Mr_sausage wrote:Adam wrote:I saw the first two Cousteau films (that both won Oscars) at Cinefamily a couple of months ago. The second Cousteau film might well be fine to release, with its underwater labs.
The first one, however, is unbelievable, from the crew killing a baby sperm whale that their ship runs over while chasing a herd of whales, to brutally killing a bunch of sharks that start feeding on the whale, to using dynamite to blow up a lagoon to collect all the fish in it. I can totally see why the Cousteau Estate would want it to be forgotten about, as I think almost no one today could accept it, no matter how much contextual explanation you add. But that explanation, and the understanding that would come by letting people see how far we've come since the late 1950s, would be very valuable. The first film really is a bunch of French guys having fun on the high seas, with some beautiful underwater photography that must have blown people away at the time (and is still wonderful today, if not as unique). Yes, there are scuba and sops thrown to "doing science," but it's really about a pack of French guys (divers, sailers, and a couple of scientists) having a great time.
How did they kill the sharks? I know it was an old whaling practise to jab harpoons into the heads of the sharks when they tried to eat the boat's catch as it hung from the side, so it sounds like an example of extinct whaling techniques.
Yeah, pretty much, stick a hooked spear or harpoon into them, drag them out of teh water and onto the deck and chop with an axe or harpoon them more. They killed the whale by shooting it in the head with a rifle, which they show.
In answer to the previous, yes I "enjoyed" it despite these negatives. But do I think of those as negatives, or do I think they give the film greater value as a historical document? Complicated, and probably both. And of course events like blowing up the lagoon cause great laughter in the audience (from discomfort and disbelief, I imagine).
I'm also deeply interested in both history and the history of documentaries, and I also once wrote & produced a show for the History Channel on the whaleship
Essex that was stove by a sperm whale in 1820 (and was one of many influences on Melville for
Moby-Dick). ("History's Mysteries: The True Story of Moby Dick"). So to see this pack of sperm whales was also very moving to me, and the unnecessary death of one even more tragic. But I've also already seen footage of whales being killed, etc., and I also am familiar with the history of whale hunting. The Save the Whales movement didn't arise until the 1970s, and there were no laws against any killing prior to then.
Anyway, I think the movie is well worth seeing, and I can also imagine lots of people being disgusted by it, but I think they should work on understanding the source of the disgust, and the sources of the behavior of Cousteau & his men.
