Help! - Fans of really, REALLY obscure movies.

[Aristus]

I saw this film just once when I was a kid, nearly thirty years ago, and have never forgotten it. It took place in current times, probably the early seventies, in Holland, and concerned two orphaned kids, an Asian girl and a European boy. They were cared for by a Catholic priest. The sea-dikes overflowed and a massive catastrophic flood occurred. The kids' guardian is killed, and they are left alone to search for help and be rescued from the flooded area. They are befriended by a grizzled old sea captain. He tells them a strange story of a girl who visited an undersea wreck, fell asleep there and became a mermaid. (I know it sounds weird, but the story he told was depicted in an animated sequence that I remember clearly.) The kids are finally taken in by a colleague of their original benefactor.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Can you help me with the title?

[DisgustipatedinCA]

1. Well, I tried

I've never seen the movie you refer to, but I did type the following in Google:

movie mermaid holland catholic dike

I got lots of porn links. Sorry.

[Aristus]

2. Porn?

Well, what did you expect? Mermaid, Holland, dike. You were asking for it. ;-) Thanks for trying, though.

[Bozola]

3. It believe it was called "The Little Ark".

It was about the Watersnoodramp of 1953.

[Aristus]

4. Hmm. The title sounds familiar.

Any idea when it was released? Where it was filmed? It was in color and in English. That much I remember.

[Kellanved]

5. Netherlands 1972

http://entertainment.msn.com/movies/movie.aspx?m=140459

[Bozola]

8. Ah! It's a James B. Clark film - 1972

That's James B. Clark as in "My Side of the Mountain" fame.

Starring Theodore Bikel.

http://www.eonline.com/Facts/Movies/0,60,46729,00.html

[Aristus]

6. BOZOLA!!! WE HAVE A WINNER!!!

That was it! I google searched it and got the info, including synopsis. Thank you. Another childhood mystery solved. Wow. The things you can find out by asking DU-ers! Thanks again!


:yourock:

[Aristus]

7. Danke schon, Kellenved.

(Sorry. Can't make an umlaut with my keyboard.) Bozola beat you to it by just nine minutes. Thanks so much for helping, though. :thumbsup:

[Bozola]

9. Funny coincidence...when I first saw it, I was in Wiesbaden

...so when you first described it, I thought it was a Dutch film dubbed into German.

[Aristus]

10. I want to see it again just for that animated sequence.

It was so lyrical and haunting. It's stayed with me for thirty years. I'd be terribly disappointed if it was not as good as my childhood memory. Few things endure the test of maturity upon memory. I remember it being in English simply because I saw it when I was about six years old, and would not have been able to understand it otherwise.

[Kellanved]

11. gern geschehen

However I only used Bozola's hint to look it up. I think I saw the movie, but it's really foggy.


Hold down "alt" and enter "148". That should produce a 'ö'.

[Aristus]

12. I tried that, Kellenved.

All I got was the Hewlett/Packard Desktop Tour. Oh well. Thanks anyway.