The Deep (1977)

"Anyway, rum's not drinkin', it's survivin'!"

Before we move on to another glittering decade, here’s an aquatic piece of fun from 1977. Starring two of Britain’s finest, hardman Robert Shaw and She-Who-Can-Do-No-Wrong Jacqueline Bisset. It’s The Deep, directed by Peter Yates of Summer Holiday (1963) and Bullit (1968) fame — never were two films more unalike. I’m a huge fan of Jacqueline, as my Instagram readers well know, a shining beacon of light in so many notable (and less notable works): Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac (1966), Two for the Road (1967), Casino Royale (1967) (Miss Goodthighs), Bullit (1968), Secrets (1971) (also starring the Second Coming, Robert Powell), The Mephisto Waltz (1971) (a perennial favourite), Le Magnifique (1973), The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973), Truffaut’s La Nuit américaine 1973), John Houston’s Under the Volcano (1984) (also starring Albert Finney and Anthony Andrews) and Claude Chabrol’s La Cérémonie (1995), based on Ruth Rendell’s crime novel, A Judgement in Stone (1977).

Jacqueline Bisset: coin connoisseur…

What was that stat? That in England, you’re never more than seventy miles from the sea? I’m a sucker for All Things Maritime; nautical nick-nacks: sextants, rigging, tarred rope, pirate maps, fishing tackle, flintlock pistols, lifebuoys, antique prints of fish, ships in bottles, green parrots, Robert Louis Stevenson and a bottle of rum. I’m also a sucker for all those tacky Sunday evening satellite television channels; Junk Archaeology: Atlantis, the Knights Templars, Antique Firearms, Nazi and Confederate Gold. I’m obsessed with Confederate Gold. It’s boy’s stuff. If they’re not firing off replica 16th-century cannons in gravel pits, they’re a-treasure hunting. And it’s always the same. A coterie of SUV-driving (it’s always SUVs), middle-aged (it’s always middle-aged) men (it’s always men) — with goatee beards, money belts and ginormous girths — are on a quest. There’s gold in dem hills, folks! Or buried at the bottom of the sea in some East Indiaman shipwreck. But how on earth can they afford all their sexy nautical equipment? The cost of it! Where does the money come from? Who pays for it? The speedboats, the radar, that sonar pulse thing, beep.... beep... beep… and the snazzy diving kit? 'Cos, inevitably, they almost always never find anything. Do they?

Along similar lines, but far more respectable and oopmarket is the splendid Captain Jacques Cousteau and the RV Calypso. I’m a massive fan of the Captain. There was a board game published by Parker Brothers in 1968. You can watch The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (1966) on YouTube, and there’s a really tasty 6 Disc De-Luxe DVD Box Set on Amazon. I love the Captain’s leather-book-lined office on the French Riviera. It’s all marvellously urbane. It’s very Bond.

Robert Shaw: grizzled Sea Dog

Peter Benchley, The Deep, Harper Collins [1976]

As is The Deep’s soundtrack which is by John Barry. The Deep (1977) caused a sensation on release, partly because of its superb underwater cinematography, which apart from Folco Quilici’s documentary Sesto Continente (1954), Louis Malle and Jacques Cousteau’s The Silent World (1956) and, of course, Thunderball (1965), had never really been done before (or at least in a significant part of a full-length feature film), but also because of Jacqueline Bisset’s wet T-shirt, which caused a frisson amongst schoolboys, middle-aged husbands, elderly men with heart conditions and T-shirt manufacturers. Not so good for the manufacturers of Playtex. And to that we must add a dash of Ian Fleming — plus the lucrative fall-out (i.e. cash in) from Jaws, the craze of 1975, which, as with The Deep, is based on a maritime thriller by Peter Benchley and also happens to star Robert Shaw in a similar role.

‘Like a limited edition trinket from The Franklin Mint…’

The plot is simple enough. Cigar-chomping Neanderthal David (Nick Nolte) is on holiday with his brainy and sophisticated English girlfriend Gail (Jacqueline Bisset) in Bermuda, then described as a British Crown Colony, now a British Overseas Territory, and, of course, the epicentre for all sorts of rum goings on at sea which keeps the satellite documentary channels busy. I quite understand what David sees in Gail, but it’s harder to fathom what Gail sees in David — the man’s permanently angry. There’s lots of grimacing and shouting and banging of fists. Anyway. They go diving in a wreck just off the reef, find treasure and hook up with grizzled Sea Dog Romer Treece (Robert Shaw), who examines a coin which looks like a limited edition trinket from The Franklin Mint but actually turns out to be an early 18th-century Spanish medallion, commemorating the marriage of Elizabeth Farnese, Duchess of Parma to King Philip V of Spain. This is enough to warrant its very own page on the most splendid niche website in all internet history: Coins in Movies. I love that in a film: dusty tomes, archaic mysteries and antiquarian research, sunken treasure, and ancient myths and legends — as found in the films of Albert Lewin (who was into that sort of thing): The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) and Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) — altho’ I accept that for connoisseurs of the Rambo franchise this ain’t going to cut the mustard. All the excitement of that immortal line in the historical porridge which is The Da Vinci Code (2006): “Get me to a library fast!”

‘1970s Bermuda: Gerrards Cross-on-Sea…’

But what I rather stupidly forgot to mention (get a grip, Lucozade, it’s the whole flippin’ crux of the film) was that the pair inadvertently discovers a cache of morphine capsules with a street value of God knows how many thousands of dollars. Cue Bermudian hoodlums. Cue Voodoo, with an amusingly repellent and vaguely kinky ritual involving Jacqueline’s super-flat stomach and a bloodied chicken’s foot, which often gets cut when the film is shown before the watershed. Dead trendy in the 1970s, that. Voodoo. Remember Live and Let Die (1973)? And Bermuda looks like Gerrards Cross-on-Sea, at least, in the dinner-dance bit at the couple’s luxury hotel, with the Beaujolais served in a wicker cradle, “Your Wine, Modom”, yellow tablecloths with napkins folded into mitres, a ‘chilled wane glass of grapefruit juice’ as a first course and smooching couples slow dancing to muzak in brass-buttoned blazers and long dresses. All the glamour of the suburbs.

The Deep (1977): innovative underwater cinematography…

But all credit to the cast and crew not only for learning to scuba dive but for filming 40% of the film underwater, which, according to Wikipedia, employed various technological advances, including ‘Al Giddings’ Petermar camera system and the use of specially modified 5000-watt “Senior” luminaires to provide cinematic lighting underwater.’ At the same time, ‘the world’s biggest underwater set was dug at the summit of a historic Bermuda hill formerly known as Hospital Island at Ireland Island South’, which, according to a New York Times article of the time, contained a million gallons of saltwater, stocked with a thousand saltwater fish, including sharks and a sinister Giant Moray Eel.

So there you go, The Deep (1977). A damn good yarn, with cracking underwater cinematography and a fabulous leading lady. I watched The Deep (1977) on Amazon Prime Video digital download, and it’s also available on DVD and Blu-ray. I also like the look of the Blu-ray edition which includes a documentary about the making of the film, with further interviews and commentaries.

Before I go, a quick word about the paid subscription, which costs £5 a month or £50 a year. Paid subscribers get their own special post on Friday mornings, extra bonus posts on High Days and Holidays, and access to the entire archive — now running at 136 films. The Sunday morning posts are free and can be read by anybody and everybody. I hope you enjoy The Deep (1977) as much as I did. Goslings Bermuda Black Rum for this one. And with the Easter holiday almost upon us, I’ve some juicy bonus posts up my sleeve. Until Friday… or maybe before then… Let’s see.