The Little Ark

While "zapping" through the channels on just another rainy autumn day I came across this film.

And I immediately liked the story, it goes about the big flood in 1953 which struck a big part of The Netherlands. And for me, as a Dutchmen, this off course was a reason to keep watching.

It's pretty good, with off course some small downsides to it, for starters, the Dutch actors have an pretty bad accent while trying to speak English, and on the other hand, the American actors have some trouble with pronouncing the Dutch names. Overall it's an OK youth film, with some "historical value" because it deals with such an disaster.

a 7 out of 10

"The Little Ark" is what passed for a "kids' movie" back in the 1970s. Back then, filmmakers often assumed that kids were stupid, no matter what age they were. So when they made a "kids' movie," it was usually a condescending film that "talked down" to the kids who were watching it.

In the movie, Jan and Adinda are a boy and a girl who live in a modern-day village in Amsterdam. They have been adopted by the local parish priest. The kids are supposed to be Dutch, but they both speak English with American accents. Adinda is Asian, but at least they have the courtesy to explain this to the audience by having her talk about growing up in Java, where her parents were "deaded" by government soldiers.

A huge storm strikes the Amsterdam coast. The local dikes break and the town is flooded out. The two children survive by taking refuge inside a church steeple, along with a pet dog, a cat, a rabbit, and a rooster. When an abandoned houseboat floats by the church, the kids transfer the animals to the boat and set off on an adventure (hence the "ark" of the title).

The film makers treat the flooding of the Amsterdam coast as a casual event. The two kids don't seem to be the least bit traumatized by the destruction of their town. Occasionally, they come across the dead bodies of flood victims, and while they are momentarily shocked, they quickly forget about what they have seen. When Adinda sees the body of the priest's wife, their adopted mother, floating by, she is horrified. But they never liked her anyway, since she wouldn't let them keep their pet dog.

Then a fishing vessel finds the houseboat, and the children are rescued by its commander, a sea captain (Theodore Bikel). And it's here that the children show themselves to be "dumb movie kids," of the kind that you only find in bad movies, as opposed to the smart kids that you find in real life.

Jan, who is 11 years old, initially thinks the Sea Captain is a "Pirate." A real 11-year old boy would be smart enough to know the difference, and would be glad to be rescued. But because Jan is a "dumb movie kid," he genuinely believes he's been captured by a pirate! When they are taken on board the fishing vessel, he refers to the Sea Captain as a "pirate" over and over again ("Bad ol' pirate!" "Mean ol' pirate!"), until you want to shout at him, "He's NOT a pirate, you incredible nincompoop!"

The Sea Captain (whose name we never learn) sails around the Amsterdam coast, rescuing people from flooded houses. What's interesting is (1) all of the flooded houses look the same, as if they could only afford one "flooded house" set for this movie; and (2) the Sea Captain's fishing vessel seems to be the only rescue boat on the water. We occasionally see an airplane or a helicopter flying over, but there's no "massive response" of rescue boats, as there would be in a real-life coastal flood.

Occasionally, the fishing vessel picks up other flood survivors, who disappear and reappear on the boat decks between scenes, with the regularity of movie extras. We never get to know any of these refugees, and none of them seem to be traumatized by the fact that they have lost their homes and everything they own in the flood. The one important scene they have comes when the Sea Captain leads a Sunday morning service on the ship deck, and the refugees all cheerfully sing a hymn!

Jan and Adinda have more adventures. The Sea Captain drops them off in Amsterdam City, and the children are taken on board a hospital ship. The radio man tries to get them to undress and go to bed. The children refuse to obey him, but they don't mention the most obvious reason why this is a bad idea. It's still daylight outside! You can see it through the boat windows!

The animals in this movie behave like "trained movie animals," not like real animals. The dog faithfully follows the children everywhere. Whenever they have to go somewhere, the cat obediently jumps into a basket that Adinda carries around with her, and the cat never attacks the rabbit. Even the rooster behaves illogically, at one point crowing loudly in the evening, to give away the children's hiding place.

Eventually, the Sea Captain takes the children back to their village. And wouldn't you know it! They find their adoptive father, the parish priest, whom they've been searching for all this time, playing the organ in the same church where they took refuge from the flood! The entire trip was unnecessary! Jan and Adinda would have been better off if they had just stayed in the church, and waited for him to find them!

"The Little Ark" is an obscure movie. Many people are looking for it, because its song, "Come Follow, Follow Me," got an Oscar nomination. Unfortunately the song is the best thing in the movie. Overall, it's a long and dull film, with a story and characters that have been severely "dumbed down" for kids in the audience. In real life, kids are smart, and they deserve better movies than this.

The last time I saw this was when it was originally released and I was seven years old. I remember it being a great movie for that age, but it's a film that still haunts me.

For some reason, the scene when the kids see the floating body of their foster mom (or grandma?), formed a permanent, haunting impression on my young mind. OOoh..dead body!

And I remember hard-to-understand accents...but it's one of those old movies I'd LOVE to see again, if not for nostalgia's sake. Most movies that I loved from my young (Willie Wonka, The Love Bug..) I now own copies of on DVD, but this one eludes me. And it's the only one that I haven't seen SINCE it's original release.

I saw this movie when it was released in 1972 and I was 6 years old. It was forever burned into my memory, and when I finally found the book upon which it was based, I was thrilled to rediscover one of those haunting memories of childhood.

The book itself brings back dim glimpses of the movie; until I see the movie again, it will still be a dream. But the memories it left are uplifting, happy and magical. A must-see for kids of all ages.