Deep End (film)
Encyclopedia
Deep End is a 1970 British-West German drama film
directed by Jerzy Skolimowski
and starring Jane Asher
, John Moulder Brown
and Diana Dors
. The film is set in the suburbs of London
and is perhaps best known for featuring the song "Mother Sky" by the band Can
and "But I Might Die Tonight", the Cat Stevens
song, which is used to moving effect at the film's finale. Long thought lost
, the film has recently been broadcast in the USA, uncut, on Turner Classic Movies
, and Bavaria Media is restoring the movie as part of the film's 40th anniversary recognition, for a 2010 DVD release. The film was re-released in UK cinemas on May 6th 2011 and was released on Blu-ray Disc and DVD by the British Film Institute
on 18 July 2011 in its BFI Flipside
series.
), a 15-year-old boy who has left school, finds a job in a public bathhouse
with a swimming pool. There he is trained by his 10-year-older co-worker Susan (Jane Asher
), a girl who invades Mike's fantasies, but plays with his feelings. Working in the bathhouse turns out to involve providing services to clients of a more or less sexual nature, in exchange for a tip. For example, an older woman is sexually stimulated by rudely touching his head all over while talking about football. Mike is confused by this and at first does not want to accept the tip he gets, but Susan tells him that these services are a normal practice, including exchange of her female clients for his male clients, whenever a client prefers the opposite sex.
Mike falls in love with Susan, and follows her in the night. Her fiancé takes her to an adult movie, and Mike follows them and takes a seat behind Susan. He touches her breasts. She plays being disturbed, and her fiancé leaves the auditorium to warn the manager, but when he is gone Susan kisses Mike, and shows being amused. Mike is pleased and relieved, but he is nevertheless questioned by the police. However, Susan and her fiancé leave without pressing charges, so the police let him go. The police now blames the manager for admitting a minor to an X-rated film. He promises to have a severe talk to the cashier, and gives the two officers a drink, which settles matters. The fiancé follows Mike to take revenge, but Mike tells a police officer, who questions the financé about the alleged importunity.
Subsequently Mike discovers that Susan is cheating on her fiancé with an older man who was Mike's track coach and works as swim coach for teenage girls at the bathhouse, whom he touches inappropriately. Mike is jealous and smashes the fire alarm, cutting his hand.
After receiving his first wages Mike goes to the club Susan told she would go to with her fiancé. He has to become a member to enter, but while considering this Susan and her fiancé leave, and he quickly hides in the toilet. He hangs around in the same erotic district, eating hotdogs, and finds, in front of a strip club, a topless cardboard cut-out of a girl that may or may not be Susan. He is uncomfortable with Susan exposing herself like this and steals it; he hides in a room of a brothel, and is welcomed by a prostitute with a leg cast, who offers her services at a discount. Mike declines, after which she complains that she has already provided him her time, drink and emotions, but he leaves anyway. On the underground he confronts Susan with the picture, but she neither confirms nor denies that it is her. He returns to the bathhouse, where nobody is around because it is night, and swims nakedly with the picture.
Later in a park, Mike crashes the gym/swim coach's track race and puts pieces of a broken bottle under the coach's tires, puncturing them when Susan drives over them. She discovers that Mike did this and hits him, losing the diamond from her engagement ring in the snow. Mike helps her to collect the snow where the diamond might have fallen, and they take it in plastic bags to the bathhouse to melt it. Since the rooms are locked and the pool area has no wall sockets, Mike connects the wires of a lowered ceiling lamp to an electric kettle, and they melt the ice in the kettle at the bottom of the dry pool. Meanwhile the coach arrives, upset about the punctured tires; Susan tells him indifferently that she lost the car keys she borrowed, and he leaves angrily.
