Deep End (1970) Coming of Age in Noirsville

 

"There's never been a color movie I've freaked out over except one, this thing called Deep End..."                                   (David Lynch)

Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski.

Written by Jerzy Skolimowski (Knife In the Water), Jerzy Gruza, and Boleslaw Sulik. Cinematography by Charly Steinberger. Music by  Can... (as The Can) and Cat Stevens.

The film stars Jane Asher (Alfie (1966)) as Susan, John Moulder-Brown as Mike, Karl Michael Vogler as swimming instructor, Chris Sandford as Chris, the fiancé, Diana Dors (Room 43, Tread Softly Stranger, The Unholy Wife, The Long Haul, Blonde Sinner) as Mike's first lady client, Louise Martini as prostitute, Erica Beer as baths cashier, Anita Lochner as Kathy, Annemarie Kuster as nightclub receptionist and Burt Kwouk (Cato in A Shot in the Dark and The Pink Panther Films). 

Jane Asher as Susan

John Moulder-Brown as Mike

Diana Dors as Customer

Karl Michael Vogler as the swimming instructor

Chris Sandford as Chris

Erica Beer as baths cashier

The story is set somewhere in a UK flavored Noirsville that's an interesting blend of Soho, Leytonstone, London, and Munich, Germany, and P.S., Burt Kwouk selling hotdogs gives it a little pinch of the surreal. 

A drop of orang / red on leather. Ominous or benign? "But I might Die Tonight" by Cat Stevens begins the opening credits that lovingly run over the lines of a vintage Ernie Clements Falcon San Remo Equipe Falcon. 

It's getting a quick, kid sloppy, paint job. Down from the seat to the chainring then along the chain to the pedals then up the head tube past the Falcon logo to the handle bars. We see a paint smudged hand and distortedly reflected in some bright work, our first view of Mike admiring his handy work.  We cut to Mike deftly guiding his Falcon, flying along Angel Lane, London. 

Mike looks older than he is. He's fifteen but looks eighteen (in actuality Moulder-Brown was seventeen upon release of the film). Mike's a high school drop out who gets hired on as the men's attendant at Newford a public bathhouse. 

Mikes Job interview

Karl Ludwig Lindt as Baths Manager

Mike is trained by Susan, a cute twenty-five year old redhead. Susan shows him the routine, every customer is assigned a cabin, they get a towel, a robe, soap, shampoo, afterwards the cabin gets swabbed out thoroughly. 

Occasionally Susan explains the customers request "other services" in exchange for a tip. Also some female customers request male attendants while males request females. There's wink wink some sexual hanky-panky going on.

Mikes first experience with this with an older kinky blonde who gets off on groping and pushing Mike's head into her tits while she talks about football. 

Mike's 1st Lady Client (Dors): Are you keen on football? All the boys are, aren't they? One way or another. It's always tackle, dribble, dribble, shoot.

Afterwards Mike doesn't want to accept her tip but Susan tells him its normal practice. Mike learns his job quickly and begins to become obsessed with  and fantasize about Susan. 

Susan is amused by Mike's naivete and begins to warm to him. Doing the same job they begin to bond, eat lunch together and talk. 

Susan starts to tease Mike and he starts to spy on Susan. 

Spying on Susan

Mike finds out that Susan is "servicing" men who request her, that Susan has a relatively wealthy fiancé Chris who likes to take her to porn films and "private" clubs, and that Susan is cheating on Mike with Mikes old school rugby coach who is also the girls swimming teacher at the pool. 

Susan and Chris go to a Porno Film

Susan scolding the swimming instructor

Mike spying on Susan

Susan's special customer 

This swimming instructor is also showing a bit too much public affection to the young girls, Susan notices him touching the girls and patting their bottoms. 

Susan scolding the swimming instructor

She mentions that he coming off as a bit of a pedophile. 

There's a funny sequence where Mike follows Susan and Chris into the theater and then sits directly behind Susan. Mike begins to lean forward and gently kiss Susan's shoulder. 

We can see Susan smiling slightly. When Mike gets a bit bolder he reaches his hand around and cups Susan's breast. She turns around and slaps Mike's face. She tells Chris that the guy behind her just copped a feel. Chris gets up yells at Mike and tells him he's getting the manager. As soon as Chris is gone Susan turns around and mischievously kisses Mike on the lips. Mike falls back sprawled in extasy.  

She tells Chris that the guy behind her just copped a feel. Chris gets up yells at Mike and tells him he's getting the manager. As soon as Chris is gone Susan turns around and mischievously kisses Mike on the lips. Mike falls back sprawled in extasy.  

