Knife in the Water
Short description
A well-off Warsaw couple, Andrzej and Krystyna, drive toward the Masurian lakes for a weekend aboard their yacht. On the road they nearly run down a young hitchhiker, and despite the immediate friction between the two men, Andrzej invites him along for the day on the water. Once aboard, the husband sets out to demonstrate his experience, maturity and authority, while the younger man answers with his own challenges and turns his attention toward Krystyna. The tension between the two builds steadily and finally breaks into open confrontation.
Knife in the Water is Roman Polanski's first feature, released in 1962 and the opening entry in a directing career that the facts number at 23 films, followed by Repulsion in 1965. He wrote the screenplay with Jerzy Skolimowski and Jakub Goldberg. Leon Niemczyk plays Andrzej, Jolanta Umecka plays Krystyna and Zygmunt Malanowicz plays the young man, with Polanski himself providing the young man's voice and Anna Ciepielewska dubbing Krystyna. The film runs 94 minutes and was produced in Poland.
Its reputation rests on a strong critical standing: a critics' rating of 8.5/10 from 34 reviews sits well above its audience scores of 7.4/10 on IMDb and 7.3/10 on TMDB.
What's left behind the scenes
- Zygmunt Malanowicz, the actor who played the Boy, is naturally a brunette, so his hair had to be dyed white for the role.
- In the scene where the Young Man climbs onto the yacht, after Christina is left alone, the non-professional actress Jolanta Umecka could not convincingly react to the Young Man's sudden appearance. Therefore, one of the assistant directors secretly fired a blank cartridge near Jolanta's ear at the right moment. This take made it into the film.
- "Knife in the Water" is the first Polish film to be nominated for an Oscar.
- The yacht that appeared in the film previously belonged to Göring. During World War II, it was sunk in the Masurian Lakes, but then raised from the bottom and restored. Its original name is "Requin," which means "shark".
- Polanski initially envisioned his co-author Jerzy Skolimowski, who had just graduated from acting school at the time, for the role of the Young Man, but the idea had to be abandoned in favor of professional actor Zygmunt Malanowicz.
- The film's music was composed by Krzysztof Komeda, who was playing in an underground jazz orchestra at the time. It was enough for Polanski to show the film to Krzysztof for him to illustrate certain moments. This was the first Polish film to feature jazz.
- The film, which captured the emerging stratification of socialist society, drew criticism from Władysław Gomułka, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the PZPR (according to Polanski, Gomułka threw an ashtray at the screen during a pre-premiere screening), and was banned from release by Polish censors.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
