Deep End (film)

Last updated

Deep End
Deep End movie poster.jpg
UK theatrical release poster
Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski
Written by
  • Jerzy Skolimowski
  • Jerzy Gruza
  • Boleslaw Sulik
Produced byHelmut Jedele
Starring
Cinematography Charly Steinberger
Edited byBarrie Vince
Music by
Production
companies
  • Maran Film
  • Kettledrum Productions
Distributed by
  • Jugendfilm-Verleih (West Germany)
  • Connoisseur Films (United Kingdom)
Release dates
Running time
91 minutes
Countries
  • West Germany
  • United Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Deep End is a 1970 psychological comedy drama film co-written and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, starring Jane Asher, John Moulder Brown and Diana Dors. [1] The film is a co-production between Germany and the United Kingdom. Set in London, the film centers on a 15-year-old boy who develops an infatuation with his older, beautiful co-worker at a suburban bath house and swimming pool.

Contents

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 1 September 1970. Deep End, considered a cult classic, went unreleased for many years due to rights issues. In 2011, it was given a digital restoration with the cooperation of the British Film Institute and was released in theaters and on home media.

Plot

Mike, a 15-year-old dropout, finds a job in a public bath in East London. He is trained by his colleague Susan, a woman 10 years his senior. Susan is a tease who plays with Mike's and other men's feelings, sometimes warm and affectionate and sometimes cold and distant. Mike's first female client is sexually stimulated by pushing his head into her bosom and talking suggestively about George Best. Mike is confused by this, and at first does not want to accept the tip he receives from her, but Susan tells him that sexual services are a normal practice at the baths and encourages him to serve some of her female clients for larger tips.

Mike fantasises about Susan and falls in love with her, but she has a wealthy young fiancé, Chris. Mike also discovers that Susan is cheating on Chris with Mike's former physical education teacher, who works at the baths as a swim instructor for teenage girls whom he touches inappropriately. Mike follows Susan on her dates with Chris and the instructor and tries to disrupt them. Susan becomes angry at Mike after he follows her and Chris into an adult movie theater and touches her breast, but provides just enough encouragement for him to continue. Mike's infatuation with Susan continues despite his friends mocking him, Susan mocking his mother and running over his bicycle with her car, and his activities drawing the ire of Susan's boyfriends, the local police, and their boss. Mike refuses other outlets for sex, such as his former girlfriend who comes to the baths and flirts with him and a prostitute in Soho who offers him a discount.

While following Susan on a date, Mike sees and steals an advertising photo cutout of a stripper who resembles her. He confronts Susan with it on the London Underground, flying into a violent tantrum when Susan teasingly refuses to tell him whether or not she is the woman in the photo. Mike then takes the cutout to the baths after hours and swims naked with it.

The next morning, Mike disrupts a foot race directed by the physical education teacher and punctures the tyres of his car while Susan is driving it. Susan grows angry and hits Mike, knocking the diamond off of her new engagement ring. Anxious to find the lost diamond, Mike and Susan collect the surrounding snow in plastic bags and take it back to the closed baths to melt it, using exposed electrical wiring from a lowered ceiling lamp to heat an electric kettle in the empty pool. While Susan is briefly out of the room, Mike finds the diamond and lies down naked with it on his tongue. He teases Susan by showing her the diamond but refusing to give it to her until she undresses. She complies and he gives her the diamond; as she is about to leave, she reconsiders and lies down next to him in the pool. They have a sexual encounter, although it is not clear whether or not Mike is able to perform.

Chris then telephones, and Susan rushes around the empty pool hurriedly gathering her clothes to go and meet him. Mike begs her to stay and talk to him. Meanwhile, an attendant arrives and opens the valve to start filling the pool with water. Mike becomes more insistent, chasing Susan around the rapidly filling pool, and finally hitting her in the head with the ceiling lamp, injuring her. Dazed, she stumbles and falls into the water, as the lamp knocks a can of red paint into the pool. Mike embraces the nude Susan underwater, just as he embraced the photo cutout. Water continues to fill the pool, with the live wire dangling within.

