The Silent World

This article is about the film. For the book, see The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure.

The Silent World
original film poster
Directed by	Jacques-Yves Cousteau Louis Malle
Written by	Jacques-Yves Cousteau and James Dugan
Release dates	May 26, 1956 (1956-05-26) (Cannes) August 15, 1956 (1956-08-15) (Japan) September 24, 1956 (1956-09-24) (USA)
Running time	86 minutes
Country	France Italy
Language	French

The Silent World (French: Le Monde du silence) is a 1956 French documentary film co-directed by the famed French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and a young Louis Malle. The Silent World is noted as one of the first films to use underwater cinematography to show the ocean depths in color.^[1]^[2] Its title derives from Cousteau's 1953 book The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure.

The film was shot aboard the ship Calypso. Cousteau and his team of divers shot 25 kilometers of film over two years in the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, of which 2.5 kilometers were included in the finished documentary.

The film later faced criticism for environmental damage done during the filmmaking. In one scene, the crew of the Calypso massacre a school of sharks that were drawn to the carcass of a baby whale, which itself had been mortally injured by the crew, albeit accidentally. In another, Cousteau uses dynamite near a coral reef in order to make a more complete census of the marine life in its vicinity. Cousteau later became more environmentally conscious, involved in marine conservation, and was even called "the father of the environmental movement" by Ted Turner.^[3]

The Silent World was the first of Cousteau's documentary films to win an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; World Without Sun also won in 1964. The film also won the Palme d'Or award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival,^[4] being the only documentary film to win the award until Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 repeated the feat in 2004.

References

↑ Sesto Continente directed by Folco Quilici and released in 1954, was the first full-length, full-color underwater documentary. NYtimes.com
↑ IMDb.com
↑ CNN.com
↑ "Festival de Cannes: The Silent World". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-02-05.

External links

The Silent World at the Internet Movie Database
The Silent World at Rotten Tomatoes
The Silent World at AllMovie
Jacques Cousteau's "The Silent World" by Greg Rubinson at salon.com, July 15, 2002, retrieved June 14, 2011

Films directed by Louis Malle

Feature films	Elevator to the Gallows (1958) The Lovers (1958) Zazie dans le Métro (1960) A Very Private Affair (1962) The Fire Within (1963) Viva Maria! (1965) The Thief of Paris (1967) Murmur of the Heart (1971) Lacombe, Lucien (1974) Black Moon (1975) Pretty Baby (1978) Atlantic City (1980) My Dinner with Andre (1981) Crackers (1984) Alamo Bay (1985) Au Revoir les Enfants (1987) May Fools (1990) Damage (1992) Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)

Short films	Crazeologie Station 307 Spirits of the Dead (segment "William Wilson")

Documentaries	The Silent World (with Jacques Cousteau) Vive le Tour Calcutta Humain, trop humain Place de la République Close Up

Television	Bons baisers de Bangkok Phantom India Dominique Sanda ou Le rêve éveillé God's Country And the Pursuit of Happiness

Palme d'Or winning films

1930s 1940s	Union Pacific – Cecil B. DeMille (1939) Iris and the Lieutenant – Alf Sjöberg (1946) The Lost Weekend – Billy Wilder (1946) The Red Meadows – Bodil Ipsen and Lau Lauritzen, Jr. (1946) Brief Encounter – David Lean (1946) María Candelaria – Emilio Fernández (1946) Neecha Nagar – Chetan Anand (1946) The Turning Point – Fridrikh Ermler (1946) La Symphonie Pastorale – Jean Delannoy (1946) The Last Chance – Leopold Lindtberg (1946) Men Without Wings – František Čáp (1946) Rome, Open City – Roberto Rossellini (1946) The Third Man – Carol Reed (1949)

1950s	Miss Julie – Alf Sjöberg (1951) Miracle in Milan – Vittorio De Sica (1951) The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice – Orson Welles (1952) Two Cents Worth of Hope – Renato Castellani (1952) The Wages of Fear – Henri-Georges Clouzot (1953) Gate of Hell – Teinosuke Kinugasa (1954) Marty – Delbert Mann (1955) The Silent World – Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle (1956) Friendly Persuasion – William Wyler (1957) The Cranes Are Flying – Mikhail Kalatozov (1958) Black Orpheus – Marcel Camus (1959)

1960s	La Dolce Vita – Federico Fellini (1960) The Long Absence – Henri Colpi (1961) Viridiana – Luis Buñuel (1961) O Pagador de Promessas – Anselmo Duarte (1962) The Leopard – Luchino Visconti (1963) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – Jacques Demy (1964) The Knack ...and How to Get It – Richard Lester (1965) A Man and a Woman – Claude Lelouch (1966) The Birds, the Bees and the Italians – Pietro Germi (1966) Blowup – Michelangelo Antonioni (1967) if.... – Lindsay Anderson (1969)

