Flipside 019: Deep End

[MichaelB]

Official announcement about the three-disc edition:

BFI Flipside to release a 3-Disc Collector’s Edition of Deep End

BFI Flipside announces a 3-Disc Collector’s Edition of Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End that will be released alongside the standard Dual Format Edition on 18 July.

The 3-Disc Collector's Edition presents all of the contents of the standard Dual Format Edition along with an extra DVD of exclusive content, including footage of Jane Asher and John Moulder-Brown being interviewed onstage at BFI Southbank with BFI curators William Fowler and Vic Pratt in May 2011, and the Deep End 2011 reissue trailer.

Strictly limited to 1,000 units, the Collector’s Edition will be available from all retail outlets. The RRP is £22.99 (standard edition RRP is £19.99) and the cat. no. is BFIB1131.

Unseen for decades, and yet considered to to be one of the finest films directed by Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski (Essential Killing, Moonlighting), Deep End is an original, off-beat portrait of adolescent obsession set against a backdrop of London life in an era of uncertainty and changing sexual mores, starring Jane Asher, John Moulder-Brown and Diana Dors, with a soundtrack by Cat Stevens and legendary ‘Krautrock’ band Can.

3-Disc Collector’s Edition Special Features
• Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition;
• Starting Out: The Making of Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End (2010, 74 mins): a comprehensive new feature-length documentary;
• Deep End: The Deleted Scenes (2010, 12 mins): short documentary exploring the scenes that never made the grade;
• Original theatrical trailer;
• Careless Love (Francine Winham, 1977, 10 mins): rare and disturbing short film in which a woman (Jane Asher) takes drastic action to keep the affections of the man she loves;
• Recalling Deep End (2011, 25 mins, bonus DVD only): Jane Asher and John Moulder-Brown interviewed onstage with BFI curators William Fowler and Vic Pratt;
• Deep End 2011 reissue trailer (bonus DVD only);
• Illustrated booklet featuring new essays by David Thompson, Yvonne Tasker, and Skolimowski expert Ewa Mazierska.

[perkizitore]

The limited edition is not available from Amazon anymore! I am wondering if they will honour the orders placed, or they simply accepted too many that they had to cancel them.

[MichaelB]

Vice magazine's current Movie Club feature asks assorted film professionals to watch Deep End for the first time and posts their reactions.

[MichaelB]

Mondo Digital:

The restoration obviously doesn't have much competition from any past versions, but it is indeed quite a stunner. The film is released from the BFI as a dual-format edition containing a Blu-Ray and a DVD, but the former is definitely the way to go if you have the capability. Colorful, detailed, and very filmic, it's only limited at times by the film stock that tends to go a bit grimy and nasty during some of the night scenes like many of its early '70s ilk. It's really hard to imagine how this could possibly look any better, and for anyone pining for a good version of this film to be released someday, it easily exceeds expectations. The mono audio is also very sharp and much more intelligible than even the rough theatrical prints that survived over the years.

[zombeaner]

I started the film last night and it looks pretty fantastic, the colors are especially noteworthy. I'm only about an hour in, so no spoilers please!

[MichaelB]

The Digital Fix:

I really have to express how utterly enchanted and affected I was by this film. It stuck to my gut like, to make a crude comparison, some unholy blending of Hitchcock, Polanski, Roeg, Ashby's Harold and Maude and Wes Anderson's Rushmore. But still utterly unique and able to stand on its own without an expiration date. That the film has remained so difficult to see for years since its release seems like an unfortunate way to quash something that deserves to be more than simply a cult piece. The situation is happily being rectified now. Deep End can and should be celebrated as a hypnotic dream of a picture. It's another Vertigo in its own way, with similar things to say but said far differently.

[med]

Vice magazine's current Movie Club feature asks assorted film professionals to watch Deep End for the first time and posts their reactions.

Being that it's Vice should've been warning enough, but let me tell you guys that this link is NSFW.

[MichaelB]

Cathode Ray Tube:

Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End (1970) is a film that surely ranks with Polanksi's Repulsion (1965), Antonioni's Blow Up (1966) and Losey's collaborations with Pinter, The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967) as one of the most interesting cinematic dissections made, by another European outsider, of British social and cultural mores of the 1960s.

