The Silent World
Apr. 15th, 2012 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertYesterday I found The Silent World on YouTube, the 1956 Jacques-Yves Cousteau film. I grew up watching the later Cousteau documentaries, but I don't recall seeing this earlier one. The underwater cinematography is superb, it doesn't look like someone in ninteen-fifty tried taking a camera down in a primitive housing to see if he could get some film, it looks rather like what you'd expect now. That must have been a tremendous amount of work back in the fifties.
Aside from the excellent quality of the camera work, it does look like an old film. In particular, the amount of killing of marine life, and general harassing of wildlife, is pretty shocking, particularly from a famous crew of environmentalists, though I guess back in 1956 you qualified as an environmentalist if you refrained from setting off a nuclear bomb in the open air. The scuba gear looks old, but until you look closely, or especially see them taking off the tanks on the surface, you don't realize just how old. The metal tanks are just strapped on with a couple of narrow straps. No pads, no fancy harness that adjusts in twelve ways, just metal tanks loosely affixed with a strap one step up from tying it on with a rope. And no buoyancy compensator. And no clothing beyond little shorts. Sure hope the water was warm. Nowadays people usually wear something even in very warm water, just to keep from being stung by every random tiny stinging marine critter. Those were tough dudes in those days. And speaking of dudes, there are some female turtles, but exactly 100% of the humans are men, because, naturally, back in 1956 women hadn't been invented yet. (I'm not clear on where babies used to come from, but it's not just this film, lots of sources clearly indicate that there weren't any women yet in those days.)
Aside from the excellent quality of the camera work, it does look like an old film. In particular, the amount of killing of marine life, and general harassing of wildlife, is pretty shocking, particularly from a famous crew of environmentalists, though I guess back in 1956 you qualified as an environmentalist if you refrained from setting off a nuclear bomb in the open air. The scuba gear looks old, but until you look closely, or especially see them taking off the tanks on the surface, you don't realize just how old. The metal tanks are just strapped on with a couple of narrow straps. No pads, no fancy harness that adjusts in twelve ways, just metal tanks loosely affixed with a strap one step up from tying it on with a rope. And no buoyancy compensator. And no clothing beyond little shorts. Sure hope the water was warm. Nowadays people usually wear something even in very warm water, just to keep from being stung by every random tiny stinging marine critter. Those were tough dudes in those days. And speaking of dudes, there are some female turtles, but exactly 100% of the humans are men, because, naturally, back in 1956 women hadn't been invented yet. (I'm not clear on where babies used to come from, but it's not just this film, lots of sources clearly indicate that there weren't any women yet in those days.)
