He introduced millions to his undersea world and now he has proved the inspiration for a critically-acclaimed film. Nick Morrison looks at the legacy of Jacques Cousteau.

THE overalls and red woollen hats are there; the boat is fitted with the same features; even its name is a thinly-disguised reference. There is no doubting the inspiration for the Bill Murray-starring The Life Aquatic.

But director Wes Anderson was forced to include a disclaimer on his latest movie, to make it clear the foundation created by the man who brought undersea exploration into millions of homes had nothing to do with his fictional Steve Zissou, despite the clear parallels.

"I love Jacques Cousteau. I'll always love Jacques Cousteau and I love his whole persona and I love his films," says Anderson, also responsible for Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums.

"I wanted to dedicate the movie to Cousteau, but ultimately, legally, we had to make this disclaimer, because it says 'This movie is dedicated to Jacques Cousteau and the Cousteau Society, which was not involved with the production'. The emphasis, for them, was the latter part of it; for me, it was the dedication."

The film sees Murray portray Steve Zissou, a washed-up oceanographer and filmmaker who feels his life and work slipping away from him. Alternately imperious and insecure, he heads a crew of misfits and oddballs, including his wife, Eleanor, played by Anjelica Houston.

Zissou insists his crew wear overalls and woollen hats, as did Cousteau, and his boat, The Belafonte, is equipped with an edit suite and an underwater observation suite, as was Cousteau's Calypso. Zissou's boat was clearly named to invoke the Calypso: Harry Belafonte was known for his calypso songs.

But if Zissou is on something of a downward curve, the real-life inspiration was one of the towering figures of 20th century exploration, and, at the height of his fame, one of the most recognisable men in the world. For not only had Cousteau seen more of the oceans than almost anyone else, he also brought them into the living rooms of millions of people.

Through the televison series, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, the wiry Frenchman became a household name, his distinctive narration illuminating pictures of a previously unseen world. Starting in 1968, it ran for seven years, Cousteau taking the Calypso, a converted former Royal Navy minesweeper, to every corner of the globe.

Coupled with his books, including the 20-volume The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau and the 26-volume Planet Ocean, he did more than anyone to explain the mysteries of the deep to an incredulous and fascinated world.

His film career is littered with firsts: the first underwater television equipment; the first live undersea broadcast; the first full-length underwater film, The Silent World, which won both the Oscar for best foreign film and the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

But Cousteau, who died in 1997, was more than just a film-maker: he was an underwater explorer and pioneer without peer, and later a leading environmentalist and campaigner.

One of his most famous exploits was unearthing the hull of a Greek freighter from the third century BC, buried deep in mud off Marseilles, and the Calypso also conducted the first offshore oil survey by divers, discovering a major oil field in the Persian Gulf.

His were the first experiments in underwater living, the Houses Under the Sea programme seeing two men live ten metres below the surface for a week in Conshelf I, off the coast of Marseilles, in 1962. This was followed by Conshelf II, when five "oceanauts" lived for a month ten metres down in the Red Sea, and Conshelf III, 100 metres below the surface, when six oceanauts lived together for three weeks. The experiments showed humans could live under the sea for long periods, but that we are not made to exist in a world without sun.

But perhaps Cousteau's most significant achievement was the invention of the aqualung. Previously, divers had to wear heavy suits, breathing air which was pumped manually from a ship on the surface, or had to risk early re-breathing equipment, which converted carbon dioxide to oxygen, but could prove dangerous.

Cousteau took an idea developed by engineer Emile Gagnan, who invented a device to feed cooking gas in short bursts to a car carburettor during the Second World War, when petrol was in short supply. Cousteau modified the apparatus and incorporated it into his new diving suit, and in June 1942, on a small beach on the French Riviera, took to the water with his Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

Scuba liberated divers, giving them the freedom to move underwater and away from their ships and their constricting oxygen lines, and was put to use almost immediately, clearing mines from harbours.

Cousteau also invented single-person submersibles, the Sea Fleas, capable of diving to 500 metres, the first two-seat diving saucer, the Denise, and cameras capable of filming in the sunless depths of the oceans.

He was awarded the Legion d'honneur, spoke out on environmental concerns at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and received 80,000 letters asking him to run for President of France in 1981, but after his death, of a heart attack at the age of 87, it seemed he was not the saint of the oceans he had sometimes appeared.

Allegations of anti-semitism emerged in letters received by his biographer, where Cousteau apparently complained that Jewish refugees were making it hard for him to find a home in Marseilles in 1941. Aspersions were also cast on his wartime record as a member of the French Resistance, with claims he collaborated with the Vichy regime, and he was also accused of faking scenes in his television documentaries.

His private life also came under scrutiny. After his first wife, Simone, died of cancer in 1990, it was revealed he had a mistress of 15 years, an air stewardess called Francine, with whom he had two children. He subsequently married Francine, laying the seeds for a bitter war between the two halves of his family after his death.

Today, the Cousteau Society lives on, with Francine at its head, while Jean-Michel, his eldest son from his first marriage, runs Ocean Futures, a environmental body dedicated to carrying on his father's work. Cousteau may have enlightened a generation, but he left behind a suitably murky personal legacy.

* Anjelica Houston: all at sea with Bill Murray - see tomorrow's Northern Echo.

* The Life Aquatic opens in cinemas today.