Going for a Riddle

Don’t be put off reading the original book after seeing a film adaptation of it. 

I have recently had first hand experience of such a thing although in my case such was the disappointment in the movie that it took me 30 years to summon up enough of a motivation to turn the pages of what was actually a very good characterisation and story. 

I saw this particular film in about 1980 just a year after its UK release. 

It promised a lot with its theatre trailer and the lead actors included Michael York, Simon MacCorkindale and Jenny Agutter. At the time the £1 million pound budget will have been quite modest but understandable given that the book was written and set in the first years of the 20^th Century and the action, on small boats and around the Friesian and Schleswig Hosltein coastline did not require any special effects or technically advanced stage sets and had a relatively small cast. 

The 99 minute long  movie is broadly faithful to the book of the same name, “The Riddle of the Sands” by the enigmatic Erskine Childers, his one and only venture into writing and was heralded at the time of its publication in 1903 as the forerunner of the espionage/suspense/thriller  and an inspiration to later and prolific specialists in the genre. 

Childers was certainly a very interesting person with civil and military service and even a period of running arms and ammunition in the Irish Civil War which eventually accounted for his execution by firing squad for treason in 1922. 

He used his experiences as a very proficient yachtsman as the source for the book although in an era of increasingly strained relations between the British and German Empires it was also seen as a bit of a controversial wake up call to the Government and Navy about vulnerability to attack or invasion of the Eastern coast of England under the aggressive militarisation by the Kaiser. 

In true amateurish and underdog style the two yachtsmen pursue some unusual and sinister activities along a bleak low lying coastline showing great navigational skills to master shifting tides and sand bars and outwitting the German Navy, its paid thugs and a mysterious wealthy businessman who is exposed as a former British Naval Officer but working for the other side. 

The descriptive prose of being under sail and mastering the elements is amongst the best I have read and certainly up to the works of Hammond Innes and later writers but cannot be fully conveyed into the visual media of a movie. 

The well spoken characters played by York and MacCorkindale are former Oxford University friends but having subsequently pursued two very different paths in the unchallenging foreign office and as a happy go lucky adventurer respectively. Their re-acquaintance under some duress makes for an interesting theme and with Agutter providing a bit of love interest although this is made more of on the big screen than in the pages of the book. 

I could not put the book down having been totally engrossed in the narrative and would recommend it for a holiday read. 

The film for its simplicity but did not make a big splash either in receipts (it was the last one of last films to be financed by The Rank Organisation) or by the critics. However, the book continues to attract readers and there is even a podcast series covering all aspects of the plot under the title of Riddle of the Sands Adventurers Club.

The New York Times called the film a "slow but affable period piece and the L.A Times said it "has the quaint, old fashioned sound of a Hardy Boys mystery about it but plays like a slightly more lethal boys' adventure story."

Just make up your own mind but don't take as much time as I did.