By RAY KELLY
The Deep, a commercial thriller filmed, but never completed, by the late Orson Welles is the subject of Orson Welles in Hvar, a wonderful limited edition book out of Croatia.
Assembled by photographer-writer Dusko Kovacic and film historian and documentarian Daniel Rafaelic (The Other Side of Welles), the text is presented in Croatian and English. It features additional essays by Nenad Polimac, Tonko Maroevic, Slavko Kovacic and Slobodan Prosperov Novak.
Lavishly illustrated and beautifully designed, the softcover book boasts 100 color and black and white images ― many never before published ―including photographs by the late Nicolas Tikhomiroff and others showing the cast and crew at work in the late 1960s.
The 150-page book has its roots in a significant photo exhibit staged three years ago in Hvar during the centennial of Welles’ birth.
Published by the town of Hvar and its the tourism board, Orson Welles in Hvar‘s purpose is two-fold: To celebrate the undeniable beauty of the resort island community on the Adriatic Sea and provide a glimpse into the making of The Deep, which was based Charles Williams’ novel Dead Calm.
The authors note Welles’ fondness for the former Yugoslavia, dating back to his filming The Trial in Zagreb in 1962, and his long-term relationship with Croatian actress and sculptor Olga Palinkas, who Welles renamed Oja Kodar.
Make no mistake, the authors hold The Deep in very high regard, much higher than Welles, who dismissed it in a 1982 interview as “light entertainment made for television, not for cinema… It’s a bad movie. No big deal.”
Rafaelic, director of the Croatian Audiovisual Center, argues otherwise in the book.
Based on a viewing of Welles’ incomplete workprint, which is housed at the Munich Film Museum, Rafaelic states that “had The Deep been finished, it would have lasted just under two hours. These would have been two hours of pure pleasure. Two hours that moviegoers would accept with joy…”
Orson Welles in Hvar has a limited run of just 500 copies and U.S. buyers can order it directly from Kovacic for $30 plus $15 shipping. He may be reached by email at duskokova@gmail.com
Despite its beauty, Wellesians will no doubt remain hungry after finishing Orson Welles in Hvar for a more exhaustive look at the making of The Deep, something along the lines of Josh Karp’s Orson Welles’s Last Movie: The Making of ‘The Other Side of the Wind’.
Weather, finances, cast commitments, and star Laurence Harvey’s death in November 1973 at the age of 45 were initially cited as reasons for The Deep‘s delays and eventual abandonment. However, the married Welles decision to cast past and current lovers in key roles complicated filming from the start.
Cinematographer Willy Kurant told Cinémathèque in 2003 that shooting was halted for a day when Jeanne Moreau, who had been romantically involved with Welles years earlier, unhappily discovered that Kodar, the director’s current girlfriend and a novice actress, had been given the more substantial role.
Kodar has since blamed Moreau for the scuttling of The Deep. She told an audience in Woodstock, Illinois, and the Brazilian website AdoroCinema in May 2015 that the legendary French actress refused to dub her lines because she was jealous of Kodar.
“We pretended at the time that the film could not be completed because of the death of Laurence Harvey, but that’s not true. We could not finish because Jeanne Moreau refused to participate in the dubbing. I say this without fear of repercussion, without fear of being sued, because I have letters from Orson and Orson lawyers, proving that the culprit is Moreau,” Kodar told AdoroCinema. “I was a very pretty girl, and at the time she was hired for the film, she was a middle-aged woman. When she saw me, she hated me, and could not forgive Orson for loving me rather than love her. That’s why The Deep has not been completed. It was jealousy.”
Prior Harvey’s death, Moreau told a newspaper that Welles’ hectic schedule was the reason the pair “never got together to do the dubbing.” “Orson is an incredible person. He’s always traveling, so it’s hard to get together in Paris at the same time,” she told the Montreal Gazette on April 21, 1973. “But we’ll do it sometime.”
A far different explanation for The Deep’s downfall was offered by editor Mauro Bonanni.
In a June 2015 interview with the Italian website Quinlan, Bonanni claimed that Welles scrapped the movie after realizing his young lover was ill-suited for the lead role.
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