Mike finds the diamond when Susan is on the phone with her fiancé and lies down naked in the dry pool with the diamond on his tongue. After she undresses he gives the diamond to her, after which she is about to leave, but she reconsiders, undresses, and embraces Mike. After a while Mike says he is sorry, and Susan says that it does not matter. Meanwhile an attendant has arrived, who, unaware of the presence of Mike and Susan, fills the pool with water by opening a valve. Susan is about to leave but Mike wants her to stay, and in his rage swings the large ceiling lamp at her, severely injuring her. She falls unconscious while a tin of red paint is knocked over by the swinging lamp, mixing with Susan's blood. Mike embraces the dying Susan underwater, while both are still nude. With the kettle in the water, but still connected to the mains through the lamp, for Mike the danger of being electrocuted looms.
between the US and Germany, it was shot largely in Munich
. "The cast were free to improvise, and were instructed to remain in character even if a take went awry."
Many years later Jane 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."
comparing it with the best of Godard, Truffaut and Polanski, while Penelope Gilliatt
called it "a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts". "The consensus when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival
in September 1970 was that it would have been a dead cert for the Golden Lion, if only the prize-giving hadn't been suspended the previous year."
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
directed by Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. A graduate of the prestigious National Film School in Łódź, Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films since his 1960 début Oko wykol...
and starring Jane Asher
Jane Asher
Jane Asher is an English actress. She has also developed a second career as a cake decorator and cake shop proprietor.-Early life:...
, John Moulder Brown
John Moulder Brown
John Moulder-Brown is a British actor who started his career as a child; he is best remembered for his role in the 1971 classic Deep End....
and Diana Dors
Diana Dors
Diana Dors was an English actress, born Diana Mary Fluck in Swindon, Wiltshire. Considered the English equivalent of the blonde bombshells of Hollywood, Dors described herself as: "The only sex symbol Britain has produced since Lady Godiva."-Early life:Diana Mary Fluck was born in Swindon,...
. The film is set in the suburbs of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and is perhaps best known for featuring the song "Mother Sky" by the band Can
Can (band)
Can was an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first "krautrock" groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.Can constructed their music largely...
and "But I Might Die Tonight", the Cat Stevens
Cat Stevens
Yusuf Islam , commonly known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, philanthropist, and prominent convert to Islam....
song, which is used to moving effect at the film's finale. Long thought lost
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
, the film has recently been broadcast in the USA, uncut, on Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
, and Bavaria Media is restoring the movie as part of the film's 40th anniversary recognition, for a 2010 DVD release. The film was re-released in UK cinemas on May 6th 2011 and was released on Blu-ray Disc and DVD by the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
on 18 July 2011 in its BFI Flipside
BFI Flipside
BFI Flipside is a series of DVD releases from the British Film Institute launched in May 2009. The sleeve notes to the DVD Kim Newman's Guide to the Flipside of British Cinema state that the series is "rescuing weird and wonderful British films from obscurity and presenting them in new high-quality...
series.
Plot
Mike (John Moulder BrownJohn Moulder Brown
John Moulder-Brown is a British actor who started his career as a child; he is best remembered for his role in the 1971 classic Deep End....
), a 15-year-old boy who has left school, finds a job in a public bathhouse
Bathhouse
Bathhouse may refer to* Public bathing, historical public baths* Gay bathhouse, a place where males, typically homosexuals, go to have sex with other customers...
with a swimming pool. There he is trained by his 10-year-older co-worker Susan (Jane Asher
Jane Asher
Jane Asher is an English actress. She has also developed a second career as a cake decorator and cake shop proprietor.-Early life:...
), a girl who invades Mike's fantasies, but plays with his feelings. Working in the bathhouse turns out to involve providing services to clients of a more or less sexual nature, in exchange for a tip. For example, an older woman is sexually stimulated by rudely touching his head all over while talking about football. Mike is confused by this and at first does not want to accept the tip he gets, but Susan tells him that these services are a normal practice, including exchange of her female clients for his male clients, whenever a client prefers the opposite sex.
Mike falls in love with Susan, and follows her in the night. Her fiancé takes her to an adult movie, and Mike follows them and takes a seat behind Susan. He touches her breasts. She plays being disturbed, and her fiancé leaves the auditorium to warn the manager, but when he is gone Susan kisses Mike, and shows being amused. Mike is pleased and relieved, but he is nevertheless questioned by the police. However, Susan and her fiancé leave without pressing charges, so the police let him go. The police now blames the manager for admitting a minor to an X-rated film. He promises to have a severe talk to the cashier, and gives the two officers a drink, which settles matters. The fiancé follows Mike to take revenge, but Mike tells a police officer, who questions the financé about the alleged importunity.
