Blue water, white death
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Blue water, white death |
| Original title | Blue water, white death |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1971 |
| length | 99 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Peter Gimbel James Lipscomb |
| script | Peter Gimbel |
| production | Peter Gimbel Stan Waterman |
| camera | James Lipscomb |
| cut | John Maddox |
| occupation | |
| |
Blue Water, White Death (English title: Blue Water, White Death ), and later appeared as a killer shark , is a documentary by directors Peter Gimbel and James Lipscomb from 1971 . The film is about the search for the great white shark off the coasts of South Africa , the Comoros and Madagascar , Sri Lanka and South Australia . The film was shot both on and off the boat and in the water as an underwater film, partly during dives in steel cages as protection against shark encounters. In addition, all expedition participants talk about the company and their thoughts several times in the form of short interviews.
The film was produced with the help of Cinema Center Films and cost US $ 1,050,000. The film team's journey lasted nine months and began in March 1969, most of the time spent searching for the animals on an old whaling ship. The film was released with heavy commercials by National General Pictures on June 1, 1971 , and was released internationally that same year. In the cinema it was a hit with the public and was discussed in numerous media.
Blue Water, White Death inspired the writer Peter Benchley to revise his novel Jaws (Original title: Jaws ) later for the screenplay of four years by Steven Spielberg produced and published in 1975 eponymous film . Several team members later worked on the shark recordings for this film.
content
The film begins with a brief presentation of the great white shark and lists some serious great white shark accidents. Based on this representation, Peter Gimbel decides to film the great white shark and travels with a film and diving crew assembled for this purpose to Durban , South Africa, where great white sharks are sighted regularly. There they document, among other things, the country's whaling industry and accompany the former whaling ship Terrier VIII, a ship that harpooners sperm whales and thereby attracts sharks. On the first day, the crew filmed a large number of sharks that were attracted by a whale carcass and feed on it, including gray reef sharks ( Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos ), blue sharks ( Prionace glauca ) and white-tip deep-sea sharks ( Carcharhinus longimanus ). However, after no great white shark was attracted on the second day either, the team decided to dive at night and film with the help of underwater lamps. Until the lights go out, they can film significantly more sharks than during the day. On the following day, they manage to film numerous sharks in the open water and out of the cages, sometimes keeping the sharks at a distance with electric shark sticks and their cameras.
The crew leaves the whale carcass the following day and drives north along the East African coast into the waters off Mozambique , Madagascar and the Comoros as far as Grande Comore , with many other film recordings being made in coral reefs and mangroves . Numerous fish are filmed, including moray eels , barracudas and groupers, as well as smaller reef sharks. Great white sharks are still not found during this time and the crew decides to follow the advice of French residents of the island and head to Vailheu Shoal Island , where great white sharks have been sighted. This trip was also unsuccessful and the team continues to Batticaloa on the east coast of Sri Lanka . You will again be given tips on where to look for large sharks and will drive to the designated locations. However, due to the local conditions, they have to do without diving cages. As a result, the team begins to doubt the feasibility of the cage-free and decides to return to Durban and later dive in the Dangerous Reef off the coast of South Australia , known as the colony of the Australian sea lions and for its great density of great white sharks .
In Dangerous Reef, after a while, the team actually succeeds in luring three great white sharks with the help of bait and filming them out of the diving cages. The cages are attacked several times by the sharks and at the end of the film Peter Gimbel's cage is attacked by one of the sharks and pulled away from the boats. The team manages to recover the cage, nobody is injured.
Background and effect
Preparations and shooting
The first discussions about the film led the later director Peter Gimbel in 1967 with his friend Jack Schneider , who was Vice President of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) at the time. This referred him to Cinema Center Felms , the film production company of CBS, where the idea was taken up and confirmed with an oral contract. Gimbel stated in an interview with the Washington Post that he had made a short documentary about blue sharks off Montauk on Long Island as early as 1965 and that was how he became fascinated with the sharks. During 1968 Gimbel put the crew and equipment together for the film and the search for the great white shark. The budget for the film was initially set at US $ 750,000, but later increased to a total of approximately US $ 1,050,000, which was taken over by Cinema Center.
The direction was carried out by Peter Gimbel together with James Lipscomb, who was mainly responsible for the surface shots. Other photographers and filmmakers included the Australian shark experts Ron Taylor and his wife Valerie Taylor, as well as Phil Clarkson, Stan Waterman, Peter Lake and Tom Chapin , brother of Harry Chapin , who also wrote and played the songs that played during the film are heard. Then there was the adventure writer Peter Matthiessen , who published the book Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark in 1974 about search and film. Blue Water, White Death was shot by Gimbel's Blue Meridian Company.
