KNIFE IN THE WATER

A chance encounter as starting point for a biting social analysis: a day out on the lake, two men and one woman desired by both her companions, a car made in the West, a yacht. Critics deemed that the embittered competition for status objects (including the woman) fought between a successful member of society and a youthful outsider showed the consequences of “fetishizing consumerism”. The problem seemed foreign to many Polish critics aware of the day-to-day shortages in the People’s Republic, an impression that seemed to be reinforced by the film’s Oscar nomination – an accolade never before awarded to a Polish film – and by Polański’s emigration in 1963.