The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

1976 "He gave his soul to the sea and his heart to a woman. Their love will arouse you. The story will disturb you. The ending will startle you."
6.2| 1h45m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 11 April 1976 Released
Producted By: Haworth Productions
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
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When a widowed mother falls in love with an American sailor, her troubled young son is pressured by the bullying leader of his clique to seek revenge.

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Director

Lewis John Carlino

Production Companies

Haworth Productions

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The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea Audience Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews
Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
preppy-3 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.
paul_johnr Compared to other projects like 'The Great Santini' and 'The Mechanic,' this 1976 drama was a bold endeavor for writer-director Lewis John Carlino. 'The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea' is Carlino's adaptation of a novella set in post-World War II Japan by Yukio Mishima, a prolific 20th century author who tried to revive the Bushido code of samurai honor and committed ritual suicide in 1970. Mishima was a grand literary force, considered several times for the Nobel Prize and was lauded as the 'Japanese Hemingway' by Life Magazine. Indeed, it says a great deal about his writings that Carlino was able to transport the novella's ideas to a modern English setting.'Sailor' focuses on Anne Osborne, a lonely widow and antiques dealer played by Sarah Miles. The middle-aged woman lives with her sea-loving, teenaged son Jonathan (Jonathan Kahn) in an English coastal town. Well into the rebellious phase of life, Jonathan finds himself without an adult male influence and backs a schoolmate known only as Chief (Earl Rhodes), who runs a secret club with four other boys as his underlings. This club is not the usual fun-and-games of children, however; Chief is the precocious son of a town surgeon and looks to teach the four members his nihilistic points of view (morality, for instance, is just rules that adults invented to control the world). So dedicated is the boy to his values that he even autopsies the family cat to prove an idea about existence.Providing Jonathan with another outlet is Jim Cameron (Kris Kristofferson), an American sailor who arrives into port and has a change meeting with Anne. The two fall in love almost immediately and Jonathan discovers a man who fits Chief's description of 'a heart of steel' - a man who travels the Earth and overcomes great odds. However, Jonathan feels betrayal as the love affair between Anne and Jim thickens; his hero decides to stay in England and remain tied to the soil. It's only Jonathan and his friends who can restore Jim's 'grace' with the sea from which he came, leading to one of the most outrageous conclusions in film history.As a person who has seen numerous films and read quite a few novels, 'The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea' was a very strange experience. The film doesn't fit any one particular genre, nor does it really generate one clear emotion. The love story between Anne and Jim functions as an obvious work of erotica, while the dark portrayal of adolescence reminds me of writers like Aldous Huxley and Patrick McCabe. The story's meaning is intentionally unclear, although it seems to imply that each person is given a specific destiny and that the feelings of children, by necessity, are of equal value to those of adults. There is also a certain sexual philosophy judging passion as the destroyer of good things, in this case the strong bond between Jonathan and his mother.One of Sailor's technical strongpoints is its broad, languid pacing that has a feel similar to waves of the sea. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe offers breathtaking images of ocean, sunrise, and house interiors that compare with still-life paintings. Adding to the rich visuals is a lean, chilly score by Johnny Mandel (with themes by Kristofferson) that captures the film's underlying ideas. The entire cast is superb, especially the children headed by Jonathan Kahn (who had a brief screen career). Sarah Miles conveys a wide range of emotion and has a physical elegance that is ideal for her role. Kristofferson was an excellent choice for the Jim Cameron figure, a rugged, brooding individual whose tales of sea life feel authentic. Of vital importance is the chemistry between Miles and Kristofferson, which must be strong for the film to work. Unlike inferior films that produce a cardboard love affair, Anne and Jim's rapport is solid and nothing less than convincing.Anyone who is put off by graphic sexuality or cruelty to animals will best avoid this film. Miles and Kristofferson are involved in two explicit sex scenes, with Kahn watching through a peephole to sate his teenaged curiosity. Miles is also viewed masturbating at her dressing table, but all of this material was filmed with great sensitivity. The cat 'experiment' is highly unpleasant, although not exceptionally graphic, and Chief blasts apart an overhead seagull by tossing a firework stuffed inside pieces of bread. The end credits mention that no real animals were harmed in the film, a rare disclaimer in the 1970s.'Sailor' deserves good DVD treatment for its photography alone, if not for its fine acting. Image Entertainment has come through with a 2003 disc that presents the film with respect, undoing years of mistreatment by TV broadcasts and full-frame VHS tapes. The film is presented in widescreen with immaculate visuals and Dolby enhancement of the original mono track. Unfortunately, there are no extras, with chapter stops offered as the lone feature. Another minus is its auto-play of the film when loaded into a DVD machine, which is inconvenient if you need a few moments to settle in. But for admirers of this film, IE's new disc restores the vibrant imagery seen in cinemas thirty years ago. Moving, shocking, and at times repugnant, 'Sailor' is one of the most bizarre film experiences you will ever have.*** out of 4Roving Reviewer - www.geocities.com/paul_johnr
Rathko 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.
J B The film can be faulted for at least appearing to give too much to the mother/sailor side of the conflict, an appealingly sexy but eventually unconvincing romantic fantasy. The boy Chief is the other distracting trap for the viewer - he's the embryo of a crypto-scientific nerd who has less in common with Nietzsche than with a certain type of sclerotic, egotistical academic you'll find slowly going berserk at a second rate college.Importantly, the Chief doesn't quite "get it" about his underrated disciple Jonathan and the Sailor. Jonathan is, or should be, the focus of the film because he is a more interestingly conflicted, assertive, and intellectually cogent character than any of the others - he is the Mishima surrogate, who tries to reconcile and meld the Chief's perfectionism with the sailor's fictional attraction. That requires canceling out the unacceptably artless "return" of the sailor, which is the "fall from grace." Restoring aesthetic grace to the Sailor is the shocking concluding project. Keep your mind's eye on Jonathan - even while heeding the siren calls of competing sex and death.The casting is very good. Miles has the dreamy look and self-deluding spunk of a romance novel heroine. Kristofferson always plays "himself" and in this film his noble antique head, wooden cowboy self-assurance, and gravel-voiced platitudes work perfectly to attract susceptible but discerning Jonathan in the first go around and disgust him in the second. The young actor Jonathan was a real find - able to play the submissive but also a live spark when called upon - his is the subtlest but most important role in the film.