Roman Polanski's directorial debut is the minimalistic Polish film Knife in the Water, which feels like a thriller, but is really more of a relationship drama, in which a married couple picks up a young hitchhiker who ends up being invited on their one-day sailing trip on a lake. What unfolds is a dangerous dick-measuring context, in which you're never sure whether you should be more wary of the older man or the younger man. After all, bringing a young transient with a knife about your small boat is a classic recipe for disaster, but why did the overbearing husband invite him aboard in the first place? The wife seems underwritten in comparison, but once the two men are symbolically emasculated through a kind of mutually-assured destruction of ego, she takes her place in the drama, and the title's knife, which was literal, but could also have represented the sharp-angled craft, becomes the emotional one she's able to twist in her husband's wound. I very much like that ambiguous ending, which speaks to his new impotence. The available print is missing a lot of subtitles though. Like, I'm okay with not getting every little nautical order given, but I sometimes felt like I was missing something more relevant (the kid's poem, for example). What's up with that, translators?

A chamber drama with the undertones of a psycho-thriller on open water, all in splendid b/w photography. Great start for Polanski.

In case you wondered: Yep, the whole film had to be redubbed due to unusable recordings (Polanski voicing the young man, Leon Niemczyk doing his own dialogue).

First film (directorial debut) shows the brilliancy of Roman Polanski.. 7.5/10.