Strangers On A …..Boat- Roman Polanski’s Knife In Water

 

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Knife In Water, in Polish with English subtitles, directed  by Roman Polanski, 1962  

 

As the film under review, Roman Polanski’s first feature length film Knife in Water, amply demonstrates the young French directors were not the only ones enamored of American black and white noir in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Clearly the Polish director Polanski who got into plenty of trouble on his own most of it unjustified for his sexual foibles in America later “got the bug” from his stark use of black and white cinematography to the laid back be-bop sexy sax music in the background to the equally stark and minimalist dialogue. This is one serious effort to work up on his own hook what he saw in those contraband film that he searched through the archives for with a fine comb. No wonder all kinds of film critics saw/see this film as one of his best works. (I prefer “new wave” noir Chinatown but I could be talked into this film on aesthetic grounds). Funny that this film is considered a classic to in its turn be mined for cinematic nuggets, and rightly so, since the plot line is simple and the acting is almost laughingly amateurish and over the top (although that gives it one more additional reason to be placed in the great category).

Here is how this one played out-on the surface. An older professional man and his younger wife are off on holiday, off to a lake to take their sailboat out for a cruise. (Having that boat a sign of status, no question in post-World War II communist Poland where apparently some people were more equal than others.)  An average day out in the sun and surf. On the way they “ran into,” pun intended, a hitchhiker, a college guy, living out his Jack Kerouac dream, who eventually wound up sailing away unto the mystic with them. That’s the over-lay, pretty straight forward, but once the three “combatants” got on board, got themselves isolated if only for an afternoon like something out of Dostoevsky the glue that holds society together began to fall apart. They, frankly, got on each other’s nerves, let the underlying sexual and social tensions between then get frayed, very frayed. Especially the two men, who in blatant caveman pre-feminist style, locked horns to “out man” each other in the eyes of the young impressionable wife (who had been maybe a little bored with over righteous hubby too when the deal went down).

The wheel turned though when the knife the young college guy had with him as useful for many purposes when you are on the road, slipped into the water after the husband had grabbed it from the kid. Hence the title, the English subtitle anyway, of this one. From that point on it is man against man against woman. First round to hubby both for dumping the knife in the great blue sea and for dumping the young man overboard. Second round to Joe College because he feigned being drowned and wife, then hubby went to find him with no results (he had been hiding behind a convenient buoy) so either missing or drowned, a big legal headache brewing. Third round no question to Joe College after he had sex with the wife when he saw hubby had taken off back to port (that “sex scene” not shown on screen in Catholic Poland or puritanical early 1962 cinema take your pick). Fourth round to wifey since she was able to use her “indiscretion” to bring hubby down a notch or too. Round five a tie between wife who had the old man baffled and Joe College because he got that sex he was looking for at hubby’s expense. Yeah, this was a great film, with all kinds of symbolic gestures and hidden psychological tensions. Thanks Roman.