Cast

Production

Filming

The film was made in about six months from conception to completion. [2] It was shot largely in Munich, with some exterior scenes shot in Soho and Leytonstone in London. [2] The cast members could improvise and were told to remain in character even when a scene was not going as planned. [2] Many years after the film's release, Asher denied suggestions that she had used a body double for some of her scenes: "I certainly didn't! ... And, looking back, I like the way it's done." [3]

Music

The film features the song "Mother Sky" by Can in an extended sequence set in Soho, [4] and "But I Might Die Tonight" by Cat Stevens in the opening scene and finale; [2] the previously unreleased version heard in the film was eventually released in 2020 on a reissue of Stevens' album Tea for the Tillerman . [5]

Reception

Critical reception

The film received critical acclaim. In The Guardian , Ryan Gilbey wrote: "The consensus when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 1970 was that it would have been assured of winning the Golden Lion, if only the prize-giving hadn't been suspended the previous year." [2] Penelope Gilliatt of The New Yorker called it "a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts". [2] Variety praised the lead actors and "Skolimowsky's frisky, playful but revealing direction". [6] Nigel Andrews of The Monthly Film Bulletin called the film "a study in the growth of obsession that is both funny and frighteningly exact". [7]

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "a stunning introduction to a talented film maker", praising the "delicious humor and eroticism" as Skolimowski "plays with the audience much in the same way that Miss Asher entices Brown". [8] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called Deep End "a masterpiece" that "shows Skolimowski to be a major film-maker, impassioned yet disciplined. He runs an eloquent camera and evokes fine performances". [9] Film critic Andrew Sarris described it as "the best of Godard, Truffaut, and Polanski, and then some; nothing less, in fact, than a work of genius on the two tracks of cinema, the visual and the psychological". [10] [11]

Some critics disliked the ending, which they saw as too downbeat. [2] [12] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it an "observant and sympathetic movie", but criticizing its ending. [13] Roger Greenspun of The New York Times wrote: "Although it has a strong and good story, Deep End is put together out of individual, usually comic routines. Many of these don't work, but many more work very well." [14] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote: "Judging from Deep End, Skolimowski has a fairly distinctive film personality, but it happens to be a split personality, split in a way – half-Truffaut, half-Polanski – that I find rather disconcerting and unappealing. Imagine a film like Stolen Kisses [turning, at about the half-way point, into a film like Repulsion [1965] and you have Deep End." [15]

Critics also lauded Skolimowski's strategic use of colour. [14] [12] In an interview with NME in 1982, David Lynch said of Deep End: "I don't like colour movies and I can hardly think about colour. It really cheapens things for me and there's never been a colour movie I've freaked out over except one, this thing called Deep End, which had really great art direction." [16]

Writing of the film's restoration in 2011, The Guardian's Steve Rose wrote, "Deep End is bravely ambiguous and disjointed, lurching unpredictably between comedy and creepiness; but the characters are bracingly down to earth…In fact, everything about this singular film – the camerawork, the imagery, the soundtrack – feels vibrant and surprising in a way that makes most modern coming-of-age movies look formulaic and, well, shallow." [17] Slant Magazine 's Jaime N. Christley praised "Skolimowski's hallucinatory, dissonant, yet compelling tale of hormonal confusion". [18] In The Village Voice , Michael Atkinson called it a "strangely impetuous study of coming-of-age sexual muddle, full of whimsy and abrupt ideas, and intoxicated from a distance, it seems, by Swinging London's free-love commerce". [19]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. [20]

Accolades

Jane Asher was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. [21]

Restoration

In 2009, Bavaria Media, a subsidiary of Bavaria Film, which co-produced the film in 1970 through its subsidiary Maran Film, began a digital restoration in honor of the film's 40th anniversary, in cooperation with the British Film Institute. [22] The restored film was re-released in UK cinemas on 6 May 2011 and on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on 18 July 2011 as part of the BFI Flipside series. [23] The disc extras included the documentary Starting Out: The Making of Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End and deleted scenes. [24]

Related Research Articles

<i>The Graduate</i> 1967 romantic comedy drama film by Mike Nichols

The Graduate is a 1967 American independent romantic comedy-drama film directed by Mike Nichols and written by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham, based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from Williams College. The film tells the story of 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock, a recent college graduate with no well-defined aim in life who is seduced by an older married woman, Mrs. Robinson, but then falls for her daughter, Elaine.

<i>Diamonds Are Forever</i> (film) 1971 James Bond film by Guy Hamilton

Diamonds Are Forever is a 1971 spy thriller, the seventh film in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sixth and final Eon film to star Sean Connery, who returned to the role as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, having declined to reprise his role in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).

