The Deep

Columbia-EMI/Casablanca Filmworks. Director Peter Yates; Producer Peter Guber; Screenplay Peter Benchley, Tracy Keenan Wynn; Camera Christopher Challis; Editor Robert L. Wolfe, David Berlatsky; Music John Barry; Art Director Tony Masters

Robert Shaw
Jacqueline Bisset
Nick Nolte
Louis Gossett
Eli Wallach
Robert Tessier

The Deep is an efficient but rather colorless film based on the Peter Benchley novel about a perilous search for treasure in the waters off Bermuda.

Fully 40% of the film takes place underwater, and the actors and crew learned how to dive, playing long scenes without dialog on the ocean floor. Director Peter Yates keeps up the tension in a low-key way - with a few shocker moments thrown in from time to time - and these scenes are more involving than the ones above the surface.

It's possible that inside this slick piece of engineering there is a genuinely mordant satire of human greed struggling to get out, but it never quite gets to the surface.

1977: Nomination: Best Sound

(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1977. Running time: 124 MIN.

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