Knife in the Water
A film by Roman
Polanski
1962/Poland/B&W/94
minutes
10th November; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theater
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.in
Roman Polanski's sensational 1962 debut is an example of how
a superlative director makes a film from the simplest materials. If movies were
music, Roman Polanski’s electrifying Knife in the Water would have to be
classed as some kind of trio – intense, 94-minute combat between three human
instruments.
The premise is famously simple: a married, bourgeois Polish couple
called Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) pick up a 19 -year-old hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz), and invite him on
board their yach, mainly so that Andrzej can try and prove himself the alpha.
almost all of its force – and it’s without doubt one of the
most forceful feature debuts ever made – derives from truly magnificent
black-and-white composition, credit for which must go to Polanski, his
cinematographer Jerzy Lipman, and the camera operators too.
You could hardly
find a better teaching aid for the maximising of tension, suggestion and
meaning through camera placement. It’s an exercise, and one you’d have to give
top marks, in finding ways to place all three characters in the frame, or
sometimes two, or occasionally just the one, to make every phase in their
devious power struggle visually eloquent and compelling.
There’s hardly a shot that isn’t laced with purpose. Roman
Polanski’s first feature is a brilliant psychological thriller that many
critics still consider among his greatest work. The story is simple, yet the
implications of its characters’ emotions and actions are profound.
Roman Polanski
Roman Raymond Polanski (born August 18, 1933) is an
award-winning 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). Polanski is considered one of the world’s great film directors.
1939, Poland was invaded and occupied by Germany and the
Soviet Union, in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The Polański family was
a target of Nazi persecution and forced into the Kraków Ghetto, along with
thousands of other Polish Jews. Roman Polański's mother was subsequently gassed
in the Auschwitz concentration camp. His father barely survived the Austrian
concentration camp Mauthausen-Gusen. Polański himself escaped the Kraków
Ghetto.
He was educated at the Polish film school in Łódź, Poland,
from which he graduated in 1959. Polański speaks six languages: Native Polish
language, Russian, English, French, Spanish, and Italian.
He is also known for his tumultuous personal life. He lived
in German-occupied Poland during WWII and in 1969, his pregnant wife, Sharon
Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family. In 1977 he was involved in an American
sex scandal, he fled to France where he has lived a rather reclusive life with
his wife the gifted and skilled actress Emmanuelle Seigner and their two
children.
He has continued to direct films from Europe, including
Frantic (1988), Death and the Maiden (1994), The Ninth Gate, the Academy
Award-winning and Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winning The Pianist (2002),
and Oliver Twist (2005).
Polanski is admired by many other filmmakers all over the
world for his genius as a director. 
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