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The movie is indeed an adaptation of a novel by Yukio Mishima. Just to clarify, the novel is not an obscure work. Mishima is amongst Japan's most famous writers and was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times. Also, the plot of the original Japanese story does not happen in a remote fishing village; it happens in Yokohama, which is one of Japan's largest cities. Lastly, it does not happen in feudal Japan, a fact that would be very evident had someone read the book.

Now that that's been said, I've watched the movie since I very much enjoyed the novel. While I agree with most comments concerning the movie itself, I actually very much enjoyed the ending. Not only would have supplying an ending would have been taking too much liberty, but also it allows the viewer to imagine what would happen. Furthermore, to challenge another commenter, this sort of ending does work in movies and was a common motif of films during this era. Some other notable movies with endings similar to this include Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" and "Parallax View."

The script and direction meld into a strong movie. With charm and humor to spare, this film was among the top echelon of movies from 1976. The characters in this film have a lot of depth, and that makes all the difference. In the end, the audience gets a casserole of film elements and little of the satisfaction that comes from watching these types of movies. I guess if I was in a bad mood, this movie wouldn't be half as good, but I thought it to be enjoyable and would recommend it. This is a story about a place most people might not be able to conceive. It is a powerful film. Many scenes do not feel believable, but good performances help to enhance this story.

This movie is morbid but is quite faithful to the original story. And it uses its Dover location very effectively in showing a place isolated in its own mythology.

The story is about a fatherless adolescent boy who is himself very much like the sea. He is restless and calm and seemingly untameable. All the confusion and frustrations of adolescence are portrayed here in an honesty that no other movie has ever dared to show. The restless urge to be a grown up and to move on to a life of daring excitement, and the desire to find a philosophy and a poetry to which one can ascribe are all explored in an uncompromising way in this film.

Desperate for an authority and leadership that he can look up to, the boy finds himself vying for the acceptance of a sadistic boy with a Nietzsche complex who uses a strain of hierarchy in his little band of friends in order to maintain control. Soon Kristofferson shows up and as he seems to be the stuff of oceanic legends, the boy finds a new hero to worship.

I would not even attempt to give the ending away. Suffice it to say that this is a most disturbing film in its subject matter and for those with short attention spans, it may seem slow in its pace. But like the sea, the film is languid in its pacing and it promises the same degree of poetry and savagery.

Fascinating viewing!

It's a compelling, morbid film most of the time - but what's up with the ending? It builds up (competently and suspensefully) to a situation that can easily be guessed right from the beginning, and then....it just stops, as if being afraid of going "too far". Perhaps the novel ends the same way, but in this movie it doesn't work - it renders the whole film pointless. The hyped-up erotic scenes are brief and too darkly photographed, but the performances are right on target. (**1/2)

A spooky 'erotic' romantic thriller, with undertones and imagery of both THE INNOCENTS and LORD OF THE FLIES and even RYANS DAUGHTER this film had a bit of a notorious reputation in the late 70s because of the peephole sex scenes and the all too graphic mutilation of the family cat. Plenty of seniors went stampeding from the cinemas gasping especially after the cat got the chop, hissing and howling. The sight of Sarah Miles masturbating gave a us all a kooky preview to WHITE MISCHIEF made ten years later. There has been plenty of criticism about the translation of this Japanese novel into the foggy coast of Dover, but really it does not matter because the almost MOONSPINNERS-like spooky seaside look adds to what is genuinely an usual and compelling romantic drama with deeply strange and uneasy subplot about the wrath of destructive misguided young boys. Kris Kristofferson was every woman's preferred seaman in the 70s! Then Babs snared him in her horrible remake of A STAR IS BORN. SAILOR was a big hit in its day and deserves another look. It is eerie and romantic and quite dangerous. You almost expect Sarah Miles to narrate (all REBECCA-like) "last night I dreamed I went to masturbate...." I saw it on a double with CABARET. Those were the days!

Story based on a classic Japanese novel but relocated to the UK for the movie. Widow Anne Osborne (Sarah Miles) lives in a beautiful ocean side town with teenage son Jonathan (Jonathan Kahn). One day a handsome young sailor (Kris Kristofferson) shows up and Anne falls in love. This causes issues with Jonathan and his band of sociopathic friends.

It's well-directed with beautiful settings, a good script and good acting (especially by Miles) but it has issues. It's way too slowly-paced. It gets dull very quick and no amount of pretty scenery and good acting can liven it up. When you have nude love making and masturbation scenes and it's still dull something is seriously wrong. VERY morbid ending too. Worth a look but the slow pace makes it a chore to watch at times.

This is a British drama from 1976 about a shy and lonely widow Anne (Sarah Miles) raising up her 13-year-old son in a small English seaside city. When she meets the American sailor Jim (Kris Kristofferson), she falls in love with him and wants to marry him. Her son, being a member of a fascist secret circle led by the charismatic pupil "Chief", doesn't agree with that liaison and uses his radical friends against his possible stepfather...

The German title of this brilliant movie was called "Der Weg allen Fleisches" which means as much as "The way of all flesh". This is a suitable title as love, loneliness, seduction, longings and sex are integral elements of the story.

