MovieChat Forums > The Deep Blue Sea (2011) Discussion > Acts like a 40's movie

Acts like a 40's movie

posted 10 years ago by ahrawrah
3 replies | jump to latest

I just saw this movie after skipping it when it was in theaters. It got kinda mixed reviews, I think, probably because it is so slow. It acts like a really old movie. At the beginning I was getting anxious about its lack of dialogue.

I felt this movie made no sustained effort to show how charming Hester (presumably) could be. We never really saw what attracted Freddie to Hester, besides Rachel Weisz's obvious beauty. It acts like a woman's picture from the 1940s and 50s, with the blandness of the female protagonist and her misunderstood passion. It's so focalized in Hester's perspective that we could easily lose interest in the movie if we didn't feel for Hester herself.

It also acts like a silent film in the way it uses music in the place of words. I thought it was a lovely movie, but very misunderstood when placed next to the romantic dramas coming out today instead of the movies Terence Davies is riffing off (eg. Brief Encounter).

[–] raramama 10 years ago

I agree that it played like a 40s movie. I love vintage movies so that is not an insult in and of itself coming from me. But it did move slow in the first half and the editing/look of it was very much like a Melodramatic Noir film. It seems incomplete with the herky-jerky editing the way old movies can be. There is usually some reason, the style of that period, the tools available at that time, and the strict Hays Codes that didn't allow for certain things to be revealed. This film doesn't have those excuses.

[–] shred-com 10 years ago

I completely agree. Glad I'm not the only one who thought this while watching it.

[–] wearyourlove 9 years ago

The point. If you know Terence Davies films you know his primary influences are classic Hollywood and British films from the mid- 20th century, usually melodramas. The Deep Blue Sea, like many of his films, is explicitly designed to embody and recall the filmmaking idioms of that era.