The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976)

Strong and Moving!

From my favorite movies..

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I was in my twenties when this first came out and thought it was a very emotional and sensuous movie. Playboy did a pictorial layout of the film and since I worked in a drugstore that sold it, I was able to sneak peeks while the manager wasn't watching. Perhaps I was too young to appreciate some of the plots and emotions. I did not understand the jealousy that could be provoked in young children by the introduction of a potential step-parent. I did not understand the emotional and physical needs of the widow. The ending produced a tremendous feeling of sadness which stayed with me. I recently saw it again. Disappointingly it has one of the most erotic scenes edited. The trick of showing time passing by having a picture boat glide across a picture ocean really seems corny. For a better Sarah Miles movie which holds up for its eroticism and story quality, I'd recommend "Ryan's Daughter".

A nice coincidence: I just started this novel, by Yukio Mishima, and this film, which I didn't even know existed, popped up on Netflix Instant. I finished the novel and started the movie about one minute later. First off, the novel: excellent. I think it really captures, in a horrifying way, what it was like to be a kid who thinks he's so much smarter than all the adults in his life. It's very insightful, tightly plotted (only 180 pages), and has brilliant but simple characterizations. The film: it's a fine adaptation. The location is transported from Yokohama, Japan to a small, coastal town in England south of London. Sarah Miles plays a young widow with a 13 year-old son (Jonathan Kahn). Kahn is a precocious boy who pals around with a gang of five other too-smart-for-their-age kids. They refer to each other by rank. The lead boy, known as the chief (Earl Rhodes), is a ferocious leader who believes human morality is a ridiculous concept. Basically, he has a very fascist philosophy and believes himself, and his five underlings (Kahn is #2 of the five), to be of a superior ilk than everyone around them. Kris Kristofferson plays the titular sailor who begins a romantic relationship with the very lonely Miles. While Kahn is excited at first to know this sailor (he is himself fascinated by the sea), when he realizes that he's intent on entering the family, he feels threatened. Kahn and his buddies then form a plot to get rid of Kristofferson. The major criticism that most seem to have of the film is that it doesn't explicate the children enough. I'm not sure that it's true. Perhaps I understand them better because I had just finished the novel (where there is a bit more of an explanation), but I think that people reading the novel may be just as perplexed by these kids' attitudes as they are when watching the movie. Perhaps a lot of people didn't have that philosophy when they were that age. More power to them, because it's very ugly, but I think it's very common. The one big complaint that I have with the film is a technical gripe: the sound is awful. I don't think it's just the video I watched, either. Much of the time, characters speak in an audible volume. But just as often they speak so softly that you can't hear them at all. Even after I turned off my air conditioner, I could just barely hear what was being said. The cinematography is very beautiful, as is the score (by Douglas Slocombe and Johnny Mandel respectively).

Anne Osborne (Sarah Miles) is a young widow living in a picturesque seaside village in England. Her troubled son has fallen in with a bad crowd; he belongs to a secret society run by a bully who has his own very definite ideas about the proper order of things. When Anne decides to marry a merchant sailor (Kris Kristofferson), her son takes the news quite badly and turns to his pals for help.This movie was quite controversial in 1976, and with it's graphic sexuality and shocking cruelty, it still is. Miles is well-cast as the needy widow but sometimes overdoes the cow-eyed trances and histrionics. Kristofferson looks the part of a rugged seaman and the two have great chemistry. The creepy boys' club provides some truly cringe-worthy moments as innocent young boys commit unspeakable acts, and this movie is not for the squeamish (especially animal-lovers).Lovely Devon locations contrast nicely with the increasing tension and overall feeling of doom. An interesting and haunting movie for adults.

This is a very chilling movie based on an even more chilling novel. It does seem to be a cross between "Oedipus Rex" and "Lord of the Flies" as some reviewers have astutely pointed out, but it is actually based on an obscure Japanese novella. The original story had a Japanes protagonist and was set in a Japanese fishing village. The filmmakers don't entirely succeed in transplanting the action to rural England and casting a Kris Kristoferson in the lead role, but an international film never could have gotten made at the time with a Japanese lead, and once they cast Kristoferson, setting the movie in a Japanese fishing village would have drawn the inevitable charges of racism from the perpetually outraged idiots in the "PC" crowd.Besides the awkwardness of the adaptation is redeemed by some great acting. This is probably Kristoferson's second best role after "Pat Garret and Billy the Kid". Sarah Miles is also very good as the lonely widow. Her sex scenes with Kristoferson are very erotic if very perverse (you see them only through a peephole as her disturbed son watches). The British child actors are also very good for a change, particularly the very disturbed but nevertheless sympathetic son and the truly psychopathic leader of the gang of schoolboys he runs with (who make the "Children of the Damned" look cute and cuddly by comparison). The scene where the gang eviscerates a live cat is almost unbearable to watch. And the final scene on a hill overlooking the sea is chilling, tragic, fatalistic, beautiful, and mythic all at once. This is and haunting and unforgettable movie.