Description:
Obsession and fate collide in one of the most controversial and provocative films ever made. English widow Anne Osborne (Ryan's Daughter's Sarah Miles) lives by the sea with her young son, Jonathan. The arrival of a rugged American sailor, Jim (Blade's Kris Kristofferson), brings Anne the joy and sensual fulfillment she thought had gone forever, but her son is disturbed by this new intruder and joins a perverse group of fellow students led by the charismatic Chief. With its disturbing shock ending and frank love scenes, this stylish adaptation of the novel by legendary writer Yukio Mishima has become a timeless classic, with sty
Obsession and fate collide in one of the most controversial and provocative films ever made. English widow Anne Osborne (Ryan's Daughter's Sarah Miles) lives by the sea with her young son, Jonathan. The arrival of a rugged American sailor, Jim (Blade's Kris Kristofferson), brings Anne the joy and sensual fulfillment she thought had gone forever, but her son is disturbed by this new intruder and joins a perverse group of fellow students led by the charismatic Chief. With its disturbing shock ending and frank love scenes, this stylish adaptation of the novel by legendary writer Yukio Mishima has become a timeless classic, with stylish direction by Lewis John Carlino (The Great Santini), powerhouse performances, exquisite cinematography by the legendary Douglas Slocombe (Raiders of the Lost Ark), and a haunting score by Johnny Mandel (M*A*S*H). Beautiful, eerie, and erotic, this spellbinder has been restored from archival elements to its anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) glory.
Quite possibly better known for a notorious Playboy magazine spread than for its own cinematic merits, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea is one of the weirder artifacts of the wide-open American cinema of the 1970s. The Japanese setting of Yukio Mishima's novel is transplanted to the English seaside, where an adolescent boy has fallen in with a group of pint-sized fascists (they call each other by numbers, not names). The gang's idea of exploring "the center of reality" is vivisecting a cat, a ritual rendered in dreamlike, repellent detail. Meanwhile, the boy's mother (Sarah Miles) takes up with an ocean-wandering American seaman (Kris Kristofferson), their gauzy nude scenes providing voyeuristic titillation for the peeping son and audience alike (hence Playboy's interest). The combination of Lord of the Flies with the soft-core stuff makes a very awkward match, and the insistent touch of director Lewis John Carlino, who went on to make The Great Santini, does not help. Carlino's montage of shipboard pistons and pumps churning as the sailor arrives in town is a particularly unfortunate foreshadowing of the sexual gymnastics to come. Kristofferson, looking somewhat zonked as he often did in the '70s, is nevertheless effectively cast, and Miles, after Ryan's Daughter and Lady Caroline Lamb, practically had a patent on the sexed-up English (or Irish) rose in movies. Their efforts can't disguise the silliness of the execution. Still, those kids are truly scary. --Robert Horton
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Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
Release date: 27 January 2004
Number of discs: 1
EAN: 0014381195521 UPC: 014381195521
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