The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

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!

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!

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."

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.

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.