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 drama film co-written and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, starring Jane Asher, Diana Dors and John Moulder Brown. [1] Set in London, the film focuses on the relationship between two young colleagues at a suburban bath house and swimming pool.

Contents

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 gets 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 fantasizes about Susan and falls in love with her, but she has a wealthy young fiancé, Chris. Mike also discovers that Susan is cheating on her fiancé with Mike's former physical education teacher, who works at the baths as a swim instructor for teenage girls who he touches inappropriately. Mike follows Susan on her dates with Chris and the instructor and tries to disrupt them. Susan gets 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 the photo is of her. 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 gets 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, and "But I Might Die Tonight" by Cat Stevens in the opening scene and finale; the previously unreleased version heard in the film was eventually released in 2020 on a reissue of Stevens' album Tea for the Tillerman.

Trivia

The film was one of a series of supporting performances by Diana Dors that helped reestablish her career. [4]

Reception

The film received critical acclaim, with Andrew Sarris comparing it to the work of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Roman Polanski.

Penelope Gilliatt called it "a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts". [2]

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]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and called it an "observant and sympathetic movie" that "deserves a better ending". [5]

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." [6]

Variety wrote, "Sharply-edged hues, taut editing, a fine musical accomp, good playing alongside the leads and Skolimowsky's frisky, playful but revealing direction make this a pic with commercial legs and yet with a personalized quality for more selective spots." [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. (Moulder Brown and Miss Asher really are flawless)." [9]

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." [10]

Nigel Andrews of The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "a study in the growth of obsession that is both funny and frighteningly exact." [11]

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." [12]

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. [13]

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. [14] The restored film was rereleased in UK cinemas on 6 May 2011 and on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on 18 July 2011 in BFI's BFI Flipside series. [15] In March 2012, it was first shown on TV by Film4.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

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

Diamonds Are Forever is a 1971 spy film, the seventh 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 the role in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).

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

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>Carnal Knowledge</i> (film) 1971 film by Mike Nichols

Carnal Knowledge is a 1971 American drama film directed by Mike Nichols and written by Jules Feiffer. It stars Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, Candice Bergen, and Rita Moreno.

<i>The Last Seduction</i> 1994 neo-noir erotic thriller film directed by John Dahl

The Last Seduction is a 1994 American neo-noir erotic thriller film directed by John Dahl, featuring Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, and Bill Pullman. The film was produced by ITC Entertainment and distributed by October Films. Fiorentino's performance garnered widespread critical acclaim and generated talk of an Oscar nomination, but she was deemed ineligible because the film was shown on HBO before its theatrical release. October Films and ITC Entertainment sued the Academy, but were unable to make Fiorentino eligible for a nomination.

<i>Beyond the Valley of the Dolls</i> 1970 film

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a 1970 American satirical musical melodrama film starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, Phyllis Davis, John LaZar, Michael Blodgett, and David Gurian. The film was directed by Russ Meyer and screenwritten by Roger Ebert from a story by Ebert and Meyer.

<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>Au Hasard Balthazar</i> 1966 French film

Au Hasard Balthazar, also known as Balthazar, is a 1966 French tragedy film directed by Robert Bresson. Believed to be inspired by a passage from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1868–69 novel The Idiot, the film follows a donkey as he is given to various owners, most of whom treat him callously.

<i>House of Games</i> 1987 American neo-noir heist-thriller film by David Mamet

House of Games is a 1987 American neo-noir heist thriller film directed by David Mamet, his directorial debut. He also wrote the screenplay, based on a story he co-wrote with Jonathan Katz. The film's cast includes Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay, and J. T. Walsh.

<i>The Panic in Needle Park</i> 1971 film

The Panic in Needle Park is a 1971 American drama film directed by Jerry Schatzberg and starring Al Pacino and Kitty Winn. The screenplay was written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, adapted from the 1966 novel by James Mills.

<i>Dollars</i> (film) 1971 film by Richard Brooks

$, also known as Dollar$, Dollars or $ (Dollars), and in the UK as The Heist, is a 1971 American heist comedy film starring Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn, written and directed by Richard Brooks and produced by M.J. Frankovich. The supporting cast includes Gert Fröbe, Robert Webber and Scott Brady. The film is about a bank security consultant (Beatty) who develops a scheme with a prostitute, Dawn Divine (Hawn), to steal several criminals' money from a bank vault.

