Terence Davies is the darling of the BFI where the pseuds who run the place orgasm and genuflect in that order each time his name is mentioned and even as I write are probably planning deification any time soon. The problem with this is that now Davies thinks he is a better writer than Terence Rattigan whereas he isn't fit to change Rattigan's typewriter ribbon. If there was one thing Rattigan could do in his sleep it was CONSTRUCT a play, apparently Davies thinks he can construct a film. In your dreams, mate. With gorgeous conceit Davies is on record as saying that Rattigan didn't devote sufficient time to Hester in Act I of his play so Davies has put that right by dreaming up a lengthy sequence involving Hester's marriage to William Collier and introducing an entire scene involving Collier's mother, and other scenes showing Hester and Freddy Paige getting together. Stuff that Rattigan was able to do more than adequately via a combination of stagecraft and dialogue. He has also seen fit to eliminate the young married couple who find Hester in the play and far from the gas meter running out he has her feed it with several coins before attempting suicide. This is all accompanied by loud, agonisingly tortuous music reminiscent of one of Wagner's worst excesses and if that weren't enough he throws in several pop songs of the time - You Belong To Me, Autumn Leaves and, in another totally extraneous scene set in a tube station during the blitz, Molly Malone. His amateurishness shows up in a pub scene in which the patrons are singing at the tops of their voices, Freddy and Hester step outside, meters from the pub and suddenly it's silent as the grave. It's one thing to tamper with a work that no one alive remembers seeing on its first production - Oscar Wilde say, but The Deep Blue Sea is revived as often as Private Lives both on stage and television and there can't be anyone with an interest in theatre who has not seen it in one production or another - all presented as Rattigan wrote it - within say, the lest six or seven years so there is no excuse, other than massive ego, for this travesty. Throw in the fact that the actor playing Freddie lacks even a smidgin of the breeziness that Kenneth More brought to the role and much more anger. David Mamet, a far superior writer than Davies, is also an admirer of Rattigan and he chose to direct a film adaptation of Rattigan's The Winslow Boy a few years ago, direct it, yes, not rewrite it. Someone at the BFI should remind Davies that the only thing he has in common with Rattigan is a Christian name and homosexuality.
Review of The Deep Blue Sea
