The star and director talk about the adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play. Words: Becky Reed
With the release of The Deep Blue Sea in UK cinemas on 25th November, we bring you a report from the press conference held at the close of the BFI London Film Festival. Writer and director Terence Davies is warmly welcomed, 11 years after his last film The House of Mirth. The director of such British classics as Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes adapts Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play, with Rachel Weisz as Hester Collyer. The Avengers and Thor star Tom Hiddleston plays Freddie Page, the feckless former RAF pilot for whom Hester leaves her respectable husband William (Simon Russell Beale). Read our review here. The pair give one of the most considered, and entertaining press conferences of the festival, as they discuss love, passion and filmmaking.
On adapting Rattigan’s play for the screen.
Terence: When I read Terence’s play, he does something I can’t personally respond to, which is putting all the exposition in the first act. I said to producer Sean O’Connor, who brought it to me, and the Rattigan trust, I want to tell it from Hester’s point of view. If it’s from Hester’s point of view, you can get rid of all that exposition about what went on before the curtain rose. It’s much more interesting to then reveal it slowly. They were very good about it, because the first draft was incredibly tentative. I’d never done it on a play before, and Alan Brodie from the Rattigan trust said ‘be more radical’, which I thought was terrific. By putting in scenes that were not in the play - I’ve got a very intuitive ear, and I can imitate the sounds, and the way he constructs dialogue. I hope the dialogue written for people not in the play sounds Rattigan-esque.
On getting into the post-war period.
Tom: It’s really interesting, because when I first read the script, what struck me was how universal and contemporary the feelings are. It’s a film about love, about the complexity of being in love, the darker side of passion. Hester’s act of leaving William Collier, of leaving a man who is intensely kind, compassionate and gentle, for a man who has more passion, but a greater capacity for cruelty, is something that happens every single day. What I loved about Terence’s screenplay is that it seemed very muscular in its emotional language. Rattigan’s is a little harder to access, because characters like Freddie Page and Jackie Jackson, their turn on phrase is, I think, a little remote. It’s that thing, that Terence has so beautifully referenced in that scene in the pub, where Jackie and Freddie are almost doing a pastiche of what it’s like to be in the RAF for the audience of Hester and Liz. I remember watching, for my research, an old movie called Angels One Five with Jack Hawkins, which is full of people saying things like ‘he can be terribly touchy… but he’s pure gold when you scrape down.’ We didn’t want to do that. They’re amusing as museum pieces.
On the imbalance of love between Hester, Freddie and William.
Terence: They all want a different kind of love from each other - that’s the tragedy. Love is the most exclusively human emotion. Why is that we can look at someone, not even sexually, and say, ‘I love them as a person, I’d give up my life for them’. When it’s that powerful, it can have a destructive nature. Hester comes to know real love, and real love is being able to say to the person you love most in the world, if you’re better off without me, go. That is such an act of courage. None of them villains.
Tom: For me it’s the subjectivity of each of their perspectives. I do think Freddie loves Hester, and I think he means it when he says, I just don’t love you in the way you love me. It’s also because of each of their experiences of life up until that point that forms their openness, and their capacity to yield. The reason the relationship between Hester and Freddie can’t work is that Hester is on the run from something incredible repressed - the moral code of her father, who is a priest, she’s married a judge, who it seems has tenderness, but without passion. She’s running towards passion, imbued with all of its risks and danger. Freddie has spent five years fighting dog fights in the skies of London, and he has seen death every day. The pot luck of all of his friends being shot out of the sky, and who knows who’s coming home tonight. In a year like 1950, all those guys wanted to do when they got back home was to live. To sing in the pub, to play golf, and to drive fast down the great west road, simply because they felt so lucky to be alive. So Hester’s obsession with him, to the extent to threaten to take her own life, he can’t access because of his war damage. How can you value your life at so little, when we spent five years trying to save it.
On the film’s pacing and shot composition.
Tom: I think the cinema differs from the theatre in its capacity to hold silence. On stage, you can’t be silent for too long, because the play will die. Theatre is an art form that thrives on words, language and arguments. Cinema is about behaviour and feeling and the expression of thought. Without words, as in life, it’s incredibly moving. So our process of reduction, to reducing the scene to a look, a glance or a touch, is the most exciting area of performance in film. The beauty is that it all just happens in the moment. One of the great things Terence said to me before we started was that the camera captures truth, but it also captures falsity. So if you don’t feel it, don’t do it.
