A man and his wife go sailing for the afternoon, taking a hitchhiker with them. As a storm approaches, they are forced to stay on the boat overnight. The threat of violence lurks.
This film will be of interest to anyone who admires the work of Roman Polanski. Polanski was said to be only the second protégé of the Lodz Film School to achieve international success. The first was Andrzej Wajda, and we can safely assume that Polanski was far more successful and influential.
This film in particular earned him an Oscar nomination for best foreign film, and catapulted him to fame by putting him on the cover of Time magazine in 1963. For me, I think the hype is too much: all I really learned from this picture is that Polanski likes wild jazz music and that in Poland people will steal your windshield wipers.
Critic Michael Koresky has a much deeper view of the film, saying it expresses class warfare, class envy, eroticism, tension, isolation and carries an "atmosphere of recumbent terror". This is grossly overstating the facts. There is some tension, and being that the film takes place on boat, isolation naturally follows. But the rest is a bit of a stretch.
The class envy or warfare aspect you can only see if told to look for it, which leads me to believe it is probably not there. One man is an author and another a hitchhiker, but any struggle they may have does not appear to arise from class. Eroticism is also a stretch, as I kept thinking the film would become erotic, but it borders on it a few times without crossing over. The closest to anything erotic in this film is a young man in tight shorts, and this is hardly sexually appealing. The atmosphere of recumbent terror is a beautiful phrase but would be better used on another film.
The film is strong in the area of visuals. Polanski has made a striking film in contrasting black and white, his angles and use of zooms and wide shots is excellent. So, on a technical level, I cannot say anything bad about the film. But the plot is just not there. I spent the film waiting for something to break... the tension would rise and lower, but never reached a crescendo. I cannot call this one of my favorite Polanski films.
This film will be of interest to anyone who admires the work of Roman Polanski. Polanski was said to be only the second protégé of the Lodz Film School to achieve international success. The first was Andrzej Wajda, and we can safely assume that Polanski was far more successful and influential.
This film in particular earned him an Oscar nomination for best foreign film, and catapulted him to fame by putting him on the cover of Time magazine in 1963. For me, I think the hype is too much: all I really learned from this picture is that Polanski likes wild jazz music and that in Poland people will steal your windshield wipers.
Critic Michael Koresky has a much deeper view of the film, saying it expresses class warfare, class envy, eroticism, tension, isolation and carries an "atmosphere of recumbent terror". This is grossly overstating the facts. There is some tension, and being that the film takes place on boat, isolation naturally follows. But the rest is a bit of a stretch.
The class envy or warfare aspect you can only see if told to look for it, which leads me to believe it is probably not there. One man is an author and another a hitchhiker, but any struggle they may have does not appear to arise from class. Eroticism is also a stretch, as I kept thinking the film would become erotic, but it borders on it a few times without crossing over. The closest to anything erotic in this film is a young man in tight shorts, and this is hardly sexually appealing. The atmosphere of recumbent terror is a beautiful phrase but would be better used on another film.
The film is strong in the area of visuals. Polanski has made a striking film in contrasting black and white, his angles and use of zooms and wide shots is excellent. So, on a technical level, I cannot say anything bad about the film. But the plot is just not there. I spent the film waiting for something to break... the tension would rise and lower, but never reached a crescendo. I cannot call this one of my favorite Polanski films.