Knife in the Water (1962)

White Sail

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Knife in the Water on DVD

It's hard to believe that Roman Polanski's feature debut came exactly 40 years before his Oscar-winning The Pianist, and his explorations of paranoia and male behavior remain refreshingly the same.

One of the greatest of all feature debuts, Knife in the Water concerns a husband and wife who stop to pick up a hitchhiker on their way to spend the weekend on their boat. They get off to a bad start and the two men subtly compete with each other throughout the rest of the trip -- with dire results.

Legend has it that San Francisco State University has a pristine 16mm print of this film in their library that can't be shown because the white subtitles disappear against the whiteness of the sailboat. Criterion presents the film in a beautifully watchable new transfer with clear, optional subtitles (it's the only feature film Polanski made in his native Polish).

DVD Details: Polanski insisted on one particular feature for this DVD: the inability to fast-forward. He ordered that control locked out so that viewers can only see his feature from beginning to end. Best of all, a second disc contains eight of Polanski's preceding short films, notably his award-winning Two Men and a Wardrobe. Even in these short films Polanski dabbled in the macabre and the paranoid. This is a must.

Starring: Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz
Written by: Jerzy Skolimowski, Jakub Goldberg, Roman Polanski
Directed by: Roman Polanski
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Language: Polish with English subtitles
Running Time: 93 minutes
Date: October 17, 2003