[Giap]

Very enjoyable film, if a bit rough around the edges. It's the small touches that sell it, the yellow raincoat in the snow, the guy painting the wall and the use of colour in general, the decor in the prostitute's room, Bert Quark's routine around the hotdog stand. Otherwise, one has to take the good with the not-quite so good: the central obsession theme is engaging and amusing and the characterisation convincing (it's a very strong script) but doesn't ultimately yield any great epiphanies. the leads have great chemistry, and yet they are both slightly miscast, the boy in particular, being far too posh and far too pretty for the role. There are some great cameos, particularly Diana Dors, everything shot around Soho is very exciting, and yet the performances are sometimes out of control, one thinks of the child actor's line to Steven Coogan in A Cock and Bull Story: "I thought this was a comedy, not a pantomime" :) This may be partly to do with the dubious decision to use German actors and then dub them later with cockney accents. Also, the inherent danger of a Polish-speaking director letting his actors improvise in English, so that sometimes the dialogue is over-explanatory and prosaic. The thing I really didn't like was the handheld camerawork, which is forward-looking but not in a good way, although the lighting was really nice. All in all then, it's not the masterpiece some are claiming, it's certainly not Blow Up or Repulsion or Performance, but I think if one goes in with expectations ever-so-slightly lowered then it has a lot to recommend it even so.

Btw, whilst the BFI have received a lot of credit for this release, I think it's only fair to note that the transfer and the major extras are ported over from Germany.

[MichaelB]

Btw, whilst the BFI have received a lot of credit for this release, I think it's only fair to note that the transfer and the major extras are ported over from Germany.

It's equally fair to note that had you read the whole of this thread before making your contribution, you'd have seen that I've already highlighted this twice (here and here), and have also drawn attention to the fact that an alternative German edition is available.

And I took the trouble to credit Bavaria Film specifically, who have done a grand job.

Although the vast majority of Flipside releases are in-house BFI transfers, there's no point in duplicating other people's effort when HD masters already exist in excellent condition - I think The Bed-Sitting Room (MGM) and Privilege (Universal) are the other two Flipsides that made use of non-BFI masters.

[Giap]

Hi Michael, sorry, wasn't refering to you but to some of the recent DVD reviews, for example The Digital Fix (although you didn't previously mention that the main extras are also taken from the German release).

Actually, this stands out as one of the weakest transfers to appear on a BFI blu-ray as there is very excessive noise reduction (someone is even credited as the 'grain removal artist' or something like that! That's the guy to fire next time they're making cut-backs...). Comparing the feature to the trailer, which was transfered by the BFI I think it says, is very informative if one can look past the dirt and scratches. I understand it wouldn't make financial sense to re-master the film, and if anything this is a testament to the quality of the BFI's in-house work.

[MichaelB]

Well, in-house is always preferable, if only because one can maintain total control over every single element. But it's not always economically justifiable - a good example being when the BFI was offered a 16:9-framed master of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. In this case, while a 1.66:1 framing would have been preferable, if only to match the theatrical ratio, it would have cost considerably more to create a brand new HD transfer from scratch, and the general consensus (echoed by reviewers) was that it would have made negligible difference to appreciation.

In fact, the BFI is one of a surprisingly small handful of independent labels that primarily works from original film materials, creating their own telecines and restorations. Criterion also does, obviously, and I suspect the same is true of the more specialist labels like Edition Filmmuseum - but there aren't too many other examples, and vanishingly few in Britain. This is largely because the BFI has archival reasons for creating decent masters over and above commercial distribution - otherwise, it's so much more expensive that it's hardly surprising that other labels (including top-tier ones like MoC) usually rely on other people's masters.

Incidentally, it's probably worth quibbling about the phrase "taken from the German release" - not least because the German release isn't out for another five or six weeks! In actual fact, what usually happens is that the scope of the release is dictated by upfront sales of the rights - so it's not a case of drawing on existing extras so much as agreeing to contribute financially to their creation. In this case, there was no good reason not to let Bavaria Film do most of the work, as they had the original materials and it was their film.