At the Bathhouse one day a group of school boy friends of Mike begin to tease him asking what kind of lay Susan is. Mike defends her honor in a fight that ends up three against Mike in the pool. 

Mike is soaked but Susan is impressed. Mike wearing a just bathrobe and Susan take his wet clothes down to the bathhouse boiler room to dry out by laying over the steam pipes. Later when Mike goes back to the boiler-room to get dressed, Susan peeps on him liking what she sees.  

Susan Peeping on Mike

Liking what she sees

Another sequence has Mike stalking Susan and Chris to a private club. When he can't get in without a membership he stakes the entrance out at the corner. He buys a hot dog from a Chinese dog wagon vendor and wanders around the "red light" district. 

Burt Kwouk hot dog vendor

At a near by strip club Mike spots a life sized almost nude cutout of Susan, the barker is calling the cutout Angelica. 

Susan /Angelica

When the barker is looking the other way, Mike grabs the cutout and runs off. First he ducks into a small crib where the hooker inside tells him she'll give him a discount because she has a broken leg.

She even grabs the cutout and lays it next to her on the bed tells Mike that she's cool with it if he wants to do it like that, lol. Mike disgusted starts to leave but the hooker demands some money because he got her "excited."  

Later that same night when Susan and Chris have a fight upon leaving the club, Susan splits and takes off down the street towards the underground. Mike has to quickly grab the cutout he stashed and run after Susan. 

There's another sequence where Mike following Susan, hops on an underground getting Angelic / Susan the cutout stuck in the door. The reactions of the passengers on the train when Mike is trying to pull free the cutout, is a hoot, you'll get the subtext. 

WTF is that chap doing

Mike trying to pull the cutout out of the door

When Susan refuses to tell Mike whether or not she posed for the cutout. Mike throws a tantrum and ends up taking the cutout the bathhouse pool swimming naked with it in the pool. A fantasy for Mike. 

Mikes Fantasy Sequences

The Cutout Version

Things get worse when Mike begins to interfere Susan's dates with Chris and the instructor. Mike is so obsessed with Susan that he passes up a chance of letting out some sexual steam, when an old girlfriend offers him sex in a bathhouse cabin. Susan notices. 

Things go spiraling into the deep end of Noirsviile when Mike's escalates his disruption 

Noirsville

Why the hell are Neo Noirs like these not known? It's floating out there with probably countless others that were never picked up for TV broadcast because they would never pass a network censor. By the time VHS comes along they are well forgotten. 

Jerzy Skolimowski's art direction uses the familiar Neo Noir palette of clashing colors carnal reds against dead body blues, grimy puke yellows, with peeling intestine greens, all offset with bathhouse pastels heavy on the turquois. 

Jane Asher and John Molder Brown are excellent and very compelling. They make it all quite believable. Diana Dors is great as the eccentric customer who likes to talk football, she also dubs the hooker with a broken leg. The rest of the cast is good and the overall effect of the combo of Soho & Munich gives the film a very familiar but definitely off swinging sixties vibe. It's a nice surprise. 8/10

 

The film received critical acclaim, with Andrew Sarris comparing it with the best of Godard, Truffaut and Polanski, and Penelope Gilliatt called it "a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts". [The Guardian, 1 May 2011, Deep End: pulled from the water] 

"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." [The Guardian, 1 May 2011, Deep End: pulled from the water] 

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."[RogerEbert.com] 

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."[Greenspun, Roger (11 August 1971). "Screen: 'Deep End,' Fantasies in a Public Bath"] 

Variety observed "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."["Film Reviews: Deep End". Variety. 16 September 1970] 

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and declared 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."[Siskel, Gene (30 November 1971). "2 on Teen-Age Love". Chicago Tribune] 

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times declared the film "a masterpiece" that "shows Skolimowski to be a major film-maker, impassioned yet disciplined. He runs an elonquent camera and evokes fine performances. (Moulder Brown and Miss Asher really are flawless)."[Thomas, Kevin (26 August 1971). "Growing Up Theme of 'Deep End'". Los Angeles Times.] 

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' and you have Deep End."[Arnold, Gary (23 September 1971). "Skolimowski's 'Deep End'". The Washington Post.] 

Nigel Andrews of The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "a study in the growth of obsession that is both funny and frighteningly exact."[Andrew, Nigel (April 1971). "Deep End". The Monthly Film Bulletin.]

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."[1982 NME interview with David Lynch at the Wayback Machine]

The film has a score of 85% on Rotten Tomatoes