The film team's journey lasted nine months and began in March 1969, with most of the time spent searching for the animals. The team spent the first five months on the former whaling ship Terrier III , traveling from South Africa to Sri Lanka and back without finding great white sharks. After a break of almost four months, the crew traveled to Port Lincoln in Australia in January 1970 and toured the area around Cape Catastrophe in Spencer Gulf in Lincoln National Park with a motor yacht for two weeks , again without success. Most recently, they traveled to Dangerous Reef, where they finally succeeded in attracting three great white sharks with a mixture of blood and whale oil that they put into the water over a period of 36 hours. The film crew stayed in Dangerous Reef for about a week and sometimes filmed four to five great white sharks at the same time. Mathiessen described the first shark sighting in his book as follows:
“… The great fish breached, spun the sea awash and lunged after the skipping salmon tall (another bit of bait, pulled through the water by a line); we stared into its white oncoming mouth. 'My God' Gimbel shouted, astounded by the sight of his first white shark. The conical snout and the terrible shearing teeth and the dark eye like a hole were all in sicght, raised clear out of the water. Under the stern, with an audible whush , the shark took a last snap at the bait, then wheeled away. "
“... the big fish appeared, turned covered by the water and pounced on the attached salmon tail (another bait that was pulled through the water on a rope); we stared at the white approaching mouth. 'My God' Gimbel exclaimed, fascinated by the sight of his first great white shark. The conical snout, the terrible fangs and the dark eye were all visible, clearly protruding from the water. "
publication
Before the film was released, the Motion Picture Association of America had cut requests to improve the film's rating. In particular, some curses by the actors that were uttered during the recording in the excitement were cut out. On June 1, 1971, the film was released with a lot of publicity by National General Pictures , it was released internationally that same year.
Gimbel then gave several interviews and explains his motivation for the film and the background to the filming and the trip. In an interview with the Washington Post , for example, he pointed out that, in contrast to documentaries such as The Silent World and World Without the Sun by French director Jacques Cousteau , he wanted to present viewers with a much more personalized and emotional film in which they looked at the Remember the leading actors and should put themselves in their shoes.
aftermath
The film was released in 1971 as the very first documentary about the great white shark and thus appeared four years before Steven Spielberg's animal horror film The Jaws (original title: Jaws ) . The mass fear of the great white shark triggered by the latter was not yet present in 1971, even if the shark was already known as a dangerous predator at that time. Ron and Valerie Taylor later also shot several shark scenes for Jaws in Dangerous Reef, which were incorporated into the film as footage and, according to Peter Benchley, the book by Matthiessen is supposed to be used by Peter Benchley while working on the script for Jaws alongside the film Blue Water, White Death very much. In addition to these sources, Benchley also used the film The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea (in German Haie. Herrliche Räuber der See ) by Jacques Cousteau , Shadows In The Sea by Thomas B. Allen and About Sharks And Shark Attacks by David H. Davies .
In 1975, after the success of Jaws , the film Blue Waters, White Death was re-released by the distribution company Cinema Center under the alternative title Killer Shark to take advantage of the great demand for shark films. Peter Gimbel himself made it clear in 1971 that although the film was made to film the infamous great white shark, he and the crew were fascinated by the impressive and beautiful animals.
Movie reviews
The film was covered and discussed several times in newspapers both after its appearance and later, with the range of criticism being very different. In a contemporary review of the American film critic Vincent Canby in the New York Times , the latter described the film as a quite entertaining, sometimes great documentary ("quite jolly, sometimes awesome, new documentary movie"). He also takes up the accompanying book Blue Meridian by Peter Matthiessen and certifies that he describes the journey and search for the great white shark “on a more introspective level”. According to his assessment, Blue Water, White Death is a very conventional documentary of the romantic experience of the trip and he compares the prevailing mood with the rover boy tone of Bruce Brown's surfer film The Endless Summer . This is achieved and accompanied by several self-confident depictions of the events of the trip, the multiple use of "shameful" sunsets and the recording of Tom Chapin's folk songs during the trip. At the same time, however, in his opinion the film contains some of the most beautiful and breathtaking underwater shots he had ever seen. In addition to the shark scenes in South Africa, he highlights various other shots in order to finally highlight the final scenes and the encounter with the great white shark off the coast of South Australia from the diving cages as a climax and emphasize that these shots are probably unique. He asks why a diver does such a thing ("Why, in heaven's name, do people do this sort of thing?"), And answers this with a quote from Peter Gimbel from Mathiessen's book:
"Danger doesn't interest me ... but I'm curious and I think everybody's curious to find out just what their limits are under situations that exert a certain amount of stress on them."
"I am not interested in danger ... but I am curious and I think everyone is interested in finding out where their limits are in situations that put a certain level of stress on them."
He goes on to say that the film does not speculate, but rather shows the people who push their curiosity to the limit and show their enthusiasm after the dives. The meaning of the undertaking for those involved becomes so private in some places that no form of language can express it. In Canby's view, the film cannot explain people like Peter Gimbel and his crew, but it can describe them. As the heart of the film, he regards its "action" together with the enormous technical understanding and the purity that makes it so poetic that he has not seen in a long time:
"However, the heart of the film is its action, recorded with immense technical skill, and it is so pure that it's as poetic as anything I've seen on the screen in a long, long time."
