{"id":691,"date":"2004-05-21T10:48:07","date_gmt":"2004-05-21T10:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2004\/05\/knife_in_the_wa\/"},"modified":"2004-05-21T10:48:07","modified_gmt":"2004-05-21T10:48:07","slug":"knife_in_the_wa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2004\/05\/knife_in_the_wa\/","title":{"rendered":"Knife in the Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

Payday, so what better way to treat myself than pick up a DVD at HMV on the way home. I got this classic Roman Polanski film<\/A> because it’s simply wonderful. I think it’s safe to say that the makers of Dead Calm<\/A> were probably over-so-slightly influenced by this Polish debut feature.
\nThere are only three characters in the film, and we’re introduced to them all pretty quickly. Andrzej and Krystyna are a married couple – she somewhat younger than him. They’re on their way to spend a day and a night sailing around in the Polish lakes (I’m guessing somewhere in the northwest of Poland<\/A>), when they stop and pick up a hitch-hiker. He ends up joining them on the trip, even though he’s never been sailing before and professes not to be able to swim.
\nThe film is tautly made, and it’s a joy to see it again. Like Polanski’s later Cul De Sac<\/a>, you get a real feeling of isolation. There aren’t any other boats (although given the weather’s so wonderful, this is perhaps surprising).
\nThe DVD’s not bad, although there seems to be a degree of less important dialogue that’s left untranslated which annoys me. And the subtitles suffer from Americanisms – I doubt anyone in 1962 Poland described someone as an “Asshole”. But the film comes with a fine documentary detailing the making of the film, with nearly all the main participants showing up (only Jolanta Umecka who plays Krystyna isn’t represented).
\nAnd finally, I should mention that the soundtrack comprises of a series of wonderful jazz pieces, which all add the edgy moodiness of the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Payday, so what better way to treat myself than pick up a DVD at HMV on the way home. I got this classic Roman Polanski film because it’s simply wonderful. I think it’s safe to say that the makers of Dead Calm were probably over-so-slightly influenced by this Polish debut feature. There are only three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}