“Knife in the Water” is an interesting and thoroughly enjoyable film for many reasons. This was Roman Polanski’s first feature, and despite a title with the promise of a thriller, it is really more of an intellectual and psychologically-tense art film. The story is about a snide, gruff husband and detached, drab wife who pick up an enigmatic hitchhiker after almost running him over. For reasons unknown the husband invites the young man to join them for an overnight trip on their sailboat. The man and the boy begin, for lack of better of term, a verbal then physical cockfight, that culminates in an unexpected way.
This is not a run-of-the-mill thriller like one would expect. I was expecting someone to murder someone else in this film, but the director was smarter than that. The film is really about the male ego, and the stupid if not downright dangerous things men will do to stoke theirs. This film review published in 1963 when the movie was released sums things nicely: “The odd sort of personal hostility that smolders in many men who have trouble asserting their egos in this complex modern world is casually, cryptically and even comically dissected by the probing camera of Roman Polanski in his Knife in the Water… he (Polanski) flashes the chemistry of sex – the natural bestowal by the woman of her token of sympathy upon the more pathetic of these rivals and then her ultimate display of contempt for both immature male creatures. It makes for a neat ironic twist.” (http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C01E5D8113DE63BBC4151DFB6678388679EDE)
No comments:
Post a Comment