The Big Blue

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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.