The first Polish film to be nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar, Roman Polanski's "Knife in the Water" is one of the most impressive director's debuts I've seen.

 

The story is simple. A wealthy couple on its way to spend a weekend on their yacht picks up a young and attractive hitchhiker. The middle-aged husband, a successful and cynical sportswriter invites the young man on board, perhaps to show off his nice yacht, his seamanship, and eventually, his superiority. His young and sexy wife does not say much but as the yacht moves along and tension between two men rises, she seems to enjoy the presence of a passenger and the obvious competition between them for her attention.

 

Made of the very simple material, the film is a brilliant psychological thriller that shows the young writer-director's extraordinary ability to create menace on the screen throughout the profound study of the characters' deep hidden emotions. Not as widely known as "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby", "Knife in the Water" is the perfect introduction to the work of the director whose craft in creating disturbing studies of anger, humiliation, fear, and sexuality is truly remarkable.

 

 

 

Devastating and beautiful early film from talented director Roman Polanski...but 'beautiful' in a sad, melancholy sense. Rarely have I seen a picture which so vividly captures the wonder of weather (gray and drizzly skies and choppy sea water, illuminated suddenly by a burst of sun rays).Sure,the film is in black-and-white,however that foreboding sky actually becomes a character in the plot involving a couple out for a boating weekend who pick up a hitchhiker and invite him along on their trip.

Not a whole lot of story (in the conventional sense), though both Jerzy Lipman's amazing cinematography and Krzysztof Komeda's jazzy score make the journey a worthy ride which builds in suspense and a creepy, muted kind of ambiance. Polanski's eye is unerring, but don't expect him to give into a big pay-off. The narrative is pretty much based in reality--it's grounded--and is without major outbursts, violence or melodrama.

*** from ****

 

 

 

Knife in the Water (1962), Polanski's feature debut, made when he was twenty-nine, is a tense overnight sailing trip taken by a man with his pretty younger wife and a handsome young drifter they find hitchhiking on their drive to the boat. The action is claustrophobic and fraught with menace – the two men are in conflict from the moment they first meet – and a cool jazz score gives the film an edgy contemporary air. The young man carries a long knife of the switch-blade type. Does the old rule apply, that a weapon, once introduced in a story, has to be used? Polanski was to do many other things in his career, but his ability to create unease was all there in this first one. And the shooting on the water is as effective as that to be found in another remarkable film of about the same time, Rene Clement's Plein Soleil, with Alain Delon as Tom Ripley.