User Reviews

The Snow Goose

Often the first name that comes to mind when one thinks of mushy greeting cards, Hallmark is a veteran producer of classic films. For instance, look for a release this year of Homer Hickam's (author of October Sky/Rocket Boys) Sky of Stone.

I was not even born when this film version of Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose first appeared on the BBC in 1971, and it is only through my Uncle's affiliation with the Post Office that I was able to secure a copy of this film much later (British television comes under the supervision of the General Post Office).

This is an award-winning made-for-TV movie that affected me like no other, a black and white film set in the dismal east-coast marshes of Essex in the late 1930s.

There are only two characters, really: a misshapen, scraggly, dark-haired man who had taken up residence in an abandoned lighthouse from whence even the sea had retreated, and a smudgy-faced waif from the nearby Saxon oyster-fishing hamlet of Wickaeldroth.

In what I consider to be his best film role ever--though I am sure a younger generation will forever remember him as Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films--a very young Richard Harris takes on the personality of Gallico's dark hero Philip Rhayader, assisted by a young Jenny Agutter as Frith.

We learn that Mr. Rhayader, a painter, has come to this desolate lighthouse to escape pity and the uncomfortable reactions that his physical deformities seem to engender. At 27 years of age, he buys the lighthouse and the land around it to be his haven from commerce with others, and creates a small artist's studio and a sanctuary for wounded fowl.

One day, he detects a small form approaching on the sea wall. His visitor is a young girl from the nearby village, and as she draws near, he sees that she carries a bird which has been shot by the fowlers in a nearby marsh.

I said earlier that there are only two characters of any import in this story, but there is indeed a third if we count the wayward Canadian snow goose who has miraculously survived a terrible storm. Blown nearly three thousand miles off her migratory course, upon her weary approach to the marshes, she is greeted by a shot from a hunter's gun.

Rhayader tells the apprehensive girl, Frith, that this bird comes all the way from Canada, so he calls the snow goose La Princesse Perdue, the lost princess. Frith begins to visit the recovering bird regularly, but once it has healed and flies off in response to its migratory instinct, her visits cease. It is then with even greater loneliness and sadness that Rhayader awaits the fall, which signals the return of the snow goose and his curious female visitor. Meanwhile, he recedes again into his sequestered life, only seeing the world twice a month when he deftly sails his boat to the village of Chelmbury for supplies.

Seasons pass and Frith grows to be a young woman, La Princesse Perdue returns every fall, and war continues to scar the face of Europe. One day, the government calls upon every able-bodied man on the east coast of England who owns a tug, a fishing boat or a power-launch, to sail to Dunkirk and save an army of British soldiers who are trapped on the beach, awaiting destruction at the hands of the advancing German army. When Frith comes to visit, she finds Rhayader in his boat, ready to sail across the channel to do what he can to help, a gleam in his eye at the challenge that awaits him. It is at this point that Frith becomes aware of the feelings that have grown in her heart for this man, and she offers to go with him.

To say more would indeed spoil this film, or should I say the story. Unfortunately, even though Paul Gallico wrote the screenplay for this classic, he stipulated in his will that the movie should never again be screened, so sure was he that the message he wished to convey was to be found in the 53 pages of his novelette of the same name. Few films created in the century since the dawn of the moving-picture medium deserve a perfect ten. This is one of them.

Reviewer's Note: This film is based upon the actual event known as `Operation Dynamo'. June 2, 2004, marks the 64rd anniversary of the evacuation at Dunkirk, wherein 338,000 stranded men were shuttled to safety by a flotilla of rag-tag vessels that would have been an embarrassment to McHale's Navy.