Cul-De-Sac. (12A.)
Directed by Roman Polanski. 1966
Starring Donald Pleasence, Francoise Dorleac, Lionel Stander, Jack MacGowran, Robert Dorning, Marie Kean, William Franklyn and Jacqueline Bisset. In Black and White. 112 min. Available to buy on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection from the 27th February
Superficially there is nothing especially Sixties about Cul-De-Sac, a film located entirely on the unswinging Holy Island of Lindisfarme, a ragged coastal outpost with a 14th century castle that is intermittently disconnected from the mainland by the tide. It's a place adrift from the lurches of popular culture and the cast, (with the possible exception of Dorleac, Franklyn and Bisset) have no particular affiliation with the period. Yet Polanski's third film still seems like a fabulous sixties artifact, a film filled with a sense of adventure and fearlessness. It is also reminds us of a time when Polanski was just a quirky little man from the other side of the Iron Curtain and his name had no more sinister connotations attached to it than the slightly disturbing films he put that name to.
Cul-de-sac is an exercise in wide open space claustrophobia. In some sense it is the last of his student films, the last of his creepy black and white exercises in confined tension. After making something of a name at film festivals for his shorts, such as Two Men and a Wardrobe, he introduced himself to the international audiences with three black and white films: Knife In The Water, made in Poland, and then two films made in England: Repulsion and this. In Repulsion, Catherine Deneuve slowly goes mad alone in her South Kensington flat. Knife in the Water has three people stuck together on a small yacht but their confinement is contrasted with the vast skies and the expanse of water around them.
His third film is a black comedy in which a wounded gangster (Stander) on the run blunders into a strained domestic situation: Pleasance and his new young trophy, Dorleac, already coming apart, stuck out on their Northumberland coast outpost. The opening scene, a car driving along an empty road across a flat barren terrain broken only by telegraph polls suggests we are somewhere in the middle of the States, miles from anywhere. Within ten minutes though the freedom and space has been wiped away and the tide has reclaimed those wide open expanses. From being small figures isolated in a large landscape they are trapped in this drafty fortress. The three indulge in various power games, while the gangster tries to get assistance for his badly wounded colleague, MacGowran.
Location, location, location – Lindisfarme dominates the film, is a force stronger than any of the characters. The strange half light of summer nights on the Northumberland coast is beautifully captured by Gil Taylor's cinematography. It is just inconceivable to imagine the film set anywhere else. Or rather it is all too conceivable to imagine; and imagine how dull it would be set in an ordinary isolated country house.
Because the set up is really quite rudimentary. There's nothing original about the situation, or the pessimism it is pushing. The main thrust of the script is to express its admiration for the style of Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, though I guess both of them would find the script (the first of Polanski's collaborations with Gerard Brach) a bit wordy and obvious. The lines of conflict are too clearly drawn: the husband is weak, clinging pathetically to his notion of civilisation; the young wife is in desperate need of excitement and doesn't care at what cost; the gangster is the harbinger of disorder but is meekly subservient to his own boss, a Mr Katelbach, who is a Godot by any other name.
With a different cast or a different a castle this would be a problem but Cul-de-sac has it's own special charm. It's a very winning, crowd pleasing form of pessimism; a bleak, knockabout pantomime. You can't help warming to it, even though it might have been aptly titled Repulsion itself, if that hadn't already been taken. Pleasance and MacGowran are particularly good. Only Pleasance could make a wimp so skin-crawling sinister. His cowardice seems more malevolent than Stander's bullying and coercion. And Polanski pulls off some striking scenes, particularly the long take where the airplane flies past. It's of its time, but this sixties can of worms still has plenty of squirm left in it fifty years on.
Other Polanski reviews
The Ghost
Carnage
Venus In Furs
Directed by Roman Polanski. 1966
Starring Donald Pleasence, Francoise Dorleac, Lionel Stander, Jack MacGowran, Robert Dorning, Marie Kean, William Franklyn and Jacqueline Bisset. In Black and White. 112 min. Available to buy on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection from the 27th February
Superficially there is nothing especially Sixties about Cul-De-Sac, a film located entirely on the unswinging Holy Island of Lindisfarme, a ragged coastal outpost with a 14th century castle that is intermittently disconnected from the mainland by the tide. It's a place adrift from the lurches of popular culture and the cast, (with the possible exception of Dorleac, Franklyn and Bisset) have no particular affiliation with the period. Yet Polanski's third film still seems like a fabulous sixties artifact, a film filled with a sense of adventure and fearlessness. It is also reminds us of a time when Polanski was just a quirky little man from the other side of the Iron Curtain and his name had no more sinister connotations attached to it than the slightly disturbing films he put that name to.
Cul-de-sac is an exercise in wide open space claustrophobia. In some sense it is the last of his student films, the last of his creepy black and white exercises in confined tension. After making something of a name at film festivals for his shorts, such as Two Men and a Wardrobe, he introduced himself to the international audiences with three black and white films: Knife In The Water, made in Poland, and then two films made in England: Repulsion and this. In Repulsion, Catherine Deneuve slowly goes mad alone in her South Kensington flat. Knife in the Water has three people stuck together on a small yacht but their confinement is contrasted with the vast skies and the expanse of water around them.
His third film is a black comedy in which a wounded gangster (Stander) on the run blunders into a strained domestic situation: Pleasance and his new young trophy, Dorleac, already coming apart, stuck out on their Northumberland coast outpost. The opening scene, a car driving along an empty road across a flat barren terrain broken only by telegraph polls suggests we are somewhere in the middle of the States, miles from anywhere. Within ten minutes though the freedom and space has been wiped away and the tide has reclaimed those wide open expanses. From being small figures isolated in a large landscape they are trapped in this drafty fortress. The three indulge in various power games, while the gangster tries to get assistance for his badly wounded colleague, MacGowran.
Location, location, location – Lindisfarme dominates the film, is a force stronger than any of the characters. The strange half light of summer nights on the Northumberland coast is beautifully captured by Gil Taylor's cinematography. It is just inconceivable to imagine the film set anywhere else. Or rather it is all too conceivable to imagine; and imagine how dull it would be set in an ordinary isolated country house.
Because the set up is really quite rudimentary. There's nothing original about the situation, or the pessimism it is pushing. The main thrust of the script is to express its admiration for the style of Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, though I guess both of them would find the script (the first of Polanski's collaborations with Gerard Brach) a bit wordy and obvious. The lines of conflict are too clearly drawn: the husband is weak, clinging pathetically to his notion of civilisation; the young wife is in desperate need of excitement and doesn't care at what cost; the gangster is the harbinger of disorder but is meekly subservient to his own boss, a Mr Katelbach, who is a Godot by any other name.
With a different cast or a different a castle this would be a problem but Cul-de-sac has it's own special charm. It's a very winning, crowd pleasing form of pessimism; a bleak, knockabout pantomime. You can't help warming to it, even though it might have been aptly titled Repulsion itself, if that hadn't already been taken. Pleasance and MacGowran are particularly good. Only Pleasance could make a wimp so skin-crawling sinister. His cowardice seems more malevolent than Stander's bullying and coercion. And Polanski pulls off some striking scenes, particularly the long take where the airplane flies past. It's of its time, but this sixties can of worms still has plenty of squirm left in it fifty years on.
Other Polanski reviews
The Ghost
Carnage
Venus In Furs