Subsequently Mike discovers that Susan is cheating on her fiancé with an older man who was Mike's track coach and works as swim coach for teenage girls at the bathhouse, whom he touches inappropriately. Mike is jealous and smashes the fire alarm, cutting his hand.
After receiving his first wages Mike goes to the club Susan told she would go to with her fiancé. He has to become a member to enter, but while considering this Susan and her fiancé leave, and he quickly hides in the toilet. He hangs around in the same erotic district, eating hotdogs, and finds, in front of a strip club, a topless cardboard cut-out of a girl that may or may not be Susan. He is uncomfortable with Susan exposing herself like this and steals it; he hides in a room of a brothel, and is welcomed by a prostitute with a leg cast, who offers her services at a discount. Mike declines, after which she complains that she has already provided him her time, drink and emotions, but he leaves anyway. On the underground he confronts Susan with the picture, but she neither confirms nor denies that it is her. He returns to the bathhouse, where nobody is around because it is night, and swims nakedly with the picture.
Later in a park, Mike crashes the gym/swim coach's track race and puts pieces of a broken bottle under the coach's tires, puncturing them when Susan drives over them. She discovers that Mike did this and hits him, losing the diamond from her engagement ring in the snow. Mike helps her to collect the snow where the diamond might have fallen, and they take it in plastic bags to the bathhouse to melt it. Since the rooms are locked and the pool area has no wall sockets, Mike connects the wires of a lowered ceiling lamp to an electric kettle, and they melt the ice in the kettle at the bottom of the dry pool. Meanwhile the coach arrives, upset about the punctured tires; Susan tells him indifferently that she lost the car keys she borrowed, and he leaves angrily.
Mike finds the diamond when Susan is on the phone with her fiancé and lies down naked in the dry pool with the diamond on his tongue. After she undresses he gives the diamond to her, after which she is about to leave, but she reconsiders, undresses, and embraces Mike. After a while Mike says he is sorry, and Susan says that it does not matter. Meanwhile an attendant has arrived, who, unaware of the presence of Mike and Susan, fills the pool with water by opening a valve. Susan is about to leave but Mike wants her to stay, and in his rage swings the large ceiling lamp at her, severely injuring her. She falls unconscious while a tin of red paint is knocked over by the swinging lamp, mixing with Susan's blood. Mike embraces the dying Susan underwater, while both are still nude. With the kettle in the water, but still connected to the mains through the lamp, for Mike the danger of being electrocuted looms.
Production
The film was made in around six months, from conception to completion. An international co-productionInternational co-production
An international co-production is a production where two or more different production companies are working together, for example in a film production...
between the US and Germany, it was shot largely in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
. "The cast were free to improvise, and were instructed to remain in character even if a take went awry."
Many years later Jane Asher denied suggestions that she had used a body double
Body double
A body double is a general term for someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character in any recorded visual medium, in shots where the character's body is shown but the face is either not visible or shown indistinctly, or in shots where the image of the credited actor's face is joined,...
for some of her scenes: "I certainly didn't! ... And, looking back, I like the way it's done."
Reception
The film received critical acclaim, with Andrew SarrisAndrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
comparing it with the best of Godard, Truffaut and Polanski, while Penelope Gilliatt
Penelope Gilliatt
Penelope Gilliatt was an English novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and film critic....
called it "a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts". "The consensus when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
in September 1970 was that it would have been a dead cert for the Golden Lion, if only the prize-giving hadn't been suspended the previous year."
External links
- End review at Britmovie.
- BFI - Deep End at BFI | British Film Institute.
- Optimism Unfulfilled: Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End and the Swinging Sixties, an article by Christopher Weedman, at Senses of Cinema.
- Deep End: Ripe for Rediscovery - TCM Movie Morlocks