"Le Grand Bleu" redirects here. For the yacht, see Le Grand Bleu (yacht). For the Suwon Samsung Bluewings supporters group, see Grand Bleu.
This article is about the film. For other uses, see Big Blue (disambiguation).
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The Big Blue Le Grand Bleu
Theatrical poster
Directed by
Luc Besson
Screenplay by
Luc Besson
Robert Garland
Marilyn Goldin
Jacques Mayol
Marc Perrier
Story by
Luc Besson
Produced by
Patrice Ledoux
Starring
Rosanna Arquette
Jean-Marc Barr
Jean Reno
Paul Shenar
Sergio Castellitto
Marc Duret
Griffin Dunne
Cinematography
Carlo Varini
Edited by
Olivier Mauffroy
Music by
Éric Serra
(Original)
Bill Conti
(US version)
Production company
Gaumont
Distributed by
Gaumont (France) Weintraub Entertainment Group Columbia Pictures (United States) Filmauro (Italy)[1]
Release dates
11 May 1988 (1988-05-11) (France)
19 August 1988 (1988-08-19) (United States)
Running time
168 minutes
Countries
France United States Italy
Languages
English Italian French
Budget
FRF 80 million[2] (est. US$13.5 million)
Box office
9.2 million admissions (France)[3] $3.6 million (USA)[4]
The Big Blue (released in some countries under the French title Le Grand Bleu) is a 1988 drama film in the French Cinéma du look visual style, made by French director Luc Besson. It is a heavily fictionalized and dramatized story of the friendship and sporting rivalry between two leading contemporary champion free divers in the 20th century: Jacques Mayol (played by Jean-Marc Barr) and Enzo Maiorca (renamed "Enzo Molinari" and played by Jean Reno), and Mayol's fictionalized relationship with his girlfriend Johana Baker (played by Rosanna Arquette).
The film became one of France's most commercially successful films (although an adaptation for US release was a commercial failure in that country). French President Jacques Chirac referred to the film in describing Mayol, after his death in 2001, as an enduring symbol for the "Big Blue" generation.[5]
The story was heavily adapted for cinema. In real life, Mayol lived from 1927 to 2001 and Maiorca retired from diving to politics in the 1980s. Both set no-limits-category deep diving records below 100 metres, and Mayol was indeed involved in scientific research into human aquatic potential, but neither reached 400 feet (120 metres) as portrayed in the film, and they were not direct competitors. Mayol himself was a screenwriter for the film,[6] and Mayol's search for love, family, "wholeness" and the meaning of life and death, and the conflict and tension between his yearning for the deep and his relationship with his girlfriend are also major elements of the latter part of the film.
^"The Big Blue (1987)". UniFrance. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
^"Box office / business for The Big Blue (1988)". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
^"Element of control". Screen International. 23 May 1997. p. 27.
^"The Big Blue". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
^"BBC News - EUROPE - Diving legend commits suicide". BBC News. 24 December 2001. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
^"The Big Blue (1988) Full Cast & Crew". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
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