Terence: I’ve always written screenplays as I see them. So I know every shot when I go on set. That sounds restrictive, but it’s not, as if something doesn’t work, you just drop something else in. The circular scenes at the beginning - during rehearsal it took days and was terminally boring. Then we thought, if it’s circular, it will look like memories. There’s something very satisfying about that, like how music is satisfying, when you hear something resolve. Your inner ear is waiting for that resolution. Music and cinema are very similar - you have to look at it viscerally, you cannot look at it intellectually. You either believe in the first two minutes, or you don’t, and if you don’t, go on, because it’s a waste of time for everybody. There’s a bit in the film that gives me enormous pleasure, and it’s why I love working with actors. It’s the bit where Tom throws himself on the sofa and says ‘the rain came down. Golf - kaput.’ It’s just fabulous, as it’s so felt. You can’t direct that. You watch some scenes evolve, and think, I don’t have to do anything today, they’re really on the ball. Nothing fazes me - we had two cameras break down, and we lost two half days of filming. What will faze me is if someone is rude. The magic is gone, and I just want to pack up and go home. It’s ridiculous - I’m 66 years of age.
On the possibility of adapting the story for two male lovers.
Terence: There’s this myth that Rattigan wrote it about two men. Frith Branbury, who did the first production in 1952, said he never saw a draft that was about two men. Even if it were, it’s not relevant. What’s relevant is that someone gets profoundly changed by the discovery of sex, at 40. It’s overwhelming, to discover sexual love. That combination, with passionate love, is incredibly powerful. I didn’t want it to have any implication that it was about two men, because it’s not. It’s about a woman who is very conventional, who does the most unconventional thing. She leaves her husband - women didn’t do that in the Fifties. If you were working class, there was nowhere to go, and the middle class simply didn’t do it. Also, she makes faux pas, like getting her man out of the pub. You did not do that in the Fifties! It makes him even more angry! It’s got to be ferocious - you can hear poor Tom almost losing his voice. It’s got to have ferocity, especially when it comes from England where we’re terribly repressed - well, we used to be!
On the music and background soundtrack.
Terence: The one thing I want to point out, is that her William is more like a companionship, as he probably has a very small libido. It’s very cultured and they share that culture - a Radio Three culture. When she meets Freddie, who likes very popular things, and songs, he just likes them, and she’ll go along as it’s something she’s never experienced before. She takes him to the art gallery and he’s just bored, and makes a funny joke. I remember coming back from church one Sunday morning and everyone listened to radio’s Family Favourites. Every door and window was open, and everyone was singing You Belong to Me. I’ve never forgotten it. Such a romantic and yearning song, but it’s also about possession. It was right and proper for that subtextual meaning. I grew up on popular music, and every time I hear it, I’m right back. Particularly the shipping forecast - I could listen to it all day, and it had such a huge effect on me.
Tom: You don’t get that much specificity from many directors or writers. Terence had written in all the music. Approaching the film, it meant there was a reservoir of research material that was very easy to access - as soon as I heard Stafford, I thought, ah, I know where we are.
On what Tom has learned in his meteoric year in cinema.
Tom: If I’m being totally honest, before the beginning of 2010 I had only made one feature film in my entire life. Then I made five in the space of 12 months, and I was very lucky to make five very different films. Terence’s was the last in that line, and by no means the least. I think this was the most poetic material I had engaged in, and unquestionably the most serious and mature. I adored the process of shooting this film. I loved working with Rachel. She is completely fearless and without vanity in the way that she approaches her work. She’s capable of playing the extremity of her range, whether it’s anger, sadness, vulnerability or joy. As a woman, she’s incredibly game, and warm and fun. That was amazing. I liken Terence, behind his back, to a poet. Because sometimes between takes he’ll quote T.S. Eliot as a note, and that will be the exact, correct thing that you need to know. I do think film acting is not about preparation really, it’s about freedom, and once you’ve done your training, when you start shooting it’s about free-falling, and allowing accidents to happen. I’ve seen actors over-think things and be almost aiming for a target, and that’s dangerous. Allow life to happen, and trust your director and his crew to capture that with their motion picture cameras!
On the possibility of Terence making a contemporary film.
Terence: I did write a contemporary comedy set in the world of fashion, but I couldn’t get the money for it. It would be nice to do something modern. The difficulty is what the theme should be. I feel alienated from the modern world. Technology, I’m completely hopeless with. I can only make one kind of telephone call on my mobile. If you leave a message I don’t get it for three years. I feel it’s got a life of its own, that it’s controlling me. The more it becomes technologically subtle, the more it denies the world. Getting on the train, everyone on the carriage was texting, speaking, on laptops. You look around, and think surely, there’s got to be more to life than this. But then I’m getting old and miserable probably! It would be nice to do something funny, because being made to laugh is one of the great joys of life. That’s why the atmosphere on set should be warm and fun. You’ve got to be able to have a laugh. The worst thing of all is people with no sense of humour. They are just killing, you know, as they take themselves so seriously. I remember on one occasion, one actor was completely humourless, and at the end of the shot broke the most enormous fart. It was louder than Krakatoa. I said, ‘surely that’s not an opinion’. It was like trying to have a conversation with a corpse! You’ve got to have passion and humour. Without those, you’re dead.
Tom: I have to say, this stand-up to my left is exactly what you get on set. We had so much fun, that when I saw the film, I thought, where are all the jokes?
