The first film they screened was Polanski’s debut feature “Knife In The Water”, and it was one of the titles I hadn’t seen on the big screen. As much as I enjoy “Knife In The Water”, it has never been one of my absolute favourites. That said however, there is no doubt that this is a stunning debut from Polanski.
“Knife In The Water” starts with a married couple in a car, bickering, while on their way to their boat for a sailing trip they had planned. While on the drive, they pick up a hitch-hiker and once they reach their destination, the husband asks the unnamed stranger if he would like to come aboard and join them on their journey. As soon as the hitcher is on board, the husband, Andrzej, embarrasses him by showing him just how little he knows about sailing. This angers the hitcher but he doesn’t retaliate in a violent matter, instead he tries to show off (in front of Andrzej’s wife, Kryztyna) in different ways such as climbing the mast to the top barefoot (something that Andrzej obviously cannot do), until the two men are constantly trying to one-up the other. I’m sure all of this is done to try and gain the attention of the only female on board, but ironically she pays them little attention. It isn’t long during these one-upmanships that the hitch-hiker reveals that he is carrying a large knife, and suddenly the atmosphere changes and it becomes more suspenseful. You just never know whether these games the men are playing will erupt into violence and now with the addition of a knife on board, the tension is palpable.
I must admit that my own memory of “Knife In The Water” was quite a bit off in regards to what actually happens in the film. I was sure that the knife did come into play, and quite violently, at the end, but this is not the case at all. In fact the suspense comes from another place all together when the hitch-hiker is “accidently” knocked overboard. From the beginning we know that he cannot swim, but with all the male posturing going on, Andrzej refuses to go in after him, because he is sure that the boy is lying. When the hitcher does not resurface, Krystyna begins to taunt her husband (after being sick to death of the games the two men have been playing), and asks if he will truly be a man and go to the police and report the death, or will he pretend that the young boy did not exist and go on living his life.
The highlight of the film is the incredible script which was written by Polanski himself along with another Polish filmmaking heavyweight, Jerzy Skolimowski. It tackles its subject in an interesting and quite subtle way, more in the form of these tense conversations rather than the actions of these two men. It is interesting to note that “Knife In The Water” seems like the typical debut film, which often deal with limited characters and very few locations, in an attempt to keep budget costs down. All this is true of “Knife In The Water” except Polanski being Polanski had to make it different and harder by shooting his debut film on water, which you would imagine would have been extremely difficult for an experienced director, but such is Polanski’s talent that he pulls this off amazingly. The decisions he makes with some of his shots are brilliant and unexpected, showing very early in his career just how talented he was at composing his shots. I must admit that I love shots where a character is in close-up in the foreground while there is action happening behind them in the background, and there are quite a few shots like this in “Knife In The Water”.
The actors all perform their roles adequately although I was a little shocked to learn that both Jolanta Umecka, (who plays Kryztyna), and Zygmunt Malanowicz, (who plays the hitch-hiker), were dubbed by someone else in post production. However I am not shocked to learn that the hitch-hiker was dubbed by Polanski himself because when I was watching the film, I actually thought that his voice was so similar to that of Polanski’s. Apparently Jolanta Umecka was very hard to work with, because she was not a trained actress and she found it very hard to emote. However, ironically, whenever you ask anyone about “Knife In The Water”, she is the first thing they remember (which is no doubt due to her striking looks). Interestingly, she created a first in Polish cinema too, because with this film she was the first actress to disrobe on camera in a Polish film.
Speaking of Poland, the film was not a success in Polanski’s homeland, in fact it was attacked quite brutally due to the fact that it was a new kind of film and it wasn’t like everything else being made there (most films of that time dealt with the atrocities of the past war). Feeling unwelcome in his own country, Polanski left Poland after the failure of “Knife In The Water” and to this day, he has never made another film there, which ultimately was great for the rest of the world, as this was the catalyst that saw Polanski head down a path that would give us such classics like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown”. Who knows if these films would have existed if “Knife In The Water” was a success in Poland and Polanski choose to stay there longer?
Overall, while it is a fantastic debut film, and extremely well crafted (only the jazzy score really dates the film), this is not my favourite Polanski film, but anyone wanting to see the beginnings of a great cinematic talent and how he came to be, must not miss the chance to see this film.
3 ½ Stars.
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