While the spine of the picture is Mike's growing obsession with Susan, there are priceless incidental pleasures along the way, notably a cameo by Diana Dors as one of the boy's more demanding clients. As I was in the air, I remember thinking, 'We've got to keep going because this is going to look great.' When I landed, I could just hear Jerzy calling out: 'Kip feelming! Kip feelming!'" "I was supposed to stop the bike in front of the vehicle, but it was raining and the brakes didn't work, so the bike skidded, hit the pavement and I went flying. "There's a bit where I'm on my bicycle, riding alongside Jane's car," says Moulder-Brown.
#In the deep movie. ending free
The cast were free to improvise, and were instructed to remain in character even if a take went awry. "He's not one of those directors who use fear, but you still felt a core of steel. But she didn't arrive as a celebrity, just a member of the team." The two actors' easygoing rapport is one of the film's joys, and a consequence of the playful atmosphere fostered by Skolimowski. "She had broken up with Paul McCartney by then, so there may have been some sensitivity about that – you know, better not start humming any Beatles tunes. For me it became all about allowing emotions I understood as a teenager to have a life within the context of the scenes."ĭespite his youth, Moulder-Brown was undaunted about working so intimately with Asher. Unlike him, I was lucky enough to have had girlfriends, but I still had that rawness. I was going through the same adolescent period as Mike. Jerzy thought I wasn't vulnerable enough, but the producer Judd Bernard persuaded him to give me a screen test, and that convinced him. "I was trying to be very sophisticated, smoking cigarettes and being cool," he says now. ("His charm and innocence were obvious.") The actor has a different recollection. Skolimowski maintains that he cast John Moulder-Brown as soon as the 16-year-old walked into his office. Now that I've got two sons of my own, I feel more protective of Mike, more so than back then, when perhaps I was a bit more like her myself." She's at that stage where she's completely aware of her sexual power and uses it ruthlessly. I remember sitting up late every night rewriting my dialogue.
"Jerzy's English wasn't great at the time. Jane Asher remembers receiving the script. There are glimpses of the capital – the exterior of the public baths was in Leytonstone, London, while Soho is the setting for a dreamlike sequence in which Mike visits the boudoir of a prostitute whose leg is in a cast, before purchasing an excessive quantity of hot dogs from Burt Kwouk (Kato from the Pink Panther films). Although considered a defining British work, as well as one of the most acute screen portraits of London, Deep End is actually a US/German co-production, written and directed by a Pole ( Jerzy Skolimowski, best known then for co-scripting Polanski's Knife in the Water), and shot largely in Munich. What could have been just another coming-of-age story is transformed by an absurdist sensibility, uninhibited performances and a heightened use of colour. It's appropriate that such an elusive picture should transpire to not be quite what it seems. If something as venerated as Deep End can sink, what hope for the rest of cinema?Īfter years of being mired in rights issues, this vivid, rapturous film is about to return in a restored print. The New Yorker's Penelope Gilliatt called it "a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts". The influential critic Andrew Sarris thought it measured up to the best of Godard, Truffaut and Polanski. What's unusual about this prolonged absence is that it should have befallen a film so passionately admired. Barely seen since its release in 1971, the film concerns Mike (played by John Moulder-Brown), a floppy-fringed 15-year-old who becomes dangerously infatuated with Susan ( Jane Asher), his co-worker at the public baths.
It's not uncommon for movies to drop out of circulation and simply disappear, as fans of Deep End will attest.
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