Le couteau dans l'eau

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 ****

WELL,you can defined this great film just by one particular scene: the old man is rich,have good social position and took the boy on board to play the role of his mentor.However the young man was dragging the beautiful knife,which was_as he claimed_ the most important thing in his life.The guy was always playing the knife between his fingers and the old man was jealous about that.So when the boy went inside the yacht leaving the knife,the old man took the knife and tried to do the same.Suddenly the young appear and saw this.The only way for the old man to get away with some honour was to allow the boy do the play:he played the knife between the old man's fingers,looking straight into his eyes.Well the lady at the same time was swimming using a funny rubber cocodrile.So, imagine this beautiful scene with the knife,all the tension and suddenly we hear the woman shouting:'Andrzej, Andrzej,the cocodrile is making the bubbles',huh,when I was in the cinema the whole audience burst laughting after hearing that!. The woman stays in the background, just think why? There's another great funny shot when the woman lays there for a sunbathe with her small bikinis,well, her breast dominates the scene!. is the waving movement of the yacht who creates the sensual scene!.

Of course this scene was part of the longer plot ,the critics described this `knife scene' as the most famous and symbolic scene in all of Polanski films..Zygmunt Malanowicz,the actor who played the part of the young man said that he practice a lotnfor those scenes,polanski was afraid if he was prcticing long enough,finally everything was Ok.As Leon Niemczyc,the actor who played the mature role said" Malanowicz only gave me sligh scars'.The idea of the film was the strange competition between this two men.the jury and the prize was the woman.Polanski said he needed a actress that looked plain and normal in ordinary dress but intriguing in bikini!.

Polanski was not only interested in this kind of personages,he likes the relantionship between' the master and the servant' The domineering and the repressed ,as we can see in his short film' The Fat and the Lean' (1961, B&W, 15mins) or in features like Knife in the Water (1962); Cul-de-sac (1966);Dance of the Vampires(1967) etc.

This film is a masterpiece for a movie fan that understands sharp dialog and is interested in so called "mind" suspense. Characters in the movie are psychologically fully developed and the direction is superb; if you include Komeda's nervous jazz elements, the result is Perfection with big P. Polanski knows exactly what perfectionism is about - the devil is in the details, and the devil has no place in this great little classic. I recommend this movie to everyone that wants to get involved in film industry. Let it be the reminder why movies exist in the first place. It's the story that matters and it's the impact that dialog provides; if scenes or words stay with you long after you've seen the movie, you know that something BIG has hit you. You know that you actually start THINKING about yourself...

Knife in the Water is the debut feature film from Polish director Roman Polanski. It is a very minimalist film, shot in black and white, and spoken in Polish. It isn't much by you have to start somewhere. The film is about a rich writer and his young wife. They are going sailing for the day, but on the way to the docks they pick up a hitchhiking student whom we never learn the name of. They allow the student to accompany them on their day tour of the lake, a decision they will forever regret. Tensions start to slowly boil on the boat as relationships grow more and more heated. Almost the entire film takes place on the boat and these three are the only people in the whole movie. It is the definition of minimalist filmmaking in looks, as well as content.

Knife in the Water is, for lack of a better word, dull. Not much happens and I never feel like this film is going anywhere. It is a mere 94 minutes, but the first 70 of those minutes seem to be useless and mundane. There are moments when you think it is going to pick up, but it never really does. It is a slow film that chronicles every little moment of this trip to sea and it eventually grows tiresome to just watch these characters rig up ropes, steer the boat, cook food, eat food, play games, etc. The film does start to pick up in about the last twenty minutes as events start shaking up the story so that it can come to a vague resolution. And yet the film still lacks any kind of "aha!" moment and is devoid of any real wow! factor.

The film's central focus is on the relationship between the three characters on the book so most of the action is meant to develop the characters. The development is just as slow as everything else, however. We get to know these characters very well, but in the end we sort of regret it. There isn't much to know about these people and their stories lack any sort of intrigue. When I finally started to figure out these people I was hit with a faint breeze of anticlimactic. Then things begin to pick up, slow down again, become mildly interesting, then the film ends. And then as the screen fades to black I sort of just shrugged my shoulders and walked away.

You could argue that there is a lot of subtext here with lots of things open to interpretation. The film is vague in location, time, and character background, so there is a certain amount of this film that you could interpret in all sorts of bizarre and far fetched ways. Personally, I don't see it. I realize where a lot of the deeper prying into the film comes from. People want to see a lot more in this film than what I believe is actually there. What I did feel was a certain amount of tension that was underlying the entire film in a very discreet and possibly non existent way. Again, I feel like I was expecting something more to this film than what was actually there, thus the tension and uneasiness was all fabricated in my mind. This is just a weird movie to wrap your head around, and it doesn't seem to amount to much in the end.

Knife in the Water left me expecting a lot more. It just isn't an incredibly fascinating film. It isn't a bad film, but it isn't that great and I definitely wouldn't watch it again. I like Roman Polanski a lot and so I was really interested to see his very first feature film so it was pretty disappointing to see what little his first feature amounted to. If I had seen this in 1962 I probably wouldn't have thought much of Polanski, but of course I know how renowned he is in 2011, so Knife in the Water in no way hurts my opinion of the man's work.

In Polanski's feature debut, "Knife in the Water," strange power games were again to the fore, with ridiculous macho rivalries arising when a young looking man hitches a lift with a sportswriter and his attractive wife… Though the plot itself is slim, the film is distinguished by Polanski's precise visuals, which point the shifts in allegiance between the three characters through subtle groupings; impressively, although almost the whole film is situated on a small yacht, the effect is always cinematic rather than theatrical…

Polanski's film is implicit, ingenious, mesmerizing, and has artistic integrity… It is filled with a very different sort of suspense… There is no violence… The suspense is hinted at, suggested, refined tautly, glimpsed, did-he-mean-what-I-think-he-meant?

The rich man's confidence was in his possessions, among which was numbered his attractive wife, lying in bikini, teasing by arousing expectations between them on the deck… The student's confidence, casual, almost unaware, was in his very being... The husband resented the youth, the strength, the "cool," the easy virility of the student and worked out a compulsion to keep challenging them, to try to show his superiority…

Polanski was fair – each had his own strengths and skills; but the one obsessively resented the others