The Day of the Dolphin
| The Day of the Dolphin | |
|---|---|
 Promotional film poster by Robert McGinnis | |
| Directed by | Mike Nichols |
| Written by | Buck Henry Robert Merle (novel) |
| Produced by | Robert E. Relyea Joseph E. Levine |
| Starring | George C. Scott Trish Van Devere Paul Sorvino |
| Cinematography | William A. Fraker |
| Edited by | Sam O'Steen |
| Music by | Georges Delerue |
| Distributed by | Avco Embassy Pictures |
Release date |  December 19, 1973 |
Running time | 104 min. |
| Country | US |
| Language | English |
The Day of the Dolphin is a 1973 science fiction-thriller film directed by Mike Nichols and starring George C. Scott. Loosely based on the 1967 novel, Un animal doué de raison (A Sentient Animal), by French writer Robert Merle, the screenplay was written by Buck Henry.
Plot
A brilliant and driven scientist, Jake Terrell, and his young and beautiful wife, Maggie, train dolphins to communicate with humans. This is done by teaching the dolphins to speak English in dolphin-like voices. Two of his dolphins, Alpha ("Fa") and Beta ("Bea") are stolen by officials of the shadowy Franklin Foundation headed by Harold DeMilo (Fritz Weaver) the supportive backer of the Terrells' research. After the dolphins are kidnapped, an investigation by an undercover government agent for hire, Curtis Mahoney (Paul Sorvino) reveals that the Institute is planning to further train the dolphins to carry out a political assassination using a limpet mine against the yacht of the President of the United States.
Cast
- George C. Scott as Dr. Jake Terrell
- Trish Van Devere as Maggie Terrell
- Paul Sorvino as Curtis Mahoney
- Fritz Weaver as Harold DeMilo
- Jon Korkes as David
- Edward Herrmann as Mike
- John David Carson as Larry
Production and reception
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The film received mixed reviews when released in 1973. Pauline Kael, the film critic for The New Yorker suggested that if the best subject that Nichols and Henry could think of was talking dolphins, then they should quit making movies altogether. The film was not successful commercially, though it was nominated for two Academy Awards, for Best Original Score (Georges Delerue) and Best Sound (Richard Portman and Larry Jost). The film has gone on to a minor cult status as manifested by its never having gone out of print.
The film was originally going to be directed by Roman Polanski; however, while Polanski was in London, England, looking for filming locations in August 1969, his pregnant wife, the actress Sharon Tate, was murdered in their Beverly Hills home. Polanski returned to the United States and abandoned the project.
Differences from the novel and other sources of inspiration
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Merle's novel, a satire of the Cold War, is supposedly the basis for this film, but the film's plot was substantially different from that of the novel. The movie is instead inspired in part from the scientist John C. Lilly's life. A physician, biophysicist, neuroscientist, and inventor, Lilly specialized in the study of consciousness. In 1959, he founded the Communications Research Institute at St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and served as its director until 1968. There he worked with dolphins exploring dolphin intelligence and human-dolphin communication.
Cultural references
- On June 25, 2007, Stephen Colbert recommended his The Colbert Report viewers rent this film after making an allusion to it that received little reaction from the studio audience. [1]
- A reference to the film appears in the episode "Six Feet Under the Sea" on the television series Psych.
See also
- Military dolphin, as to contemporary military uses of trained dolphins.
