Customer Reviews

The Jacques Cousteau Odyssey - The Complete Series

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Just as David Attenborough sparked for many an interest in wildlife and natural history, Jacques Cousteau's many televised voyages inspired in others a love for the sea and for exploration in general. Cousteau is famed together with Emile Gagnan as the co-inventor of the aqualung (SCUBA). His four-decade long series of voyages encompassed the globe and brought to homebound audiences the wonders and joys of the undersea world. The story begins way back in 1950 when he converted a WW2 minesweeper into what became the most famous research vessel of our time, the Calypso. Calypso not only sailed all the world's oceans but made its way right into the heart of America, sailing up the St. Lawrence Seaway and exploring the Great Lakes in the early 1980s, traversing the Mississippi/Missouri river system in 1986 and embarked on one of the great pioneering surveys of the Amazon in the 1982-83 season. Calypso's long journey finally ended on the other side of the world when it sank off the island of Singapore in 1996. In its day, it was so famous that Country singer John Denver wrote a song in tribute to it. In 1997, barely a year after the sinking of Calypso, Cousteau himself died.

Cousteau received numerous awards throughout his lifetime, including the Croix de Guerre during WW2. He was also made Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) for his work in the French Resistance. He was eventually elevated to the level of Commander of the Legion of Honour for his later services to science. He was one of the few foreigners inducted into America's National Academy of Science. In 1985, he was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. And in 1989 he was finally inducted into the prestigious Académie Française, France's highest recognition for lifetime contribution to the nation.

Cousteau's filmed voyages were originally meant for cinematic release and both "The Silent World" (1956) and "World Without Sun" (1964) won Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature. The Silent World also won the prestigious Palm d'Or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. It was only later that Cousteau took to shooting for television. He made over 120 films in all. Warner has chosen one of his later TV series, "Cousteau's Odyssey" consisting of 12 episodes filmed between 1977 and 1981 for this initial release. This is where it belongs in the chronological list of Cousteau's TV series:

1966-68 The World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau
1968-76 The Undersea World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau
1977-77 Oasis in Space
1977-81 Cousteau's Odyssey Series
1982-84 Cousteau's Amazon Series
1985-91 Cousteau's Rediscovery of the World I
1992-94 Cousteau's Rediscovery of the World II

Cousteau's Odyssey was made for PBS and focuses on conservation and environmental destruction, unlike his more famous earlier series which focused mainly on the flora and fauna of the deep.

Warner's Cousteau's Odyssey comprise all 12 episodes filmed between 1977 and 1981. They are presented in broadcast order not in the order of filming.

1. The Nile, Parts 1 & 2 (On the communties and countries bordering the Nile)
2. Calypso's Search for Atlantis, Parts 1 & 2 (On whether the ancient Minoan civilisation on Crete could be the model for Atlantis)
3. Time Bomb at 50 Fathoms (On the attempt to salvage drums of toxic material from a sunken ship)
4. Mediterranean: Cradle Or Coffin? (On the slow dying of the Mediterranean Sea)
5. Calypso's Search for the Britannic (On the search for the sistership of the Titanic, sunk during WW1)
6. Diving for Roman Plunder (On the search for an ancient Roman ship carrying Greek Treasure)
7. Blind Prophets of Easter Island (Trying to uncover the mysteries of Easter Island)
8. Clipperton: The Island Time Forgot (Retracing the history of people shipwrecked on a lonely pacific island)
9. Lost Relics of the Sea (Searching for sunken ships in the Caribbean and Mediterranean)
10. The Warm Blooded Sea: Mammals of the Deep (The only episode dealing primarily with wildlife)

Spread over a generous 6 discs, it amounts to 2 hour-long episodes per disc. Each disc comes in it's own standard Amray keepcase with everything packed into a single cardboard box. All the episodes are transferred in their original TV aspect of 1.33:1 fullscreen, not widescreen as stated by Amazon. Sound is a basic 2.0 mono.

