Knife in the Water (1962), Polanski's feature debut, made when he was twenty-nine, is a tense overnight sailing trip taken by a man with his pretty younger wife and a handsome young drifter they find hitchhiking on their drive to the boat. The action is claustrophobic and fraught with menace the two men are in conflict from the moment they first meet and a cool jazz score gives the film an edgy contemporary air. The young man carries a long knife of the switch-blade type. Does the old rule apply, that a weapon, once introduced in a story, has to be used?
Polanski was to do many other things in his career, but his ability to create unease was all there in this first one. And the shooting on the water is as effective as that to be found in another remarkable film of about the same time, Rene Clement's Plein Soleil, with Alain Delon as Tom Ripley.
Polanski was to do many other things in his career, but his ability to create unease was all there in this first one. And the shooting on the water is as effective as that to be found in another remarkable film of about the same time, Rene Clement's Plein Soleil, with Alain Delon as Tom Ripley.