<i>The Hot Rock</i> (film) 1972 film by Peter Yates

The Hot Rock is a 1972 American crime comedy-drama film directed by Peter Yates from a screenplay by William Goldman, based on Donald E. Westlake's novel of the same name, which introduced his long-running John Dortmunder character. The film stars Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Leibman, Paul Sand, Moses Gunn and Zero Mostel. It was released in the UK with the alternative title How to Steal a Diamond in Four Uneasy Lessons.

<i>Johnny Got His Gun</i> (film) 1971 American film by Dalton Trumbo

Johnny Got His Gun is a 1971 American independent epic anti-war film written and directed by Dalton Trumbo, in his directorial debut, based on his 1938 novel of the same name. The film stars Timothy Bottoms, Kathy Fields, Marsha Hunt, Jason Robards, Donald Sutherland and Diane Varsi. It was Trumbo's first and only directorial effort.

<i>The Train Robbers</i> 1973 film by Burt Kennedy

The Train Robbers is a 1973 American Western film written and directed by Burt Kennedy and starring John Wayne, Ann-Margret, Rod Taylor, Ben Johnson, and Ricardo Montalbán. Filming took place in Sierra de Órganos National Park in the town of Sombrerete, Mexico. Two brief scenes take place in the square that was used for the final shootout in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

<i>First Love</i> (1970 film) 1970 Swiss film

First Love is a 1970 film, written, directed, produced and starred in by Austrian director Maximilian Schell. It is an adaptation of Ivan Turgenev's 1860 novella of the same name, starring Schell, Dominique Sanda, and John Moulder-Brown.

<i>The Seven Minutes</i> (film) 1971 film by Russ Meyer

The Seven Minutes is a 1971 American drama movie directed and produced by Russ Meyer. The movie was based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Irving Wallace.

<i>Change of Mind</i> 1969 film by Robert Stevens

Change of Mind is a 1969 science fiction/drama film starring Raymond St. Jacques, Susan Oliver, Janet MacLachlan, and Leslie Nielsen.

<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>Black Beauty</i> (1971 film) 1971 film

Black Beauty is a 1971 British drama film directed by James Hill and based on Anna Sewell's 1877 novel of the same name. It is the fourth feature film adaptation of Anna Sewell's story. Lionel Bart provided the rousing score.

<i>Black Girl</i> (1972 film) 1972 American film directed by Ossie Davis

Black Girl is an American family drama film with a screenplay by J.E. Franklin, based on her 1969 play, and directed by Ossie Davis. The film explores issues and experiences of black womanhood in the 1970s, including how black women were depicted and common stereotypes of the period. According to Melvin Donalson in Black Directors in Hollywood, "Black Girl is a film that explores the intricate and sometimes painful connections between mothers and daughters."

<i>One Brief Summer</i> 1971 British film

One Brief Summer is a 1971 British drama film directed by John Mackenzie, the first feature film he directed. It stars Felicity Gibson and Clifford Evans. The BFI called it "one of many '60s films to explore a relationship between a middle-aged man and a young woman".

References

  1. ↑ "Deep End". British Film Institute . Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Gilbey, Ryan (1 May 2011). "Deep End: pulled from the water". The Guardian .
  3. ↑ "Interview with David Hayles". The Times Playlist. May 2011.
  4. ↑ Vagg, Stephen (7 September 2020). "A Tale of Two Blondes: Diana Dors and Belinda Lee". FilmInk .
  5. ↑ Ebert, Roger (1 December 1971). "Deep End". Chicago Sun-Times . Retrieved 28 May 2019– via RogerEbert.com.
  6. ↑ Greenspun, Roger (11 August 1971). "Screen: 'Deep End,' Fantasies in a Public Bath". The New York Times . p. 42. Retrieved 6 July 2023.
  7. ↑ "Film Reviews: Deep End". Variety . 16 September 1970. p. 23.
  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. ↑ Arnold, Gary (23 September 1971). "Skolimowski's 'Deep End'". The Washington Post . p. C1.
  11. ↑ Andrew, Nigel (April 1971). "Deep End". The Monthly Film Bulletin . Vol. 38, no. 447. p. 71.
  12. ↑ "1982 NME interview with David Lynch". NME . Archived from the original on 13 March 2012 – via DavidLynch.de.
  13. ↑ "Deep End". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved 26 November 2023.
  14. ↑ Roxborough, Scott (15 May 2009). "Bavaria restoring 'Deep End'". The Hollywood Reporter . AP. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  15. ↑ BFI (4 April 2011). "A New Digital Restoration - Deep End" (PDF) (Press release). Retrieved 11 April 2013.
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.