The Deep

The Deep (2007)

An unfinished feature film directed by Orson Welles and based on Charles Williams’s Dead Calm (1963), filmed between 1966 and 1969 off the Yugoslav coast. Starring Welles, Jeanne Moreau, and Laurence Harvey, the project follows a newlywed couple whose yacht voyage becomes a psychological thriller after encountering a drifting vessel. The film remains incomplete, with missing scenes, unfinished sound, and surviving only in workprint form.

Date of release
2007-07-08
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
1h 51m
Genres
Thriller
Director
Orson Welles

Casting

Interesting facts

The Deep is an unfinished film directed by Orson Welles, based on Charles Williams's novel Dead Calm (1963), which was later adapted as an eponymous 1989 film. Welles produced and wrote The Deep, as well as played the role of Russ Brewer opposite Jeanne Moreau and Laurence Harvey.

Production

Welles intended the film to be a less personal, more commercially viable project than his past efforts, saying of The Deep: "My hope is that it won’t be an art-house movie. I hope it’s the kind of movie I enjoy seeing myself. I felt it was high time to show that we could make some money." Peter O'Toole recalls that he was approached by Welles to play the lead in the film and remembers The Deep as "a script that I thought was beautiful."

The film was shot off the coast of Yugoslavia between 1966 and 1969. It was photographed in color by Belgian cinematographer Willy Kurant, who also shot The Immortal Story for Welles.

The production was plagued by financial and technical problems. As work on the film became more sporadic and difficult, Welles became increasingly withdrawn. Amongst the unshot scenes was an explosion that would have formed the film's climax.

Although the production was deeply troubled, many of the people involved have spoken highly of the film, including lead Jeanne Moreau, who in 2000 looked back on the film as "a fantastic experience", noting that "the only disastrous thing was that later on, the film disappeared."

Welles struggled to finish the film after production effectively halted in 1969. He edited trailers and short scenes to help secure financing, and at one point contacted Charlton Heston about recording voice-over narration.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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