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.
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.