1970s	MASH – Robert Altman (1970) The Go-Between – Joseph Losey (1971) The Working Class Goes to Heaven – Elio Petri (1972) The Mattei Affair – Francesco Rosi (1972) The Hireling – Alan Bridges (1973) Scarecrow – Jerry Schatzberg (1973) The Conversation – Francis Ford Coppola (1974) Chronicle of the Years of Fire – Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina (1975) Taxi Driver – Martin Scorsese (1976) Padre Padrone – Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (1977) The Tree of Wooden Clogs – Ermanno Olmi (1978) Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola (1979) The Tin Drum – Volker Schlöndorff (1979)

1980s	All That Jazz – Bob Fosse (1980) Kagemusha – Akira Kurosawa (1980) Man of Iron – Andrzej Wajda (1981) Missing – Costa-Gavras (1982) Yol – Yılmaz Güney and Şerif Gören (1982) The Ballad of Narayama – Shohei Imamura (1983) Paris, Texas – Wim Wenders (1984) When Father Was Away on Business – Emir Kusturica (1985) The Mission – Roland Joffé (1986) Under the Sun of Satan – Maurice Pialat (1987) Pelle the Conqueror – Bille August (1988) Sex, Lies, and Videotape – Steven Soderbergh (1989)

1990s	Wild at Heart – David Lynch (1990) Barton Fink – Coen brothers (1991) The Best Intentions – Bille August (1992) Farewell My Concubine – Chen Kaige (1993) The Piano – Jane Campion (1993) Pulp Fiction – Quentin Tarantino (1994) Underground – Emir Kusturica (1995) Secrets & Lies – Mike Leigh (1996) Taste of Cherry – Abbas Kiarostami (1997) The Eel – Shohei Imamura (1997) Eternity and a Day – Theodoros Angelopoulos (1998) Rosetta – Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne (1999)

2000s	Dancer in the Dark – Lars von Trier (2000) The Son's Room – Nanni Moretti (2001) The Pianist – Roman Polanski (2002) Elephant – Gus Van Sant (2003) Fahrenheit 9/11 – Michael Moore (2004) The Child – Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne (2005) The Wind That Shakes the Barley – Ken Loach (2006) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – Cristian Mungiu (2007) The Class – Laurent Cantet (2008) The White Ribbon – Michael Haneke (2009)

2010s	Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2010) The Tree of Life – Terrence Malick (2011) Amour – Michael Haneke (2012) Blue Is the Warmest Colour – Abdellatif Kechiche (with actresses Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux) (2013) Winter Sleep – Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2014)

Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature

1942–1975	The Battle of Midway / Kokoda Front Line! / Moscow Strikes Back / Prelude to War (1942) Desert Victory (1943) The Fighting Lady (1944) The True Glory (1945) None given (1946) Design for Death (1947) The Secret Land (1948) Daybreak in Udi (1949) The Titan: Story of Michelangelo (1950) Kon-Tiki (1951) The Sea Around Us (1952) The Living Desert (1953) The Vanishing Prairie (1954) Helen Keller in Her Story (1955) The Silent World (1956) Albert Schweitzer (1957) White Wilderness (1958) Serengeti Shall Not Die (1959) The Horse with the Flying Tail (1960) Sky Above and Mud Beneath (1961) Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler (1962) Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World (1963) World Without Sun (1964) The Eleanor Roosevelt Story (1965) The War Game (1966) The Anderson Platoon (1967) Journey into Self (1968) Arthur Rubinstein – The Love of Life (1969) Woodstock (1970) The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971) Marjoe (1972) The Great American Cowboy (1973) Hearts and Minds (1974) The Man Who Skied Down Everest (1975)

1976–2000	Harlan County, USA (1976) Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? (1977) Scared Straight! (1978) Best Boy (1979) From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China (1980) Genocide (1981) Just Another Missing Kid (1982) He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' (1983) The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) Broken Rainbow (1985) Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got / Down and Out in America (1986) The Ten-Year Lunch (1987) Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988) Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989) American Dream (1990) In the Shadow of the Stars (1991) The Panama Deception (1992) I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School (1993) Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1994) Anne Frank Remembered (1995) When We Were Kings (1996) The Long Way Home (1997) The Last Days (1998) One Day in September (1999) Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000)

2001–present	Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001) Bowling for Columbine (2002) The Fog of War (2003) Born into Brothels (2004) March of the Penguins (2005) An Inconvenient Truth (2006) Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) Man on Wire (2008) The Cove (2009) Inside Job (2010) Undefeated (2011) Searching for Sugar Man (2012) 20 Feet from Stardom (2013) Citizenfour‎ (2014)

The Silent World

See also

References

External links