Unfortunately, Warner has done very little if any restoration on the films. The prints are serviceable. Colors are strong and well saturated. Black levels are strong and deep giving a richness to the image. However, the films are splattered with dirt specks, streaks and film nicks. There is heavy grain throughout. Some footage look decidedly worse off than others. For a videophile the picture quality would be unacceptable. For someone more interested in the documentary, it's passable. It's a shame that documentaries, no matter how good, are not given the same meticulous treatment as Hollywood movies or even sitcoms. Still I'm happy to finally get a chance to see Cousteau and crew on DVD and to relive the voyages once again.

I agree with all the other reviews. As a fan of Cousteau's stuff from way back, I was thrilled to get the set, and disappointed by the complete lack of restoration. Sound is good, but the colors are badly red-shifted on several of the episodes.

Hard to say how much of this is Warner's lackluster effort, versus the endless legal mess which has engulfed the Cousteau Society since Cousteau's death (not to mention the nasty lawsuit against Jean-Micheal when his father was alive). This is also why we may never see the Silent World and the other early classics on DVD. Reminds me of the problems associated with Charlie Chaplin's estate.

Nonetheless, I got them because, as I look into the WayBack Machine, I can see that the Cousteau films (most notably The Undersea World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau) were what inspired a young kid to get SCUBA certified and eventually get a degree in Oceanography. So yes, film is a powerful medium, but shame on those responsible for not giving us restored, or at least, better, prints.

OH MY GOD! WHAT IS GOING ON? Who in Hell do these studios think they are, playing these games with the DVD releases of classic television? I swear it's time for a government investigation of a conspiracy to defraud the American consumer. What they're doing is selling us the same product multiple times, under the guise of giving us improved versions each time, when all along they have the resources to do it right the first time. It's not a new story. First they sold us LPs, then 8-tracks, then cassettes, then CDs, then digitally remastered CDs, then CDs with bonus tracks & expanded liner notes, then enhanced CDs with video playable on computers, and so on. And yes, we get what we deserve when we go to them, rushing up eager to get pushed around, as Rod Serling said, but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Okay. Specifics: Get your VHS and the new DVD of "Calypso's Search For Atlantis" ready to compare. Roughly half an hour into part 1, there's a sequence wherein the crew is shown readying their new breathing apparatus. In the original broadcast (the VHS version), the men are shown sampling the air before lowering the device. One calls it "mountain air", another judges it "antique". It's a great moment, humorous and memorable. Now watch the DVD. THE SCENE ISN'T THERE. IT WAS CUT OUT. IT APPEARED IN THE VHS VERSION, FOR GOD'S SAKE, BUT WAS EDITIED FROM THIS DVD RELEASE! Check the running time of the VHS version: 58 minutes. Now look at the running time on the DVD edit: 51 MINUTES!!!!! It's the same story on the rest of the DVDs, the episodes having been cut in some cases down to a mere 48 minutes!! WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY? The answer, in all likelihood, is that Warner Bros, those geniuses who cropped the top & bottom of the full screen Kung Fu in order to create some half-baked letterbox format of a tightly composed visual masterwork created for full screens, are planning to re-release the Cousteau Odyssey series in a remastered, complete & uncut form in order to bleed even more money from You & Me. As Col. Kurtz. said, "I hate them, I do hate them, those nabobs". They are guilty of Grotesque Stupidity and Heinous Evil. I condemn them. It's boycott time, WB.

Five Stars for content from documentary BUT One Star for:
1. package is too bulky and needs to be slimed-down in a slim case packaging
2. picture quality and colors are terrible! I thought I was watching something from an old VHS tape rental. They could at least re-mastered it.

As others have mentioned, the picture-quality of this series on DVD is very poor. This is because it was originally shot in 16mm, using average-quality film-stock and a hand-held camera. The result is like looking at someone's poor-quality color home-movies from years ago. This gets worse when the DVDs are viewed up-converted on a modern hi-def TV, where the dismal quality becomes glaringly obvious (we are badly spoiled by state-of-the-art video-quality from recent nature-documentaries such as the stupendous "Blue Planet"). To make it worse, the editing is rather slap-dash, and the pacing often slow and boring. The result is something more dated and nostalgic, rather than informative.

