Surfs Up

The Endless Summer. To surfboard enthusiasts, a new wave film is an epic celebrating the cool of a bronzed athlete atop a ten-foot slab of polyurethane foam, shooting through a tunnel of sea-green water formed by a breaker's curl. "The ultimate thing in surfing is to be covered up by the wave," says Bruce Brown, a blond, 28-year-old Californian who probably qualifies as the world's foremost exponent of pleasure before business. A Bergman of the boards, Brown makes his pleasures pay, and has pushed his income into a fun-filled six-figure bracket as producer, director, narrator and promoter of documentary movies about the idle life.

Summer, Brown's sixth film, is an uncritical ode to sun, sand, skin and surf that first came to light on the West Coast lecture circuit, proved its box-office potential with a splashdown in landlocked Wichita, Kans. Now audiences everywhere, surf-bored by the dry run of Hollywood's beach-party musicals, may relish the joys of Summer as it follows a pair of skillful California surfers, Mike Hynson and Robert August, on a three-month, round-the-world tour in search of the perfect wave.

The paradise found by two young men with almost nothing else on their minds is remote Cape St. Francis in South Africa, where the small, perfectly curling waves give a long, loose ride. From the shores of Ghana to Tahiti's black sand beaches to Hawaii's perilous "Pipeline"--the Mount Everest of surf-dom--chills and spills crowd onto the screen. Some are caught by a waterproofed camera that behaves like a frolicsome seal, nuzzling close enough to eye a surfer's footwork, or leaving the viewer breathless and upended under a cascade of angry white water.

As narrator, Brown sounds most at sea whenever he ventures a comment on activities ashore. Like any loquacious neighborhood, hobbyist who has gone overboard for home movies, he mixes obtuse observations of native customs with exuberant how-dy-do's ("Say hello, Lance. Atta baby!") to some of his surfing pals visited along the way. Perhaps wisely, Brown leaves analysis of the surf-cult mystique to seagoing sociologists, but demonstrates quite spiritedly that some of the brave souls mistaken for beachniks are, in fact, converts to a difficult, dangerous and dazzling sport.

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