The director uses surreal scenes to support the emotional side of the movie. There is a beautifully shot sex scenes between Anne and Jim, and an outstanding masturbation scene of Anne in front of a mirror, secretly watched by her son. There are strange dream sequences, spiritual moods of the sea and a cruel scene where the gang's leader rips off a dead cat to present his totalitarian theories to his worshippers by its testicles.

Sarah Miles ("Blow-up", "Venom"), Kris Kristofferson ("Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid", "Convoy") and also the children actors are doing a fine job here. The touching score was written by Johnny Mandel, and Kris Kristofferson added his chilling "Sea Dream Theme". This film is more than just a love drama but an outstanding and forgotten tale about love, sex and death at the seaside with great locations and a very strange ending. Watch it if you get the occasion to do so!

Although it has a handful of powerful and disturbing moments, the reality is that for most of its runtime my general reaction to this movie was a sense of wonder that anyone would bother to put out a movie that was so dreadfully boring. There are basically two aspects to the story: first is the lonely widowed mother Anne (played by Sarah Miles) who meets and falls in love with a sailor named Jim who's just arrived in port (Kris Kristofferson), and second is the widow's troubled son Jonathon (Jonathon Osborne) and his reaction to his mother's growing relationship with Jim.

Most of what power there is in the movie comes from the story of Jonathon. The boy has a definite Oedipus complex, regularly spying on his naked mother as she engages in various types of sex play (with Jim and with herself) and he's fallen in with a bad group of kids who've formed a secret society of some type under the leadership of an even more disturbed boy who has a fixation with mutilating animals. There's nothing particularly likable about the boys. They're disturbed - perhaps even evil. The leader of the group (Earl Rhodes) plots to make sure that Jonathon will turn against Jim (perhaps he was afraid that a relationship between the two would lessen his own influence over Jonathon) and succeeds in enlisting Jonathon as part of a horrendous plot to deal with the situation. The story of the relationship between Anne and Jim was less interesting to me. It seemed to come out of nowhere and perhaps for that reason didn't strike me as believable.

There's some humour in the movie (especially the tea room scene!) but overall this is a very dark and twisted story. For the most part I found it uninteresting and unpleasant, although it does lead up to quite a climax in the end. There's a fair amount of nudity involving Sarah Miles, and a few sex scenes (although nothing explicit.) My own opinion, though, was that overall - in spite of a few good scenes - this was dreadfully dull. (3/10)

I really enjoyed this movie back when it came out in 1976. It never showed up at the major theaters though. I saw it in one of the Dollar theaters. How it got away with an R rating back then I will never know. I had seen x-rated movies that had showed less. And the love scenes were a spread in Playboy. My girlfriend said is was because it had a plot. I do remember she was in a state of shock when we left. She was an 18 year old Southern Bapist Sunday School teacher at the time. Kris Kristofferson was never highly rated as an Actor but I think he did an excellent job in this movie. The child actors were completely believable. It was written by a Japanese gentleman and I am amazed at how well some examples of Japanese literature and movies translate to the US. The Magificent Seven ( AKA the Seven Samarai) and " A fistful of Dollars".

If you can find it on DVD I would highly recommend it.

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".

Sarah Miles deserved far, far better than this film. Her performance is head and shoulders above any others in the movie, and this becomes evident 15 minutes into it. Her performance is the only reason I can give this film a rating higher than one star. Kris Kristofferson plays her love interest, in a performance that redefines the words laconic and listless.

Possible Spoilers: Miles plays a lonely widow whose husband who died after a long illness, with a troubled, sullen teen son (naturally). She meets Kris Kristofferson, playing a sailor with no sense that he is one, and instantly drops all of her British reserve to fall in lust with an American stranger who is completely passive and has absolutely no personality. Sarah Miles literally carries every scene between her and Kristofferson on her own shoulders; it's like watching a champion dancer dance with a mannequin, except that you can at least prop up and pose a mannequin. For some bizarre reason, Kristofferson, who underplays every role he has, decided to underplay this performance even more, as if that would give him some sort of quiet American strength. Instead, it gives him a quiet lethargy that puts the energy right through the floor. I have to wonder if Miles actually said to Kristofferson at some point during rehearsals: "Kris, you are going to give me more energy than that during the take, aren't you?" If the director actually said to Kristofferson "less energy, be more subtle", that was the Wrong direction for Kristofferson. It's like saying to Robin Williams "Robin! Be more manic, and much higher energy!" Naturally, the woman's son resents the hell out of Kristofferson, and like most movie children of single mothers, is under the influence of the worst element he can find, a hateful little psychopath that likes blowing seagulls' heads off with firecrackers, mutilating cats, etc, without adults around them ever noticing. Without a strong father figure around, the movie argues, male children will immediately fall into gangs or worse.

The end of the movie is out of a Stephen King novel, and does not fit in with the rest of the story at all. There seems to be no moral or statement to the film that I could find. In fact, it seems to go out of its way to avoid one. If you had to find a "moral" in it, it would seem to be, stay in the Navy and never retire, or you will deserve to be cut into tiny pieces in short order, as your just punishment. Why? I have no idea. I guess the sea is a jealous mistress. Like, Fatal Attraction jealous.

