Film Script with Letter of Provenance (8.5" x 11"); Written by Orson Welles ;
Fine+
Orson Welles, 1970

One of Orson Welles' legendary uncompleted projects, "The Deep," was filmed at sea off the coast of Yugoslavia between 1967 and 1969. The film starred Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey, Michael Bryant, and Oja Kodar. It would have marked Welles' second color film, following "The Immortal Story" (1968), which also featured Welles and Jeanne Moreau and was shot by the same cinematographer, Willy Kurant. Welles's undated screenplay, originally titled "Dead Reckoning," is primarily formatted in a two-column European style. The left column describes the visual elements to be shown on screen, while the right column presents the accompanying dialogue. The script consists of 167 mimeographed pages, brad-bound between black die-cut wrappers. It shows minor stains on the front cover and title page. This script is accompanied by a Letter of Provenance, indicating that it came from a friend of Peter Noble, author of the 1956 biography "The Fabulous Orson Welles," who was also a friend of Welles.

Welles' screenplay for "The Deep" was based on the novel, "Dead Calm," by Charles Williams, a crime thriller later filmed as "Dead Calm" (1989) by Australian director Phillip Noyce, starring Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. Unlike Welle's "The Stranger" or "Touch of Evil," "The Deep" has no political subtext to speak of, nor is it a parable like "The Immortal Story." "The Deep" is the closest thing to a pure action thriller that Welles ever wrote or directed, and had he been able to complete the film, it probably would have worked as such and would have become a significant Neo-Noir film. Welles' incomplete workprint of "The Deep" belongs to the Munich Film Museum.