Maritime Movie Mania

Prototype for a scaphandre (atmospheric diving suit) invented by Alphonse and Théodore Carmagnolle (1882), and the inspiration for the Big Daddies in Bioshock (2007).

Despite my love of coastal areas and lighthouses, I don't have any burning interest in naval and maritime history. Don't get me wrong: I wish I were nautical (or at least had a friend with a sailboat and a generous disposition towards lubbers). Treasure Island is one of the few books that I can read over and over, and I enjoyed both The Sea Wolf and The Terror. I'm eighth on my library's waiting list for The Wager. I can bait a hook, tie a few knots and I don't get seasick. Other than that, I've never really felt the lure of seafaring per se.

But I do like museum exhibits with practical items, and that was enough to get me to the Musée National de la Marine, just across the Seine in the 8th Arrondissement. It's jam-packed, not just with all the oars, anchors, sextants, cannonballs, cutlasses, and life preservers you would expect, but with extremely detailed scale-models of French commercial vessels and warships from Louis XIV's era to the present day, and massive carved figureheads and prow sculptures from the golden age of sail.

For some reason, Sugar's private submarine is stored way over in the 19th Arr.

But I had more fun in the temporary exhibition on seafaring films, Objectif mer: l'océan filmé. On display were items from the origins of film, including magic lanterns and original Lumière era cameras and projectors, as well as equipment, props, costumes and reproduction sets from maritime movies up through the current era. The walls were festooned with full-size, vintage movie posters in French (what must have been a billboard for Walt Disney's production of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea took up an entire wall) and while film clips were projected on just about every open space.

I especially appreciated that no distinction was made between "important" films such as Louis Malle's and Jacques Cousteau's documentary Le Monde du Silence (1956), Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) or literary adaptations such as Jack London's The Sea Wolf (1941) and basic entertainments like Titanic. I'm sure I'll never watch The Meg, but the clip they were projecting above a bust of Jaws' Bruce the shark helped drive home the exhibit's theme of how depictions of the sea reflect a whole range of aspirations and anxieties--but most often seem to be just another form of temporary escape.

The poster for Les Drames du Pôle (1913) gave me a terrible premonition of our upcoming trip to Lapland.

Bruce the Shark reproduces his iconic pose for the Jaws (1975) poster ("Les Dents de la Mer").

 
Costumes for Jack Sparrow (Pirates des Caraïbes, 2003) and Steve Zissou (La Vie Aquatique, 2004).

The ghost of Esther Williams apparently haunts one of her swimsuits.

If you've never seen the grindhouse/early cable-TV standby Humanoids From the Deep (1980), now you don't have to.

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