented with all possible maneuvers of the aqualung -loops, somersaults, and barrel rolls. I stood upside down on one finger and burst out laughing, a shrill distorted laugh. Nothing I did altered the automatic rhythm of air. Delivered from gravity and buoyancy I flew around in space.”

Jacques Cousteau & his team descend into “the world of rapture” in The Silent World (1956, dir. Jacques-Yves Cousteau & Louis Malle) (the opening shot of the film, pictured above, can be seen on youtube here) The Silent World, Cousteau’s first feature-length documentary, was groundbreaking in its use of full-color underwater cinematography. Unfortunately, the film is now equally famous for the damage Cousteau & his divers inflicted on marine life during filming - they blow up a coral reef, kill hundreds of fish, leave no sea turtle unmolested (they are especially fond of hitching joyrides on the backs of the turtles, who struggle under the extra weight to reach the surface to breathe), and fatally injure a baby whale with their ship. The blood attracts several sharks, who promptly devour the whale. Enraged by this, the divers harpoon all the sharks, pull them up to the ship, & proceed to brutally hack them to death with axes. “The crew becomes angry with the sharks, and fight to avenge the baby whale,” narrates Cousteau - this time it’s personal. Cousteau later became much more environmentally conscious & was a pioneer in the marine conservation movement - his behavior during the filming of The Silent World simply reflects the sensibilities of the time. Notably, most of the reviews published in major American newspapers upon its initial release in 1956 are full of praise & don’t even mention the above incidents as problematic.

Jacques Cousteau & his team descend into “the world of rapture” in The Silent World (1956, dir. Jacques-Yves Cousteau & Louis Malle) (the opening shot of the film, pictured above, can be seen on youtube here)

The Silent World, Cousteau’s first feature-length documentary, was groundbreaking in its use of full-color underwater cinematography.

Unfortunately, the film is now equally famous for the damage Cousteau & his divers inflicted on marine life during filming - they blow up a coral reef, kill hundreds of fish, leave no sea turtle unmolested (they are especially fond of hitching joyrides on the backs of the turtles, who struggle under the extra weight to reach the surface to breathe), and fatally injure a baby whale with their ship. The blood attracts several sharks, who promptly devour the whale. Enraged by this, the divers harpoon all the sharks, pull them up to the ship, & proceed to brutally hack them to death with axes. “The crew becomes angry with the sharks, and fight to avenge the baby whale,” narrates Cousteau - this time it’s personal.

Cousteau later became much more environmentally conscious & was a pioneer in the marine conservation movement - his behavior during the filming of The Silent World simply reflects the sensibilities of the time. Notably, most of the reviews published in major American newspapers upon its initial release in 1956 are full of praise & don’t even mention the above incidents as problematic.

François de Roubaix - Baleines (Whales)

This track comes from the unused score Jacques Cousteau had Roubaix compose for his 1976 documentary about Antarctica, Voyage to the Edge of the World.  Cousteau eventually rejected the electronic score for being too avant-garde.