Also, the run-time of the episodes has been cut down from the originals, which means that these are the versions which were edited down to fit in an hour of commercial television, and allow the time required for advertisements.

I have always loved Jacques Cousteau's television series. I became a scuba diver because of the fascination he instilled in me as a child. I bought this series of his programs from the 1970s eagerly. These remain some of the best underwater documentaries ever produced. I just wish they would have given them the time and money they deserve to restore them to their original quality. The video quality here is poor and I have to think they could have done much better. Check out the Jacques Cousteau: Pacific Explorations set for a very nicely restored series. Still, I have to recommend this set to anyone who remembers the original series. These are great to watch as a family.

Like many others, I too am greatly disappointed with the poor quality of the film to tape transfer that was used to create this DVD. I grew up with the these brilliant series and I wanted to introduce them to my kids. I wish I had read the customer reviews before purchasing them however. Unlike many DVD's of this kind where the studios went back and retransferred the material from the original negative, these DVD's look like they were made from second or third generation prints. There has been absolutely no effort at restoration. As a result, while Cousteau has something unique and priceless to offer my kids, they have grown up watching pristine imagery of the undersea world and the poor picture quality here is a real turn off for them, preventing them from fully appreciating what Cousteau has to say about the natural world. It's a real shame as I was very much looking forward to sharing this with them - if for no other reason than as an antidote to the kind of thing shown on Discovery and Animal Planet that makes kids think the sea is full of dangerous sharks and other menacing beasts. This DVD set is a real insult to Cousteau's legacy. He deserves better than this cheap attempt to market his wonderful films with little or not interest in quality control.

Blue Planet is great. Planet earth with its military developed helicoper gyro cam and rock steady pictures from a mile away, is great. This series is somewhat grainy 16mm. Perhaps your measure of worth is high definition. Not me. The colors are fine. The locations are ancient and beautiful. The music (Elmer Bernstein at his best) is enchanting. The narration (with an American accent but thoughtful and flowing like poetry) is a relief. I look back at this series with Cousteau and company with their philosophical world view, smiles and joy in life very fondly. Seeing it again on DVD (I own the series) and I feel like I am exploring on board the Calypso. The view of the changing world from the damming of the Nile to rising sea levels was part of an arising awareness of the uncertainty of nature and the effect of industry that we forgot too much in the following decades of increasing wealth (will we be like Minoan Crete in 500 years?). If you need this to be more like Jaws the movie and get bored with things like view of a Greek Island then this series is not for you.

First off, Those who wrote reviews expecting to see HD or LCD quality in these videos, gimme a break please!! These are just how I remember watching them on TV every weekend when I was a kid. Juaques Cousteau is and will forever be the king of the oceans and seas. I loved watching these videos, took me back in time. I did NOT expect to see fully remastered picture quality....There's no such advertisement nor do they mislead anyone into thinking otherwise. So if you're a pampered baby and must have HD quality without whining then don't buy these videos, but if you can overlook that and have a lust for marine biology and oceanography then these are for you.

Long before the effects of CGI animation comes this set. An honest look at sea exploration comes this effort. To be sure, some imaging is grainy coming from the available film stock. Some lighting is certainly not optimal. Some actions transcends current thinking and dealing with similar circumstances. But the subjec matter!!! The episode dealing with the "The Search For The Britannic" is telling. The human interaction with dealing with a survivor of this tragedy is both poignant and emotional. One really feels for this nurse, a crew member of that time who survived the sinking, of her feelings and triumphs of life afterwards! Her practicality, fullness of life, and humor is charming. Mr Cousteau's response to her is both wonderful and engaging. The exploration of the sunken ship, circumspective of the time reveals tidbits of information which best describe this mystery of time to most people of our age and is timeless. This documentary is not to be cast aside! Perhaps a good study for an optional high school studies course! If not, be sure to get this into your collection to pass on to your children and grandchildren! A true piece of human history and not to be missed!