Metrograph

Cousteau and his cohort set up in a state-of-the-art, saucer-like underwater base, and we get to live alongside these so-called oceanauts on the ocean floor, in what is perhaps the most playful and purely enchanting of the explorer-filmmaker’s works, winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The wit is the only thing that’s dry here, while the views from under the sea are nothing short of otherworldly.

Preseved by the Academy Film Archive.