In the intoxication of the deep

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Movie
German title In the intoxication of the deep
Original title Le grand bleu
Country of production France
original language English
Publishing year 1988
length Director's Cut
approx. 160 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Luc Besson
script Luc Besson
production Luc Besson
music Eric Serra
camera Carlo Varini
cut Olivier Mauffroy
occupation

In the intoxication of the deep is a feature film by the French director Luc Besson from 1988. The drama is fictional, but is slightly based on the biographies of the apnea diving recorders Jacques Mayol and Enzo Maiorca .

action

The boys Jacques and Enzo grow up on the same small Greek island. Both are interested in diving, but while the children in the village ingratiate themselves with Enzo, Jacques is an outsider whose only stop on land is his father, a sponge diver. When Jacques dies in a dive, a world collapses. He leaves the island and it takes years for Jacques and Enzo to cross paths again. Jacques has put his extraordinary diving skills at the service of science, Enzo is the current record holder in freediving and would like to compete against his childhood friend at the next world championship in Taormina . Jacques accepts the challenge and travels to Italy , where he meets up with the cheeky insurance agent Johana from New York , whom he met during a dive in Peru . The diving competition off the coast of Sicily turns into a gripping duel between the two childhood friends. In a later world record attempt in Greece , Enzo dies shortly after surfacing. Traumatized by this stroke of fate, Jacques starts a night dive and disappears into the depths of the sea, accompanied by a dolphin. Not visible to the viewer, but logically inferred, Jacques drowns shortly afterwards.

History of origin

Three years after his Paris underground adventure Subway with Christopher Lambert and Isabelle Adjani in the leading roles, former diving instructor Luc Besson fulfilled a long-cherished dream with the script and the later realization of Im Rausch deriefe, in which he also made a short cameo as a diver. The director's script was inspired by the rivalry between the French Jacques Mayol and the Italian Enzo Maiorca , who chased each other's diving records over a period of ten years in the 1960s. The leading actors Jean Reno and Jean-Marc Barr , who had never dived before in his life, took part in several months of training in preparation for In Rush of the Deep . Neither Reno nor Barr could be doubled in any of the numerous underwater sequences that were filmed at a depth of up to 40 meters (in the plot of the film Jacques and Enzo dive to a depth of up to 120 meters). The diving world record holder Jacques Mayol, on whom Jean-Marc Barr's film character of the same name is based, acted as technical advisor during the nine-month filming. Luc Besson's second cinema production was shot entirely in English.

The wreck of the Olympia off Amorgos

The stranded ship from which Enzo rescues a trapped diver at the beginning is the Olympia , which is still on the coast of Amorgos in Greece .

The peculiar, blue-tones film poster with the dreamy, imaginative motif of a man swimming in the sea at night and trying to touch a jumping dolphin with his hand was created by the French artist Andrzej Malinowski . The US distribution title of the film is The Big Blue .

reception

In the intoxication of the deep , with its extraordinary photography, fairytale story and Eric Serra's popular synthesizer music, it became a cult film of the late 1980s. Luc Besson's underwater fairy tale, valued at 80 million francs (approx. 12 million euros), was so successful at the box office that the film was shown in French cinemas for more than a year. The success that it had in Europe was denied to the film in the USA .

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The then still unknown leading actor Jean-Marc Barr became a star overnight in France with his role as the introverted, self-destructive diver Jacques: "Suddenly I was a teen idol and known like Mickey Mouse" , Barr said years later in an interview. Although critics predicted the charismatic actor would have an international career in the film business, Jean-Marc Barr was never able to appear as memorable as in Luc Besson's underwater epic, despite numerous efforts. For Jean Reno, on the other hand, who was also not very well known by then, Im Rausch der Tief was the prelude to a long, successful acting career.

Reviews

The film-dienst celebrated Besson's film in its contemporary criticism as "a far-reaching picture story based on the biography of the famous French world record holder Jacques Mayol" . However, the “glorifying suicides” at the end of Im Rausch der Tief , which would disturb the overall positive impression , were criticized .

Versions

From The Big Blue , there are three different versions of the film. The French theatrical version is 132 minutes long. The American version is 14 minutes shorter and has a new score by Bill Conti and a different ending. In the American version there is a happy ending in which the dolphin leads Jacques to the surface of the water. The Director's Cut is 160 minutes long and the so-called Extended Version is only available on DVD in Europe and Japan. (LaserDisc 154 minutes) In the meantime, a 166-minute version of the film has also been released on Blu-Ray Disc in Germany, which contains over 2 hours of special features (including the "Making of"). The picture is in 2.35: 1 widescreen format in 1080 / 24p and the sound is available in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (German / French).

Awards

In 1989, Im Rausch der Tief, with eight nominations, was one of the expanded favorites for the César film awards ceremony , the French equivalent of the US Oscars . Despite the enormous success with the French cinema audience, Luc Besson's work could not prevail in the important categories against Bruno Nuytten's artist biography Camille Claudel or Étienne Chatiliez's social comedy Life is a long, calm river . In the rush of depth , two Césars won in the secondary categories for Eric Serra's film music and the best sound.

  • Best film score
  • Best tone
Nominated in the following categories:
  • Grand Prix as best film

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for In the intoxication of the deep . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2009 (PDF; test number: 60 435 DVD).
  2. ↑ In the intoxication of the deep. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used