Watch The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea For Free

Undescribable Perfection

Absolutely the worst movie.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

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.

Another rarity from the library,that again,I've never heard of. So naturally I just had to see it. I'll warn those who haven't seen it,to not be taken in too much by the beautiful scenery shown at the beginning. Which makes it seem like this will be a real '70s touching love story with a happy ending. Now,Kris Kristofferson will more than likely never get a lifetime achievement award from the Academy,or for that matter even a best supporting Oscar. Here in "The Sailor.." (which should have been enough of a title)he's actually effective. He's not loud and abrasive here,like he was in "A Star Is Born" or "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore". His performance,while not overly spectacular is actually very evenly paced and quite thoughtful and even poetic. I've never heard of the other players in the film but Kris's love interest is quite a bold actress for the scenes of nudity she's given. As for her love scenes with Kristofferson,if the two characters weren't portraying being in love,I'd think less of them being pictured here. Personally,I find them in this context to be quite romantic.The boy peeping in on his mother and then the couple,is just a young boy satisfying his newborn curiosity. I'm certain the producers weren't going for an "Edipous and his mother" plot. Speaking of the boy,I wondered,"how can he let himself be friends with such a rotten kid"? How also could he and the others let themselves be bossed around,hit and abused by this kid,who needs at least 20 years of psycho-therapy? It's almost impossible to imagine what could screw a young kid like that up so badly that he hates basically everything and is practically a pint-sized Hitler?I have to say I was truly disappointed that the boy and his buddies didn't come to their senses and ditch him or take him on all at once or one at a time! Instead they blindly follow his lead to where they end up offing Kristofferson. What an incredible downer! I'm glad they didn't show a scene with the mother realizing her chance at new happiness had been taken away,that would have been too much to take.Seven stars for the love story,the innocence of the boy before he goes bad,the scenery and even Kristofferson's acting. 3 off for the morbidness that I feel had no place alongside the romantic storyline. Even if it was taken from the book. (END)

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.