The penultimate film in this Polanski Retrospective is the film that he made directly after “Repulsion”, his 1966 picture “Cul-De-Sac”, which unfortunately I find probably the most frustrating of all of his films. There is so much about this film that I love, but overall as a whole, it just doesn’t really work for me. I love the initial set-up, with the two gangsters hiding out at a newly-married couple’s house (which just happens to be a castle) while waiting for their boss to come and get them after a failed job. In fact, most of the first half of the film I really enjoy, which has some fantastic black comedy throughout, but every time that I watch “Cul-De-Sac”, there is one scene that always takes me out of the film, and I start to lose interest. It is a scene about halfway through which is done in one long continuous take – all eight and a half minutes of it. The scene takes place just after they have buried one of the gangsters (who succumbs to his wounds), all the while drinking the wife’s homemade vodka. Now intoxicated, the gangster and the husband have a heart-to-heart about his wife, the castle they bought and just how unhappy he is (contrary to how he looks). While this conversation takes place, the wife goes into the ocean to clean herself off.
While the scene is a good one emotionally, as we truly start to find out something about our characters, the way that it is shot just loses all the atmosphere and energy that the film had before it. The whole scene feels labored and you actually feel the time going by. What makes it worse is that Polanski choose to shoot the scene in one shot not for any artistic reason, but because he was behind schedule and the money-men were on his case, so to catch up he shot the scene in a day, that would normally take five. I suppose that this is a reality of filmmaking, but it is a shame because the scene just loses all the energy of the film previous and I always find my mind wondering during it, thus taking me completely out of the film. In fact that seems to be my main problem with the film in general – the pacing. It just feels too languid. I think if it had been tightened up in a few places, we would be talking about this film in a much higher regard, and dare I say it, could be claimed as another Polanski masterpiece.
For the most part, it is an incredibly well acted film. Both Donald Pleasance as George (the husband) and especially Lionel Stander as Richard (the head gangster) are outstanding, and Jack MacGowran impresses in his small role of the doomed gangster (he impressed Polanski so much that he was immediately cast in his next film “The Fearless Vampire Killers”), but unfortunately Francoise Dorleac as Teresa (the wife) doesn’t fare as well. Francoise Dorleac is actually the sister of Catherine Deneuve and seeing “Cul-De-Sac” immediately after “Repulsion”, you notice the similarities between the two girls straight away. Both are very striking and gorgeous women, although in terms of acting (in regards to the Polanski films they starred in), I believe Deneuve was the better actress. This may be because Dorleac’s character, Teresa, is quite unlikable in “Cul-De-Sac” plus she has a lot more dialogue than her sister did in “Repulsion”, and thus her thick French accent (as well as her knowledge of the English language) becomes more of an issue here. Sadly Dorleac only made three more films after “Cul-De-Sac”, as she was killed when her sports car flipped and burned on a roadway in Nice, France, about a year after Polanski’s film was released. She was only 25 years of age. We were never given the chance to see if she would have become as big a star as her sister ended up becoming.
Gil Taylor is back doing cinematography duties after his brilliant work in “Repulsion” and like that film, his work here is also outstanding. After being cramped indoors the whole time for the previous film, I’m sure that it would have been a nice change of pace to work in the open spaces of the island that “Cul-De-Sac” is set, although he has stated in interviews that he had a hell of a time making it all match, due to the crazy climate of the island. Personally I think he does a magnificent job disguising this fact.
Polanski is also back with his regular screenwriting partner Gerard Brach, and what they bring to the table is a great story with some hilarious dialogue and situations. They also continue to tackle very similar themes from Polanski’s first film “Knife In The Water”, and that is what it means to be a man, and how a man’s pride or ego affects the way he reacts to a situation. As well as all of that, it investigates male and female dynamics and even turns them on their head (for example, when Richard first breaks into the house and is confronted by Donald Pleasance’s character, he is dressed in a female’s nightgown with his face all done up in make-up). In fact, if you strip it all down, “Cul-De-Sac” is really an alternative version of “Knife In The Water” with the exception being that the female character in this film takes a much more aggressive role and attempts to influence the actions of the men, where as in “Knife In The Water”, the men’s actions are all for the benefit of the woman (who is much more passive). An example of this is when the couple are locked in their bedroom while Richard calls his boss. Teresa verbally abuses George for not doing anything, claiming that a real man would have stood up for his wife. She continues to belittle him while at the same time trying to egg him on in an attempt to get George to act.
The title of the film, “Cul-De-Sac”, is really quite brilliant as it basically describes all of the character’s situations, as well as a few other points in the film. The title roughly translates to “Dead End” which is true of many things in the film. First the castle itself is situated at the end of a road that twice a day, due to the tides, is unreachable from the outside world. The entire road gets flooded making it impossible to reach or leave when the tide is in. Secondly, both the situations of the gangster and the husband are in fact “dead ends”, [SPOILERS] with the gangster’s end being a literal death, and for George, he realizes by the end of the film that he is in an emotional dead end, by being in a loveless marriage.
Speaking of ends, the final shot of the film is so brilliant and so utterly heartbreaking. We finally see the impact of the emotional torment George has had bottled up inside him, since the end of his previous marriage, when we see him sobbing on a rock and calling out his previous wife’s name.
Overall, while there is a lot to like about “Cul-De-Sac”, my problems with the pacing and my dislike of Francoise Dorleac’s character, make the film a frustrating experience for me. However, it is definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of black comedies or Polanski in general. One final note is that, sadly, this was the last time that Polanski shot a film in black and white.
3 Stars.
Again my wife came along to see this too (after all it was a double-header with “Repulsion”)and basically didn’t like this film either, although she said that she liked it a little more than “Repulsion” because it had more of a plot. She gave the film 1and ½ stars.
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