Three Films: Knife in the Water / Repulsion / Cul-de-Sac

by Roman Polański

Book by Polanski, Roman

Hardcover

First published December 1, 1975

About the author

Roman Polanski (born Rajmund Roman Liebling) is an Academy Award-winning Polish-French film director, writer, actor, and producer. After beginning his career in Poland, Polanski became a celebrated arthouse filmmaker, and Hollywood director of such films as Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974).

Shortly after the young Polanski’s family settled in Kraków, Poland, his parents were interned in a Nazi concentration camp, where his mother died. Polanski escaped internment and survived the war years by finding occasional refuge with Catholic families and often fending for himself. At age 14 he appeared on the stage, later acting in films directed by Andrzej Wajda, the leading figure in the Polish film revival of the 1950s. Polanski studied directing at the State School of Cinema in Łódź. By the time he graduated in 1959, he had already directed several award-winning short films. He made the French film Le Gros et le maigre (1961; The Fat and the Lean) and then returned to Poland to direct his first full-length feature, Nóż w wodzie (1962; Knife in the Water), a tense psychological study of sexual rivalry that brought him international fame.

After he left Poland in 1962, Polanski made several major films in Great Britain and the United States. Repulsion (1965) traces the psychotic breakdown of a young woman whose fear and loathing of sex drive her to commit several murders. The dark comedies Cul-de-Sac (1966) and The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me but Your Teeth Are in My Neck (1967) followed. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is a thriller about a young New York City wife who unwittingly bears a child by the devil. Polanski’s second wife, the Hollywood actress Sharon Tate, was pregnant when she was brutally murdered (along with four others) by Charles Manson and his acolytes in 1969. The violence of her death influenced his next film, Macbeth (1971), a gory yet artistically effective adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare. Chinatown (1974) reinvigorated the moribund film noir genre. These films were notable for their careful buildup of mood and suspense, their subtle handling of human psychology, and their fascination with evil in its various forms.

In 1977 Polanski was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful intercourse with a minor. He subsequently jumped bail and fled to France, where he remained active in both the theatre and motion pictures. His subsequent films include Tess (1979), based on Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Frantic (1988), a suspense film, Bitter Moon (1992), an erotic comedy, and Death and the Maiden (1994), a psychological drama adapted from a play by the Chilean author Ariel Dorfman. In 1989 Polanski married the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, who starred in Frantic, Bitter Moon, and the 1999 mystery The Ninth Gate. The Pianist (2002), which tells the true story of Władyslaw Szpilman’s survival of the Nazi-occupation of Poland during World War II, shared much in common with Polanski’s own childhood experience and earned the Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival and a best director Oscar for Polanski. He followed that with Oliver Twist in 2005.

Reviews

[Anthony McGill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The screenplays of the first three Roman Polanski directed films.

His famous first: the award winning Polish drama "KNIFE IN THE WATER"/"Noz w wodzie" (1962/US: 1963) BAFTA nominated for Best Film and Academy Award nominated as Best Foreign Language Film.
Original screenplay by Kuba Goldberg, Polanski and Jerzy Skolimowski.

And his two British produced thrillers:
"REPULSION" (1965) - original screenplay by Gerard Brach & Roman Polanski. (Adaptation and additional dialogue by David Stone.)
"CUL-DE-SAC" (1966) - original screenplay by Gerard Brach & Roman Polanski. (Translation by John Sutro.)

With an introduction by Boleslaw Sulik, an interview with Polanski and critical analysis from articles in journals "Sight and Sound" and "Cahiers du Cinema."
24 pages of stills.

[mahdi mousavi nejad · Rating 2 out of 5]

* به نظرم این نکته که در فیلم نام جوان را نمی‌دانیم بااهمیت باشد. حتی یک بار کریستینا از او نامش می‌پرسد که بی‌جواب می‌ماند. وجود سایه‌وار مرد جوان و از این چیزها.
* چاقو را بعضی از منتقدان نشانه‌ای فرویدی دانسته‌اند و از مثلث عشقی و این‌ چیزها نام برده‌اند که به نظر من تعبیر و تفسیری کلیشه‌شده و نامراد در داستان است. همه تلاش داستان (که بی شباهت به تلاش داستان بعضی کارهای دیگر پلانسکی مانند «مرگ و دوشیزه» نیست) در خلق موقعیتی ویژه، ناب و انسانی است که در «چاقو در آب» به احتمال فراوان در آن لحظه‌ای شکل می‌گیرد که کریستیانا آن جمله مرکزی را به زبان می‌آورد: «نه او غرق نشده بود. درواقع غرق شدن او همان قدر واقعیت دارد که وفاداری من به تو.» در پی‌گیری داستان، سنگینی این لحظه مرکزی داستان به‌خوبی حس می‌شود و به نظر من این لحظات سنگین و کندگذر که هرچند در فیلم، کوتاه باشد، تا مدت‌ها در ذهن مخاطب بجا می‌ماند، از ویژگی‌های اساسی کار پلانسکی به عنوان یک «مؤلف» است؛ دقیقاً همان لحظه‌ی ناب در فیلم «مرگ و دوشیزه» که مخاطب سرگردان گناه‌کار بودن یا نبودن آن میهمان ناخوانده می‌ماند و هیچ راه فراری را نمی‌یابد.
* به‌‌خصوص احساس می‌کنم که «چاقو در آب» و «مرگ و دوشیزه» از یک چشمه که بی‌شک در نگرش پولانسکی به دنیا سر دارد، آب می‌خورند. و جالب این‌جاست که در هر دو اثر، یک زن و شوهر و یک شخص سوم داریم و بس و فضای حوادث بسیار محدود و ناگسترده (در اولی، قایق و در دومی، کلبه‌ی بیرون از شهر) است.