Review by mossgrymk

I chose this particular Bruce Brown surfing doc to watch and review although I could just have easily gone with "Dangerous When Wet", "Surf Crazy" or the most famous of them, "Endless Summer", because they are all basically the same movie; elegies, odes, tone poems, love letters or whatever you want to call them to this most sublime of sports. And like all of them it celebrates a world of eternal lightness. Even when the weather is foggy or chilly, once you get in the water it's all good. Yes, there are shark sightings and wipeouts but they somehow do not feel ominous or fatal. None of the many surfers shown are frowning or angry or brooding except in a cartoonish/comic way. And Brown's breezy, cheeky, but still informative on the nuances of wave riding, Socal voice becomes seductive after a few minutes and you find yourself sucked in like, well, a surfer in a curl. Maybe it helps to have grown up near the beach, like I did, but I suspect that even 1960s residents of Wichita or Lausanne were at least somewhat charmed. Give it a B.

PS...Speaking of Lausanne, it's interesting that the most visually striking part of this film concerns not surfing, but skiing.

PSS...Note to RNMorton above...Saw it on TCM.