Which is especially odd, as there are No Sea Metaphors or allusions to the sea in this film!

(This IS adapted from a Japanese story by a famous but rather disturbed author, who committed suicide as a protest against modern society, but even in terms of the Samuri tradition, the film makes no coherent statement; even one that we could disagree with.) The film left me with a feeling that I had been subjected to three levels of abuse: one, a slow-moving (and I mean, Slow-Moving) morality tale with no moral at the end, two, Kris Kristofferson's energy-sucking performance that seemed to suck the vitality out of me as I watched it, and lastly, the abuse of Sarah Miles, who gave an Oscar-worthy performance in a film that was not worthy of her, and gave her no energy to work with; which means her work was twice-heroic. If she was not in this film, no-one would remember it on any level; and out of respect for her, no-one should.

A lonely British widow living in a seaside town strikes up a romance with an American sailor, much to the disapproval of her son. The pacing of the film is rather lethargic, as there is more emphasis on atmosphere and characters than plot. Unfortunately, the characters are not very interesting. The film also loses points for an unpleasant and unnecessary scene where a cat is dissected. Miles is alluring as the sexually frustrated widow and mother of a troubled, teen-aged son. Kristofferson is the studly sailor of the title. The film is probably better known for a steamy Playboy pictorial featuring the two stars that effectively ended Kristofferson's marriage to Rita Coolidge.

This movie belongs to the features showing children from the evil side, as Jack Clayton did with his INNOCENTS, disturbing, bizarre, and certainly not destined to young audiences; to make it clearer, a film speaking of a child and for adults only. But unlike THE INNOCENTS, this film is not a horror movie, only some kind of unidentified filmed object, hard to put in a category. It's worth watching though, not uninteresting, because showing things rather unusual on screen, miles away from the Hollywood style. But disturbing, yes. Don't miss the sea gull scene, children's cruelty.

Distasteful British film from a Japanese novel about a very troubled young man who comes under the influence of a Hitler-like classmate and plots to harm his widowed mother's lover. A couple of good scenes (Sarah Miles discovering her son has been peeping at her and confronts him in anger, the pasty-faced lad trying to ensnare Kris Kristofferson to his demise by being extra friendly), but what's the point beyond provoking shock? Ugly and uneasy, it doesn't showcase anyone involved to any advantage (especially Kristofferson, whose hollow stares and usual gravelly talk is out-of-place in a psychological mishmash like this one). Coldly without any sense of its own absurdity, director Lewis John Carlino seems to believe a circumstance like this could actually happen. If he's right, that's far more shocking than anything in "Sailor". * from ****

An unforgettable and profoundly disturbing story centered on a widow, Anne, and her only son, Jonathan, in a remote English seaside town. Jonathan belongs to a gang led by a precociously intelligent sociopath known only as Chief, who through sheer force of will and intellect, indoctrinates them with a quasi-Neitzchean philosophy of ultimate superiority and the non-existence of morality. When Kris Kristofferson's Captain Jim arrives in town, and strikes up a passionate relationship with the lonely Anne, Jonathan sees him as a heroic masculine prototype, removed from society and living a 'true' life on the open sea. But when the Captain decides to settle down and marry Anne, Jonathan takes it as an ultimate and unforgivable betrayal, and exacts a terrible revenge.

Based on the 1963 Mishima novel, "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea" hints at many themes, from Jonathan's Oedipal obsession with spying on his mother's bedroom to his physical admiration of the Captain that verges on latent homosexuality. The atmosphere, masterfully created by veteran cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, is one of darkly brooding clouds, gray seas, and an air that constantly threatens rain. The (in)famous sex scenes are really not that explicit, and the casual violence exhibited by the children is far more shocking than any glimpse of breast or buttock.

The film, for all its brilliantly evocative atmosphere, excellent performances, and quietly brooding menace, is not without its flaws. The score is terrible, all mawkish piano and sickly clarinet. It is often overly intrusive and distracts from the overall sense of ripe stillness that director Carlino conjures throughout the film. But in general, the film is a remarkable experience, and one that any viewer is unlikely to forget quickly.

Sarah Miles is the only notable component to this movie. It is only her presence that makes the movie worth watching. The nude love scenes were, no doubt, controversial back in 1976. The story, in general, doesn't make clear why these love scenes needed to be so explicit. Perhaps, to inject some visual energy into a movie which is, otherwise, kind of dull. I didn't mind watching Sarah with her clothes off, but I also enjoyed watching her when she was fully dressed. She looked nice, and her performance was better than the movie itself. One major liability was the unappealing, ineffectual actor who played Miles' son. There was too much focus on her son and his circle of weird friends. Kris Kristofferson is pretty generic in the role of the "sailor." Despite the so-called "passionate" love scenes, I sensed no chemistry between him and Sarah Miles. It boils down to personal taste, and this movie is not entirely to my taste. Again, I must praise Sarah Miles. Her performance was good. She looked good (with or without her clothes). If not for Sarah, the movie would have been a complete flop.