Le marin qui abandonna la mer

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.

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.

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.

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!