Conversely, when the Quay Brothers shorts collection was assembled, the BFI (as the primary rightsholder and the label geographically closest to the filmmakers themselves) created virtually all the extras - but after pre-selling the rights to French and American labels, whose input permitted a more generous package than if the BFI had attempted it alone. In fact, in this particular case another bonus of doing an advance deal was that the French distributor offered to throw an extra of its own into the pot (that bizarre interview in the puppet museum), which the BFI wouldn't even have known about otherwise.

[HJackson]

I'd just like to say what a wonderful release this is, and what a wonderful film I found Deep End to be (my first Skolimowski movie). I especially appreciate the inclusion of the short film Careless Love, which seemed like the sort of scenario you'd be more likely to find in an episode of Chris Morris' Jam. Thoroughly excellent package.

May I politely ask when we can expect to see the early Flipside titles reissued in dual-format editions? There are a few I'm interested in buying, and I'm not sure whether or not to buy them now and put up with the eventual inconsistency on my shelf, or wait it out.

[MichaelB]

I understand it's going to be reasonably soon, but I don't know the exact dates yet.

[MichaelB]

Twitch

Beaver

[frankiecrisp]

Terrible cover for the German release

[MichaelB]

Terrible cover for the German release

You're not the first to have noticed this.

[813broadway]

What is John Moulder-Brown up to these days ...

I read that he is currently filming a period thriller set in Capri.

Can anyone forward me a link to the Wild Child interview in Scarlet Steet? Apologies for being so late to comment here, when it appears all this activity was a while back, but I only just saw Deep End at the London Film School and then saw Mill on The Floss, where Moulder Brown was by far and away the best thing in the whole series...

If anyone can help I'd be really appreciative.

Fascinating. Would love to read that interview.

I could scrounge through my collection of Scarlet Street to see if I could find it & make you a photocopy.

HarryLong, Thanks so much for the offer. I wouldn't want you to go too far out of your way...if you found it would you be able to scan and upload?

I know this is late since the above post, but I have just joined & would also be fascinated to read the interview if the kind poster did indeed scan the article for the forum member who requested it.

Would anyone please let me know if its available to view on the forum or elsewhere? I looked up the source and it seems the back issue may not be available anymore.

Many thanks

[MichaelB]

68 copies of the three-disc Deep End collector's edition were recently found in the warehouse that wasn't torched by rioters last summer. Amazon has taken them on exclusively, and they can be ordered here.

But when these are gone, that'll be it.

[McCrutchy]

68 copies of the three-disc Deep End collector's edition were recently found in the warehouse that wasn't torched by rioters last summer. Amazon has taken them on exclusively, and they can be ordered here.

But when these are gone, that'll be it.

Wow, 68 copies or not, that price needs to come down by 10 quid at least. Considering I just got burned by Amazon.com on the Alien Anthology today (I bought it yesterday at Best Buy and unwrapped it), I'm happy to wait til the last second on this one.

[Lazertron]

Thanks for the heads-up, MichaelB. Missed out the first time - ordered right now. Hmm, to think of it, I have the regular BFI Blu and the german edition sitting here aswell

[813broadway]

Another query about the John Moulder-Brown interview in Scarlet St.--

Can anyone provide a link to it ? I realise it's no longer 2010, when the last poster weighed in with the offer, but I still want to read it !! Thanks anyone who can give a tip on how to get hold of it.

[Raymond Marble]

Does anyone know if there was a contemporary release of this film's soundtrack on vinyl? (Contemporary to the film's initial theatrical release--1970--not this physical media release.) It seems like there would have been, but so far I can't find any reference to its existence. Of course "Mother Sky" turned up on the Can album Soundtracks, but I was hoping for a more direct soundtrack release for the film.

[Alphonse Tram]

There has never been a Deep End soundtrack. The only Can music in the film is, as you point out, 'Mother Sky', which can be found on their LP 'Soundtracks'.

If I remember rightly, the film only features this Can track and 'But I Might Die Tonight' by Cat Stevens, and that's it. Mother Sky is nearly 15 minutes, but these two tracks and a bit of Wagner is not rally enough to fill an LP.