You won't be disappointed!

Too much of everything

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The acting in this movie is really good.

It's 1901 and Simon MacCorkindale is a young British gentleman taking a sailing holiday alone off the Frisian Islands, near Germany's northern coast. He stumbles into a situation that arouses vague suspicions that something is up, and he sends for his college friend, Michael York, to visit him and bunk on his sailboat. To be brief about the whole thing, the two men uncover a plot by Kaiser Wilhelm to launch an invasion of England's defenseless east coast, using 100,000 German troops covered by the entire German fleet. The two Oxford men spoil it all after many suspenseful incidents.It's obviously not an expensive movie but it's not bad. A great deal of attention seems to have gone into period detail. The boats we see look like the boats we'd expect to see in 1901. This was pre-fiberglass and pre-epoxy. Every boat looks made of heavy wood that's become soggy with time and weighs a ton, including the dinghy. It must have been work to row one of those monsters.The filming was evidently done not in the Frisian Islands but off the coast of Holland, which is too bad. I wanted to get a look at the Frisian Islands. The Frisian language is well-known to linguists as being as close as it's possible to get to ordinary English. One sentence is practically identical in both languages, something to do with bread and cheese. The location shooting is impressive and evocative. The sea recedes and leaves vast areas of mud flats. Why anyone would vacation there is as much of a mystery as why the Kaiser would want to invade England in 1901. The espionage story is fantastic, resembling John Buchan. Nice shots of boats at sea though.The acting is of professional caliber for the most part, although the English actors playing Germans aren't too convincing. Jenny Agutter is wasted in a small part. I kept hoping that instead of the weather's being cold and damp all the time it would suddenly turn sunny and blazing hot so that she could take a dip but my wistful wish was, as usual, unrealized.But -- what's the matter with the film? It didn't quite click. Maybe it's partly my fault. The four or five German agents are all bundled up in big black overcoats and bowlers and I was confused at time about who was who, and why it was important to follow one of them and not another. Wolf Kahler was always recognizable but a bit young for Kaiser Willie.The narration, by York, sounds stilted to modern ears, over-correct in its grammar and too formal in its description of relationships and events that are decidedly informal in their nature. The direction doesn't help much. The mano a mano fights are clumsy. And there is a scene in which Michael York trails a couple of Germans into a complicated old barn with straw on the floor, a crooked staircase, and a loft above. York darts around from one hiding place to another in the background while the camera focuses on the German agents -- in the same shot, like kids playing hide and seek. All I could think of was the windmill scene in Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent." The scene I found most impressive? Michael York arrives at the station, in response to MacCorkindale's invitation. The two old friends stand staring at each other, using ritual forms of greeting. They don't embrace. They don't shake hands. York is impeccably dressed; MacCorkindale is in sloppy boating kit. Once aboard the sailboat, nothing has changed. The conversation is scant. The host doesn't offer the guest a drink or anything, and when York asks if it's possible to get anything to eat -- since he's been on the train for twelve hours at his host's request -- MacCorkindale answers nervously but eagerly that he thinks he has some cold tongue. The entire scene lasts about five minutes and is an almost perfect embodiment of the concept of "awkwardness." Two old friends who hardly know each other.

Coming 3 years after the even more insipid 'Logan's Run', Micheal York and Jenny Agutter are paired-up again in more conservative dress, but this time they're in the past instead of the future.Under wicked Kaiser Wilhelm, the Germans are plotting a covert sea-borne invasion of Britain. An English holiday-maker accidentally stumbles upon their scheme whilst sailing.It's a very slowly evolving drama, played almost as shallowly as the waters they navigate. Fay Mr York may be handsome in an artist's model sort of way but never passes for an action man. His effeminate voice certainly doesn't help. Jenny Agutter does her usual pose of fresh-faced innocence with which she was invariably been typecast. I met her a few months ago in Camberwell, and apart from a few eye-lines hasn't changed all that much.Unlike most of the genre, ie; spying, sabotage, etc; the pace is largely unhurried, with none of the untimely shocks or bloody murders one usually associates with the genre. The relaxed and rather light-hearted way in which the story unfolds seems to hark back to a more civilised time. The whole production is reminiscent of 'The Railway Children', as though primarily aimed at kids. It's not just as if the plot is set in the early part of the 20th century, but is being narrated from the same perspective. That's cleverly done (if it was intended) but even for 1979 vintage the style requires a little getting used to. It's constantly on the edge of becoming boring - which is what sailing is like if you're used to powerboats. Though it usually manages to right itself before complete capsize.Photography is sympathetically worked, giving an excellent sense of obscurity. And combined with the reflective music score together they lend the movie a 'water-colour' feel.Compared to modern productions with their frenetic cut-and-cut-again editing, confrontational in-you-face drama, and flair for the overstatement, the movie really does seem like a postcard from the past. But that's not to say it isn't engaging and a pleasure to see.If it's on the telly (typically Saturday afternoon) and I've nothing else to do then I can't help watching it. Though I'm never quite satisfied with it at the end. It seems to lack something, but I don't know quite what. Maybe I've just watched too many 'action' movies.

Erskine Childers tale of a an attempt to invade England was made into a movie in 1979. Its just come out as a region 2 DVD and I'm in heaven. The plot concerns a British sailor on holiday off the coast of Germany hunting duck and charting the sands that are forever shifting around the small islands there. Stumbling upon something that doesn't feel right he calls a friend from the Foreign Office to come and join him. Soon the pair are off on a grand adventure, the likes of which they don't make any more (nothing blows up and their are no car chases). Very much an old school adventure film, this was painfully dated the instant it came out as Star Wars, Smokey and the Bandit and Alien ruled the roost. No matter I love this film. It has the feel of the works of Robert Lewis Stevenson or any of the great adventure writers that NC Wyeth illustrated. Slow and deliberately paced it never lets you get bored, since revelations and bits of action happen at just the right time. I love that much is made of skills that don't involve shooting things. Finely crafted and perfect for a rainy Sunday afternoon, this is one of my favorite movies.

The Riddle of the Sands seems to be symptomatic of the British film industry of the 1970's and 1980's. A small cast of characters in an enclosed setting (despite being set mostly at sea, the claustrophobia is palpable)dealing with big problems in a small way. Other films of the time like The First Great Train Robbery and A Nightingale Sung in Barkley Square are similarly set-up.However, the actors all give realistic performances and Simon MacCorkindale serves the film well as a man not entirely comfortable with words or with himself. His scene with Jenny Agutter making breakfast is a small delight of understatement and embarrassment.Agutter herself, one of the delights of British Cinema of the time (Equus, Walkabout), is both pretty and believable as always. Her gentle attempt at a German accent is also acceptable.The story however fails to engross at times, being paced a little too leisurely and suffering from a lack of visual diversity. There are only so many shots of slow moving yachts and open seas that one can bear.Still, the lack of ambition ensures that the film has a feel of realism and there are no annoying matte lines or blue screen artifacts to dissuade us from the view that this is a real story.I did not like the film the first time I saw it, but I am sure that it will grow in the memory.