My All-Time Favourites - Pt 1 - Swallows And Amazons

Over the course of this blog I will attempt to look at the films that I consider to be my all time favourites. Some of them may not be great films, but they will all have at one time endeared themselves to me in such a way they still give me that same warm feeling inside as they did when I first saw them. Some films pale after a time - some to a degree that you wonder what you ever saw in them in the first place. But some stay with you, having built themselves a home in my consciousness and occasionally have been life changing events.


For the first it seems quite apt to go back to one of the first to grab me in such a way - Claude Watham's 1974version of the perennial Arthur Ransome classic children's story Swallow And Amazons. A simple tale of a family holiday in The Lake District in 1929. The Walker family arrive in the Lakes and the four Walker children set off to camp on the island on the lake on their boet, The Swallow. There, they meet the Blackett girls, whose boat is The Amazon and they have fun creating their own adventures. And that's all there is really. Except, of course, there is so much more underlying the simplicity of the story. As with the books, the most endearing aspect of the books, and in such the film, is that the adventures they have are created by themselves. No spies to rounded up, no hidden treasure (well, nearly none), no being tied up in cellars by surly bearded men etc. In essence it is the kind of childhood adventures that we all got involved in - the ones that were limited only by our own imagination. The Lake then becomes the Wide Open Sea, and charted accordingly, with every bay, inlet, stream being accorded an exotic name - Shark Bay, the Amazon river, Rio. One of the greatest achievements in the film is how the landscape is shown as it appears in the children's imagination. While certain shots do show the relative close proximity of the island to their holiday home, when they are abroad in their world, we see it as a deserted island set in a silvery sea of vast scope. The moutainous landscape on the horizon only adds to this feeling of solitude, a world where adults are far, far away. And as viewers, we identify with this feeling of freedom, because we all surely at one point in our childhood, revelled in those moments where there are no adults present and we are left to our own devices.


The locations are a big help to the film, and they not only filmed in the Lake District, but Wildcat Island is actually Peel Island, the origianl inspiration for Wildcat Island, thus adding a 'realism' usually missing from book to film translations. There before your very eyes is the landing bay, the campsite and the secret harbour, exactly how Ransome, and thus his characters, saw them.
When, in the film, they land in 'Rio', they land in Bowness, another true representation with the added bonus of seeing Bowness as it was in the 70s, albeit done up to look like the 20s. Not long after, this pleasant location was morphed into the tourist trap monstrosity that is today.
While it isn't hard to film the Lake District in its best light, to film it from a child's viewpoint isn't that easy but Whatham does it making it a microcosm for juvenile explorers and while the action takes place in what is probably a few square miles the impression of a limitless wilderness is thoroughly well realised.

It would be too easy to frown at the amateurish acting on view from the child actors, and indeed some performances are particularly stilted, but on the whole they manage between them to carry the film. Virginai McKenna as Mrs Walker is on her usual good form and Ronald Fraser, while not perhaps the Captain Flint of the books, involves himself admirably. Both the adult leads are to be commended for playing along with the ethos of a kids film and play it gentle and understated.
Kit Seymour as Nancy seems ill at ease throughout much of the film. This, however, is not how I remember from my first viewing when I was about 11 and going through the first flushes of puberty. Nancy was one of my first crushes and no doubt helped my enjoyment of the film no end. While the crush has obviously gone the way of all adolescent crushes, the character of Nancy still retains my affection and as I read through the books, it was Ms Seymour that I pictured as the domesticated feral tomboy captain of the Amazon. God knows where she is now, but the ghost of my awkward teenage years salutes her.

I have tried to get my children to watch SAA, to no effect though, alas. It seems that stories of children having fun messing about in boats just don't cut the mustard with today's children. The BBC announced a while back that they were going to make a new film of the book, and possibly the others also. I cautiously welcome the idea, but only if they remain true to the spirit of the book/original film. What this story indulges itself in more than anything is the innocence of our childhood years, and if any remake were even to hint that the kids were more hip, more street, then the whole magic disappears instantly.

Not long after my first viewing of SAA I made the first on many, many trips to the Lakes. I was instantly as captivated as the Walker children. Each time I arrive in the Lakes I am back in the land of Swallows and Amazons and I have never made a trip there without thinking of this film. For a beautifully filmed adventure of childhood innocence and exploration, for me, this has no equal (although fans of The Railway Children may argue that point. But there's no sailing in that!)