"However, the heart of the film is its plot, filmed with immense technical skill, and it's so pure that it's as poetic as anything I've seen on screen in a long, long time."
According to Richard Combs in the Monthly Film Bulletin, it is not clear what gives the film its distinctive, signature mood. On the one hand, the unusually professional use of the widescreen format and the series of impressive visual effects gave the film a very sophisticated impression, on the other hand, the viewer learns very little about the central element of the film, the great white shark. Since this only appears for a very short sequence at the end of the film, the film deals almost entirely with the unsuccessful search for the animal. According to Combs, Gimbel comes very close to his statement that he does not want to make a scientifically precise film, but rather portray a true and exciting journey and search. He achieves this through the form of classic narrative cinema with a classic build-up of tension and a climax in which the great white shark appears more as the star of the film than as the result of the search at the end. The months of preparation and search were arranged in such a way that they deliver a chain of well-balanced events and documentaries above and below the water, always with an impressive perspective in which the camera is usually invisible and only occasionally in the form of a cinéma vérité in Scene is set. Some scenes are filmed surprisingly well and sometimes bizarre, such as the night diving scenes in the middle of the sharks on the whale carcass. The subsequent encounters and film scenes and the almost playful handling of the moray eel and barracudas make the viewer curious about the encounter with the great white shark. And the aggressiveness with which he appears in the end and attacks the cages is in stark contrast to these scenes. Explanations are omitted in order to underline the description of Gimbels as a eating machine:
“The Great White is the best eating machine in the world. ... There is no passion in his attack. If they don't get anything they just go off and eat something else. Man is just another thing to eat. "
“The Great White is the best eating machine in the world. ... There's no passion in his attack. If they don't get anything, they just turn off and eat something else. Humans are just something else to eat. "
Wayen Warga wrote in the Los Angeles Times about the incredible success of the film Blue Water, White Death and its making. After his portrayal, the film company Cinema Center Films was aware that it had a good and at the same time difficult to market film, but had not expected success. He called the footage of the film some of the most exciting and best underwater footage audiences have seen to date. He cited Peter Gimbel as the reasons for the film's success. Above all, he saw the growing interest in the natural sciences following the moon landing at the end of the 1960s and the growth of the ecology movements at the beginning of the 1970s as a key success factor:
“It is extremely lucky timing. The climate five years ago wouldn't have worked for this picture. In the last several years there has been a phenomenal rekindling of interest in the natural sciences, especially the moon and the sea. The ecology movement has been born. All of those things come together in this film. "
“It's extremely lucky timing. The climate five years earlier would not have worked for the film. In recent years there has been a tremendous resurgence in interest in science, especially the moon and the sea. The ecology movement was born. All of these things came together for this film. "
According to a criticism of the film service in the Munzinger archive , the film aims "with its depiction of the predators' aggressiveness at horror effects", while "newer methods of behavioral observation [...] are not used." It follows this criticism because of "this limited perspective Despite the impressive underwater shots, it's a rather boring film. ”The critics praised the excellent shots and some scary effects in the shark shots,“ You learn a lot more about the life of these animals than what was already seen in Hans-Hass films however not ”, and although the viewer is introduced optically into the underwater world, it is not communicated“ according to which laws this world lives, how the living conditions of these animals are shaped ”. The criticism sums up:
“In addition to the diving and camera equipment, this would have required behavioral research instruments. The film, fixed on the sharks' appetite for attack and eating, contains unnecessary lengths that are laboriously bridged by conversations between the diving team. However, since the viewer saw in the picture beforehand what will be told afterwards, he feels bored for a long time. "
Peter Gimbel had already explained in 1971 that he had made the film without any deeper didactic requirements or scientific guidelines.
Web links
- Blue Water, White Death in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Trailer for Blue Water, White Death on youtube.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Wayne Warga: The Story Behind 'Blue Water' - an Unlikely Success . In: Los Angeles Times , August 1, 1971.
- ^ A b c d e William Smart: In Search of the Shark: The 12,000-Mile Hunt for White Death . In: The Washington Post , July 4, 1971.
- ↑ a b c d “Blue Water, White Death”: A “Shark Week” flashback to the 1971 doc that pre-dated “Jaws” . on nightflight.com, July 10, 2015; accessed on September 14, 2016.
- ↑ Time mosaic: sharks and small fish in: Time , No. 42/1975..
- ↑ a b c d e Vincent Canby : Screen: Dramatic Pursuit of Elusive Killer Shark . In: New York Times , May 12, 1971; Retrieved September 25, 2016.
- ^ A b Richard Combs: Blue Water, White Death . In: Monthly Film Bulletin , Jan. 1, 1971; P. 160.
- ↑ Entry “Blue Water, White Death” in Munzinger Online / Film - Reviews from film-dienst No. 25/1971. ( Entry , access required); accessed on September 23, 2016.