<i>Adaptation</i> (film) 2002 American film

Adaptation is a 2002 American comedy-drama film directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman. It features an ensemble cast led by Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper, with Cara Seymour, Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, Ron Livingston and Maggie Gyllenhaal in supporting roles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Asher</span> English actress and author (born 1946)

Jane Asher is an English actress and author. She achieved early fame as a child actress, and then through her association with Paul McCartney, and has worked extensively in film and TV throughout her career.

<i>Meet Joe Black</i> 1998 film by Martin Brest

Meet Joe Black is a 1998 American romantic fantasy drama film directed and produced by Martin Brest, starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, and Claire Forlani. Celebrating his 65th birthday, businessman and devoted family man Bill Parrish is visited by Death, who wants to know what it's like to be human in return for giving Bill extra days of his life. The screenplay was written by Bo Goldman, Kevin Wade, Ron Osborn, and Jeff Reno, and is loosely based on the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday, an adaptation of the 1924 Italian play La morte in vacanza by Alberto Casella.

<i>Another Stakeout</i> 1993 film by John Badham

Another Stakeout is a 1993 American buddy cop action comedy film directed by John Badham and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Emilio Estevez, and Rosie O'Donnell. It is a sequel to the 1987 film, Stakeout. Unlike its predecessor, the film was neither a critical nor a commercial success.

<i>Noel</i> (film) 2004 drama film by Chazz Palminteri

Noel is a 2004 American Christmas-themed drama film written by David Hubbard and directed by Chazz Palminteri. It stars Penélope Cruz, Susan Sarandon, Paul Walker, Alan Arkin, Daniel Sunjata and an uncredited Robin Williams. The film focuses on intersecting storylines taking place on Christmas Eve in New York City. It was filmed partly in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerzy Skolimowski</span> Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor

Jerzy Skolimowski is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist, actor and painter. Beginning as a screenwriter for Andrzej Wajda's Innocent Sorcerers (1960), Skolimowski has made more than twenty films since his directorial debut The Menacing Eye (1960). In 1967 he was awarded the Golden Bear prize for his Belgian film The Departure (1967). Among his other notable films is Deep End (1970), starring Jane Asher and John Moulder Brown.

<i>Personal Best</i> (film) 1982 American drama film by Robert Towne

Personal Best is a 1982 American drama film written, produced and directed by Robert Towne. It stars Mariel Hemingway and real-life track star Patrice Donnelly, along with Scott Glenn as the coach. The film is about the lesbian relationship between two track-and-field teammates whose relationship might interfere with their performance.

<i>Swamp Women</i> 1955 film by Roger Corman

Swamp Women is a 1956 American adventure film noir crime film directed by Roger Corman. It stars Carole Mathews, Beverly Garland, and Marie Windsor, with Mike Connors and Ed Nelson in small roles.

<i>Beach Party</i> 1963 film by William Asher

Beach Party is a 1963 American film and the first of seven beach party films from American International Pictures (AIP) aimed at a teen audience. This film is often credited with creating the beach party film genre.

<i>Private School</i> (film) 1983 film by Noel Black

Private School is a 1983 American teen sex comedy film, directed by Noel Black. Starring Phoebe Cates, Betsy Russell, and Matthew Modine, it follows a teenaged couple attempting to have sex for the first time, while their friends engage in sexually minded practical jokes.

<i>L.A. Without a Map</i> 1998 film

L.A. Without a Map is a 1998 romantic comedy-drama film directed by Mika Kaurismäki, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Richard Rayner, based on Rayner's 1988 semi-autobiographical novel Los Angeles Without a Map. The film stars David Tennant, Vinessa Shaw, Julie Delpy and Vincent Gallo, with Cameron Bancroft and Joe Dallesandro. It is an international co-production between France, the United Kingdom, Finland and Luxembourg.

<i>The Shout</i> 1978 British film

The Shout is a 1978 British horror film directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. It was based on a short story by Robert Graves and adapted for the screen by Skolimowski and Michael Austin. The film was the first to be produced by Jeremy Thomas under his Recorded Picture Company banner.

<i>Two-Minute Warning</i> 1976 film by Larry Peerce

Two-Minute Warning is a 1976 action thriller film directed by Larry Peerce and starring Charlton Heston, John Cassavetes, Martin Balsam, Beau Bridges, Jack Klugman, Gena Rowlands, and David Janssen. It was based on the novel of the same name written by George LaFountaine. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Film Editing.

