Frantic

I really don't understand how this movie could have such a low score at this site. Perhaps the European atmosphere doesn't appeal as much to Americans as it does to Europeans.....just like most french top-films never made it to the US.

Nevertheless, Roman Polanski is terribly underrated as a master of suspence. In fact, looking back at Hitchcock's movies (which is unfair, since they've been made in a completely different era) I don't think he ever made movies written this well.

For some reason most of the time film making starts with putting the director together with some of the best or most popular actors of that period. But this one certainly doesn't.... It shows that Polanski wrote this himself, with his close friend and film-writing-partner, because he really knows what this story is about - he knows where to be funny, where to make it tense, where to make things kind of 'sensual'.

The weird thing is, that looking at all the things that happen in this movie, it's still so relatively shot, and doesn't feel at all too paced, or rushed. No, it rather feels like you are watching a 4 hour movie.

Anyway, those who have ever lost track of someone (for a short moment) in a strange, big city or those who have ever tried to find out something in France, will know and recognize exactly what Harrison Ford's character is going through - people not taking you seriously, people who don't care, people who refuse (or aren't able) to help you in your own language. All these things are put in this movie, so well, that -at least for me- it is really very realistic.

Most writers and directors nowadays seem to ruin most great movies/thrillers by not being able to make a good ending to the developing story. At one point our main character has got to find out what is happening....and how to do that, without taking away the suspence is incredibly difficult. Roman Polanski has done this very well, by not making this story too complicated and slowly unraveling a -looking back- simple mistery. There is no need to glue parts of the story together to make it all fit, or just skip parts to make it easier for him/you.

No, this is the first movie I've seen where when someone looses his shoes on a roof, he has to walk barefoot the next day. Most movies just ignore these little facts, but Roman makes it always difficult for himself in order to make it more easy (or, more easy to believe) for us.

There are no things that make me wonder 'how this is possible' - no, if you are a well known surgeon, many other surgeons from all over the world will know you. And if you will go to a convention in Paris, it's not at all unrealistic that you will run into a few of your friends...even when it's such a big city. Having problems with luggage when you're flying, isn't unrealistic too...nor is the story of this movie, the reason why what happened, happened.

Although I've never understood why our friend wanted his own wife back, instead of staying with the beautifull french girl ;) Again, that's what most people would do in real life....

Bart

What was truly amazing about Frantic was Polanski's ability to turn ordinary situations (finding and opening a briefcase, climbing on the stairs, grabbing the timing device, even driving from the airport) into extended and memorable scenes where the level of dramatic tension was extended to the point beyond slight interest.

Take the scene in the bedroom when Harrison Ford is originally searching for the briefcase and trying to open it up. Polanski does not end with the briefcase here. Later scenes involving it evoke a remembrance of the detail that went into crafting the first scene. Ford's trip onto the rooftop is treated the same way. The scene does not end with him neatly hiding on the roof. It is wracked with complications. The four sitting at the table about to grab the stolen timing device. Even the dance scene, surrounded with potential spies and unknowns, fills itself with Ford's eroticism and paranoia equally well.

The movie is filled with other examples like these, which make it a slow and delayed series of expectant occurences. The movie flows well from a sequence of dramatic sources of tension. I cannot believe that I had seen it earlier. It is truly a shame that Polanski is effectively banished from this country.

"Frantic" is the most Hitchcock-influenced movie of Roman Polanski. The director has touched almost every cinematic genre, although always with a special taste for mysteries and disturbing elements. That's his trademark.

"Frantic" is a more conventional movie in Polanski filmography, but it's very well done and the sensation of something disquieting –typical of his films- is always there. An American doctor (Harrison Ford) goes to Paris for a medical congress with his wife. In their hotel the woman disappears without explanations and Harrison Ford begins a nightmarish research throughout the city…

The film reminds us of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller "North by Northwest" (1959) –in that movie a misunderstanding is the motor of the story, here it's something similar but more enigmatic, because we don't know who kidnapped doctor's wife.

This is the first cinematic collaboration between the Polish-French director and his future wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner –she's the girl who helps Harrison Ford in this adventure.

Intriguing and exciting: these are the words for "Frantic". Perhaps it's not considered among Polanski's most important movies, but it still looks fresh and entertaining.

One of Polanski's most Americanized efforts, Frantic, begins very well. Through a leisurely exposition between a happily married doctor and wife on a business trip in Paris, Polanski's camera at some stage begins to tell us things through ominous zoom-ins and steadicams. We see him thinking, wondering when he should start worrying. We are comfortably in the same perspective as Harrison Ford's protagonist. But this pace becomes an obstruction later on. This ironically low-key thriller's action is periodically interrupted by unnecessary scenes with no subtext, for example a dance sequence between the internally agitated Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner.

It is a true paradox that pace is an issue for a film called Frantic. So much so that I wonder upon reflection if it was Polanski's intention to compress the briskness of the action to familiarize us with the protagonist's internalization of fear, worry and bewilderment. Whatever the answer is, it was not a conducive creative device.

The first half is promising in large part because of Polanski's experience with the loss of his own wife to random circumstance with murderers. It made me feel as if I was going to see an intense, personal film that dealt with that eternally wounding part of his life, sadly one of the many. Alas, I didn't get that. Frantic is a formula suspense film easily pigeonholed with the rest of the 1980s Hollywood thrillers.

The hero's essential obstacle being that he's a fish out of water, an American businessman in Paris who speaks no French and thus can hardly navigate his way through the city, much less a trail to his wife in which time is of the essence. The film would truly live up to a degree of tension if his interactions with Parisians were realistic. They all seem willing to help, none of them annoyed by an American archetype anxiously babbling English at them in their native country. I've heard many stories from friends and writers who've been to Paris. They do not bless Paris with a reputation for being nice and accommodating to English-speaking Americans. One friend told me that he was not allowed to have his passport back unless he asked for it in French. Another told me that when he tried to order a meal at a restaurant in English, the clerk slammed her hand on the table and ordered that he speak French. My own experience in Paris might be vastly different, and it is no doubt a beautiful and culturally rich city, but there would inevitably be at least a blemish of resistance against Ford's conventionally American character.

There is, however, a great sense of the hero's naivété with danger or intrigue. The tone is never too tongue-in-cheek to diminish the tension of the narrative and never too pitiful to deprive him of his credibility as a serious dramatic character. There is a terrific scene in which he must enter a woman's apartment from the outside ledge through a diagonal window. He must carry a satchel with important contents. He is also a well-fed middle-aged American doctor who never thought by any stretch of the imagination that a simple business trip would require him to do this. There is a not-so-good scene that suggests the same thing, but leaves us with a major story gap, during a scene at an airport where he's scared that the contraband-sniffing dogs will discover the dope in the suitcase. The dogs don't, and yet not only does Ford appear to have forgotten about at least a gram of coke in his pocket, the police dogs don't notice either.

Generally, Frantic is a genre film with genre conventions: the dubious female companion, the inept American intelligence agents, American paranoia concerning terrorism and a predictable ending that was only unpredictable to me because I felt sure that Polanski would take bolder steps. It is nevertheless an entertaining movie, but not a riveting one and not particularly memorable.

A truly brilliant film, a touch of Hitchcock, The acting from all players is superb in my book, I adore the music which truly complements the atmosphere, Recommended a must watch..