Knife in the Water

Middle-aged cocksureness, arrogance and incomprehension versus teenage revolt, with a young woman as a sort of arbiter, is the theme of this lively and inventive little pic.

Polanski's first feature, a model of economic, imaginative film-making which, in many ways, he has hardly improved upon since.

Knife in the Water has one of those simple, clearly expressed narratives that grabs you and holds you even though not much goes on.

It eminently justifies the interest in its acid contents and in the techniques of its young director that it stirred.

The sexual tensions build slowly and subtly, and when they explode into violence, it seems to be the desired result.

[VIDEO ESSAY} For his debut feature film - after graduating from Poland's famed National Film School in Lodz - Roman Polanski set out to break several golden rules of academic filmmaking.

Taut, compelling, and engaging, Polanski's Oscar-nominated thriller is one of the most brilliant debuts in film history.

The acting, music and camerawork all weave together to create an unexpectedly magical, brilliantly crafted, intensely sensuous experience.

Circles and triangles govern Polanski's great, brackish anecdote about the instability of human interaction

Attests to the idea that Polanski was from the very onset, a filmmaker with a singular and disturbing vision. His is clearly a cinema of obsession.

...a dazzling black-and-white chamber piece

Knife In The Water is a claustrophobic, slow-burning expose of jealousy, spite and eroticism.