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The solitude, or rather isolation, that envelops so much of Polanski’s early cinema is seen again in Knife in the Water. He told The New York Times Magazine in 1971: “What I like is a realistic situation where things don’t quite fit in. I like to begin with a mood, an atmosphere. I begin to people the atmosphere with characters. When I thought of Knife in the Water, I thought, first of the north of Poland where I used to sail and of a theme that wouldn’t involve large numbers of characters.” In Knife in the Water, the Polish lake district appears utterly uninhabited. Not a single other human being even slips into the frame. So, despite the immense skies and vast stretches of water, the three characters remain trapped in a hermetic, Sartrean huis clos.

Knife in the Water focused on the concept of non-conformity, on the subtle battles that erupt between the haves and have-nots. Most of the film’s witticisms are at the expense of the privileged, even pampered married couple, the prosperous “Establishment” in a Poland where most people were still struggling to cope with everyday poverty. More intriguingly, Polanski omits all reference to World War II, marking an escape from a past that obsessed Wajda and the somewhat older generation of Polish filmmakers. The youth in Knife in the Water (who Polanski considered playing himself) is a restless spirit, reluctant to accept orthodox habits, and his exit from the film, skipping nimbly away across the floating logs to the unknown promise of the mainland, confirms his survival instincts.

These elements work in alliance with the film’s dialogue time and again

ith Michelangelo Antonioni, Claude Chabrol, Louis Malle, and with Central European directors like Miklos Jancso, Jan Nemec, and Ewald Schorm

chamber cinema,

And at every turn, the weather dictates the fickle mood. The desolate horizons in every direction. The waters of the lake, now placid, now whipped into irritation. The glaring sun at noon. The milky light of a summer’s evening. The dark, ominous massing of clouds.