Silent sea

Press, 12 August 1980, Page 15

Silent sea

Review

John Collins

Cousteau has become, if not unwatchable, then unlistenable tq. All but the; first 10 minutes ; of Sun- ■ day’s paean to . the dolphin, playful, happy spirit of the ageless; - timeless sea. had to be observed on a silent screen, as if peering through the- porthole of a bathyscaphe drifting through the mysterious, alluring, ever-changing vet, ever-constant sparkling watery environment ; of the enigmatic oceans.'. . Cousteau’s ' accent, which has gradually deteriorated from Maurice; Chevalier to and beyond v Inspector Clouseau, hasnow-' become .unbelievable. He sounds , like a drunken Nilverin salesman doing a' grossly ? exaggerated par- . ody of. Jacques Cousteau. • His; voice's decline into unacceptability ; has been paralleled by that of Rod Serling, i who>. does the main narration. : Serling’s emotional involvement with the microphone, or his larynx, or the dolphin, or some other happy. playful creature of'the mysterious, alluring,-, ever-chang-ing script, has long perturbed hardened . marine assessors of this programme. He is clearly now on the verge of a total breakdown over the wonder and mystery of the world’s ocean depths, and should be quickly replaced by someone who does not sound about to break into a sob of amazement and congratulation whenever Cousteau manages to persuade a bound and blindfold dolphin to eat a pilchard. The dolphin programme, like all Cousteau’s coffeetable films, looked self-in-dulgent and pointless compared with the many excellent and instructive nature series we now have. It is fun to watch men in rubber suits playing in boats and riding on fish, but in the end a Cousteau programme. doesn’t tell you very much that you didn’t already know. Cousteau’s “The Hardv Boys Convert a Minesweeper and Get Wet Suits and Have Adventures at Sea” approach is

more concerned with the men and the Calypso than With, the sea and its more permanent inhabitants. Much of the film is the sort that would have been left on the cutting-room floor by people such as '-Attenborough because it would get-in the way of what they were trying to say. The point, about Cousteau'is-that he usually ; doesn’t have all that ' much' to say.

. ; In • Cousteau’s 50 . minutes there was usually five or so that make the programme worth watching, however. Such was the film of jet-propelled mullet rounded up by dolphins and scared out of their wits and out of the water. An astonishing piece of film and not a rubber Frenchman in the picture.

David Attenborough pops up in “Life on Earth” (One) only three or four times a session, and one can almost hear the hum of envy throughout the viewing land when he does. Here I am in the middle of a herd of wildebeeste in South Africa, and, just a second, here I am desert-boot in armadillo ' poohs in South America.

Table manners are getting rougher as we work up the evolutionary chain. The bats last week ate like Robert Morley, but Robert Morley, one presumes, at least insists on his fo’od being dead first The superb but revolting film of lion tucking into a wildebeeste that was still alive to watch them, made a good play if somewere not some flaws in Nature’s vast eternal plan. It is to be hoped the lions at least had the good grace not to criticise the meal until the animal if consisted had passed out of earshot.