A classic

Since I kept hearing some really good things about this flick, I was really eager to check it out. In fact, the first time I heard about it was more than 30 years ago. Indeed, back then, one of my best friends and his two older brothers who were really into this kind of sports were really hyped by this movie. Well, I’m surprised it took me so long to finally watch the damned thing but, at least, it was really worth it. Eventually, what made this movie worked so well was the fact that it was a movie about surfing, made by surfers, for the surfers. Well, the first striking thing was the fact it was shot without any recorded sound. Indeed, instead, they had some rather annoying soundtrack and some non-stop comments from Bruce Brown, the director of this movie. Even though this narration might seem silly sometimes, or even discriminating when they get to Africa, when the guy talks about the technicality of surfing, especially for someone like me who has never been on a surfer board, it was actually quite fascinating. I have to admit that I was expecting them to go to many more exotic locations like South America or Asia but, after all, they spent most of their time only in Africa and Australia. I was also rather bewildered by the fact that, in Hawaï, there were some pretty great waves and the weather was constantly fine through the whole year so what’s the point of going anywhere else? On the other hand, you could argue that the point was in fact to discover some unknown surfing spots, some places where nobody had surfed before, and to discover the world in the process which was something rather uncommon back in the 60’s. Indeed, another impressive thing about this movie was how old it actually is. While watching these guys doing some amazing tricks on their surf, you might think it was shot 20 or 30 years ago but, in fact, it was made a whopping 60 years ago. Anyway, to conclude, even it wasn’t really flawless, it was still a really interesting watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in this subject.