Film Forum

Poland, 1962
Directed by Roman Polanski
Starring Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz
Screenplay by Roman Polanski, Jakub Goldberg, Jerzy Skolimowski
35mm. Approx. 94 min.

In the film that established Polanski’s international reputation, an innocent yachting weekend leads to adultery, which in turn results in violence.

Reviews

“Using his naturalistic camera as though it were an outsized microscope set up to observe the odd behavior of three people completely isolated for 24 hours aboard a weekend pleasure boat, Mr. Polanski evolves a cryptic drama that has wry humor, a thread of suspense, a dash of ugly and corruscating evil — and also a measure of tedium because of the purposeful monotony of its pace. What he has done, as coauthor as well as director, is merely place these people—an edgy, snarling husband, his cool and calmly critical wife and a surly and sassy young hitchhiker whom they have picked up en route to their boat — within the controlled confinement of a trim little sailing sloop and there has them work out their aggressions and their sly sexual rivalries.”
– New York Times