Rein Bloem himself typified On the Clear Sea Shore as a film essay in the form of a feature film. The film acquired the motto ‘Big birds, little birds’ (‘Uccellacci e uccellini’). Bloem: ‘One of Pasolini’s most masterful films. It is no wonder that Pasolini’s poetic starting points are used here and there in an individual way in the film essay. A classically-told story with an occasional wave of poetry in the sound, camera-work and cutting. (…) A 16-year-old girl is reading the poem My life in the collection Poetry by Herman Gorter in the royal palace on the island Scheria (Terschelling). Her mother thinks that is a strange thing to do. A storm is raging outside. (…) A tennis court has been marked out on the beach. A man is practising his serve into the surf. It is the immovable, idiosyncratic poet Herman Gorter. When he eventually climbs a dune, he is helped by a girl fond of teasing (Nausikaä). There is a tête-à-tête with overtures and rejection. Gorter walks furiously in pretty bad weather across the flats to a dinghy on the edge of the Wadden Sea. Nausikaä is a prophet of doom who predicts little good but he manages: he reaches the other shore at the foot of a lighthouse (Ameland). (…) Nausikaä draws a heart in the sand and rubs it out with a sweep of her foot before disappearing from sight to make way for the poem by Hans Faverey, composed of six couplets at high-water mark. Music on two old vihuellas invites the viewer to take the poem in calmly.’
