COUSTEAU WAS THE BOULEVARDIER OF THE OCEANS:

In 2004, Wes Anderson released The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, a film that tanked at the box office despite an all-star cast and lavish budget. One reason the film may have failed to find its audience is that this send-up of Cousteau, played by the dyspeptic, thin-skinned, money-grubbing Bill Murray, seemed so unlike the beloved Cousteau we thought we knew. As it turns out, the film portrayed Cousteau more honestly than Cousteau did himself.

The ownership of Calypso was not the only secret the diver maintained in life. He also kept a secret family and married his much younger mistress upon Melchior’s death in 1990. As his philandering has come to the surface, the dysfunction exhibited between the two sides of the family has divided the Cousteau legacy and kept Calypso rotting in dry dock after it was sunk and salvaged in the port of Singapore in 1996. A 2016 French biopic called L’odyssée took even more air out of Cousteau’s reputation, focusing on the troubled relationship he maintained with his sons — leading up to the death in 1979 of Philippe Cousteau, who died while piloting the Calypso II, the PBY Catalina flying boat that featured in the opening credits of the television series.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was the boulevardier of the oceans. He explored the seas as a post-Napoleonic savant. He told its story as a latter-day Jules Verne. He was not, as it turns out, a saint in life. But nor should he be seen as a sinner in death. Cast aside our Anglo morality, our enviro-puritanism, and the Cousteau who bubbles up is, simply put, French.

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