<i>Innocent Sorcerers</i> 1960 Polish film by Andrzej Wajda

Innocent Sorcerers is a 1960 Polish psychological romantic drama film directed by Andrzej Wajda, and starring Tadeusz Łomnicki and Krystyna Stypułkowska. Its plot follows a young womanizer meeting another yet finally interesting girl, who all but forces herself into his apartment where they play the game of appearances, unable to confess their love to each other.

<i>Mona the Virgin Nymph</i> 1970 American film

Mona is a 1970 American pornographic film directed by Michael Benveniste and Howard Ziehm, produced by Bill Osco, and starring Judy Angel, Gerard Broulard, Orrin North, Susan Stewart and Fifi Watson. The film was screened without credits due to legal concerns. It is regarded as the second sexually explicit film to receive a general theatrical release in the United States, after Andy Warhol's Blue Movie (1969). However, unlike Blue Movie, Mona had a plot, though there was more emphasis on the action.

<i>King, Queen, Knave</i> (film) 1972 film

King, Queen, Knave is a 1972 West German comedy film directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, based on the novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov.

<i>Essential Killing</i> 2010 Polish survival/political thriller film by Jerzy Skolimowski

Essential Killing is a 2010 Polish survival political thriller film co-written and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski and starring Vincent Gallo and Emmanuelle Seigner. Gallo stars as an Islamic insurgent who finds himself fighting for survival in a frozen woodland, pursued by soldiers.

Four Nights with Anna is a 2008 drama film directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. It stars Artur Steranko and Kinga Preis. It tells the story of a man who visits a woman in her sleep. The film had its world premiere as the opening film of the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 2008. It was released in Poland on 12 September 2008, and in France on 5 November 2008.

References

  1. ↑ "Deep End". British Film Institute . Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Gilbey, Ryan (1 May 2011). "Deep End: pulled from the water". The Guardian .
  3. ↑ "Interview with David Hayles". The Times . May 2011.
  4. ↑ "Can's «Mother Sky» in Skolimowsky's «Deep End» (1970)". norient.com. Retrieved 9 July 2024.
  5. ↑ "Deep End". Yusuf / Cat Stevens. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  6. ↑ "Film Reviews: Deep End". Variety . 16 September 1970. p. 23.
  7. ↑ Andrews, Nigel (April 1971). "Deep End". The Monthly Film Bulletin . Vol. 38, no. 447. p. 71. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  8. ↑ Siskel, Gene (30 November 1971). "2 on Teen-Age Love". Chicago Tribune . p. 5.
  9. ↑ Thomas, Kevin (26 August 1971). "Growing Up Theme of 'Deep End'". Los Angeles Times . p. 23.
  10. ↑ Sarris, Andrew (19 August 1971). "Films in Focus: Deep End". The Village Voice . p. 45. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  11. ↑ Weedman, Christopher (10 December 2015). "Optimism Unfulfilled: Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End and the "Swinging Sixties"". Senses of Cinema . Retrieved 9 July 2024.
  12. 1 2 Smith, Richard Harland (3 September 2009). "The Gist (Deep End)". Turner Classic Movie Database . Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  13. ↑ Ebert, Roger (1 December 1971). "Deep End". Chicago Sun-Times . Retrieved 28 May 2019– via RogerEbert.com.
  14. 1 2 Greenspun, Roger (11 August 1971). "Screen: 'Deep End,' Fantasies in a Public Bath". The New York Times . p. 42. Retrieved 6 July 2023.
  15. ↑ Arnold, Gary (23 September 1971). "Skolimowski's 'Deep End'". The Washington Post . p. C1.
  16. ↑ McKenna, Kristine (21 August 1982). "Out to Lynch". NME . Archived from the original on 13 March 2012 – via DavidLynch.de.
  17. ↑ Rose, Steve (5 May 2011). "Deep End – review". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  18. ↑ Christley, Jaime N. (13 December 2011). "Review: Deep End". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  19. ↑ Atkinson, Michael (14 December 2011). "The Limits of Free Love in Deep End". The Village Voice. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  20. ↑ "Deep End". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved 26 November 2023.
  21. ↑ "Film in 1972". BAFTA Awards. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  22. ↑ Roxborough, Scott (15 May 2009). "Bavaria restoring 'Deep End'". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  23. ↑ "A New Digital Restoration – Deep End" (PDF) (Press release). British Film Institute. 4 April 2011. Retrieved 11 April 2013.
  24. ↑ Galloway, Chris (27 July 2011). "Deep End". Criterion Forum. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.