Bishop’s logo on the shop window behind Mike’s pacing back and forth to the hot dog vendor in Soho. The colors are brilliant, and the detail is so achingly crisp that, complemented by Steinberger’s gliding and superbly mobile camerawork, the film often looks and feels remarkably contemporary. It should also be noted to US readers that this re- stored version puts back approximately 20s of underwater imagery that shows Asher frontally nude, which Paramount’s DEEP END either snipped or masked with an early fade-to-black and the closing studio logo. The PCM mono audio track has superb presence with the Cat Stevens tracks in particular newly enriched with digital clarity; the lengthy Can track, being more riveted to the origi- nal sound mix as it fades in and out as Mike dodges in and out of Soho storefronts, is not as refur- bished but remains the timeless, primal metro- nome of one of the finest extended sequences in film history.
The BR disc includes a marvelous assortment of extras which help to define this three-disc set, even in its more common two-disc issue, as one of the year’s finest. Robert Fischer’s feature-length making-of documentary STARTING OUT: THE MAK- ING OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI’S DEEP END (2011, 77m 57s), which adopts the rejected original title of Skolimowski and Jerzy Gruza’s screenplay, is an immensely gratifying history of the film’s pro- duction, featuring the input of Skolimowski, di- rector of photography Charly Steinberger (German with subtitles), editor Barrie Vince, production de- signer Anthony Pratt (who shows us a photograph signed to him by his uncle, Boris Karloff!), and actors Christopher Sandford, Jane Asher and John Moulder-Brown. The two leads are shown at the outset meeting for the first time since the produc- tion ended—in the same Munich theater where they shared some intimate moments during a screening of “THE SCIENCE OF SEX” some forty years earlier.
Fischer covers all the relevant stages: script- ing, casting, the filming in Munich (which began with a miraculous snowfall in April), the last week of shooting in London, the editing of the film, and its misfortune to have been the most popular film at the only Venice Film Festival when it was de- cided that awards were passé. This is an uncom- monly rich film documentary, a rarity in which everyone has only intelligent or amusing observa- tions to offer. Moulder-Brown (who in his sixties could pass for a man of 30) notes that this was his second film after Maximillian Schell’s FIRST LOVE and that DEEP END is “a sort of modern version” of the Turgenev novel; Asher points out the fact
that she “lowered” her natural accent to play the working-class Susan, which sheds new light on a captivating performance; Sandford reveals that he not only acted in the film but additionally served as a professional guardian for the under-age Moulder-Brown and wrote additional dialogue for the film; Steinberger commends his camera assistant’s control of the lens during his handheld operations, which made possible certain shots seldom seen prior to the introduction of Steadicam in the early 1980s; Pratt acknowledges Skolimow- ski’s considerable role in pointing out to him the values of the Munich bath house location Mollersches Volksbad (the pool there, too ornate to be used, is recognizable from its subsequent use in Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA!); and Vince, the editor of several Skolimowski films, notes the director’s extensive use of visual metaphor and how he, in their working relationship, must often con- vince him that he hasn’t gone too far (this topic is illustrated with Mike’s disruption of Susan’s quickie with the coach by triggering the fire alarm, which ends with an extinguisher dribbling a quasi-ejacu- late all over the red-tiled floor). Attention is also drawn to some virtually subliminal touches that enabled the film to effectively mask its sudden leaps from Munich to London scenery. Indeed, the only flaw I could find was the film’s identification of Can as a four-man German group, omitting credit for the unique Japanese singer and lyricist of “Mother Sky,” Damo Suzuki. There is also DEEP END: THE DELETED SCENES
(12m 37s), which adds interviews and script pages to document a few interesting roads not taken in the final cut. Most of these scenes were only scripted, sacrificed in the midst of an accelerating production, with only one actually shot (the foot- age is not included, whether or not it has survived). An intriguing curio is CARELESS LOVE (1976, 10m 4s), an Hitchcockian short film by Francine Winham starring a quite different-looking Jane Asher, who plays a housewife driven to murder by jealousy. The original UK theatrical trailer is also included. The now OOP third disc, which is PAL DVD5, includes the trailer for the BFI restoration print and RECALLING DEEP END (25m), the camcorded documentation of the Q&A with Asher and Moulder-Brown held at the BFI following the restoration’s debut screening, hosted by curators William Fowler and Vic Pratt. Though it does re- peat some information from the other supple- ments, it’s a welcome addendum to the actors’ memories collected in the other two interview supplements, and is now part of this marvelous film’s history.
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