While eye-popping images of ocean life are now commonplace — see the current Oscar-contending documentary My Octopus Teacher — when diving pioneer Jacques Cousteau released his documentary The Silent World in 1956, they were virtually unknown.
The color film, co-directed by Cousteau, then 45, and Louis Malle, then 24, and edited from footage taken from excursions on Cousteau's trusty research vessel Calypso, revealed the strange majesty of ocean life.
Audiences couldn't get enough of 20-foot sharks, octopuses, fluorescent fish, porpoises and manta rays cavorting in turquoise waters amid shadowy shipwrecks and grottos.
The dazzling sights electrified the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, where the film won the Palme d'Or — the only doc to earn the.
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