CUL-DE-SAC
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Gerard Brach and Roman Polanski
Starring Donald Pleasance, Francoise Dorleac
Released in 1966
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Gerard Brach and Roman Polanski
Starring Donald Pleasance, Francoise Dorleac
Released in 1966
Cul-de-Sac (1966) is the second Roman Polanski feature to be made in English. Watching this sparkling black and white motion picture, it is possible to at last comprehend how humor and horror can work together. If you think about some of the most intensely frightening movies you've ever seen, I'll bet most of the better ones had strong elements of often confusing humor in them. The Shiningcomes to mind, where Jack Torrance's mimicry of his wife's terror itself becomes terrifying, especially because the sarcasm misdirects us into anticipating a relief, only to get a knotted fist right in the stomach. In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, there is the memorable scene in the diner where the professorial spinster berates Tippi Hedren for alarming the locals while a drunk in the corner keeps repeating, with mock-seriousness, "It's the end of the world," which, of course, it is. Yet no movie I can think of manages to layer the absurdist humor of Harold Pinter or Samuel Beckett onto a platter of domestic horror even remotely as well as Polanski has done withCul-de-Sac.
The film stars Donald Pleasence as George, a pompous yet vulnerable upper-middle-class pre-retiree who has sold everything he owns to buy a castle for himself and his wife Teresa, the latter played with an intense and lively authenticity by Françoise Dorléac, the older and strikingly beautiful sister of Catherine Deneuve. This couple has quite the strained relationship, what with the two of them living on Holy Island amidst ten million chickens, roosters and eggs, the island being surrounded, as islands tend to be, by lots and lots of water. But the water only cuts them off from the rest of civilization during high tide. The rest of the time people seem to come and go, speaking of everything except Michelangelo.
One of the comers is Lionel Stander, who works out a sensational version of Dickie, a criminal with a voice like that of a frog that swallowed a sheet of sandpaper. Dickie and his mortally wounded friend Albie are on the run from a crime that we never learn anything about. Heck, we're not even certain it is a crime. All we know is that Dickie thinks George and Teresa are a handful of idiots. He's using her to prove something to himself and she's using him--period.
Stander mocks the pretensions of George and Teresa's lifestyle, yet manages to imitate it flawlessly when he pretends to be a servant upon the arrival of some of George's so-called friends. Dickie thinks everyone on the island is nuts, and he may be right.
This film, with its use of humor as a device of horror, also is one of the most beautiful visual experiences you'll ever encounter. Polanski, who directed and co-wrote the script, utilized cinematographer Gilbert Taylor to outstanding effect. Even in the uncomfortable close-ups of Pleasence, the result is as revealing as an Annie Leibovitz photograph.
This is a film for the ages. Nothing here is topical or lost within a melange of hipness. On the contrary, the values are straight out of a Utah bank depository. As the audience, we are in on the joke from the second reel, but by the end we begin to suspect that we are the joke. That the visitor Dickie waits for never quite arrives is only half the fun.
The film stars Donald Pleasence as George, a pompous yet vulnerable upper-middle-class pre-retiree who has sold everything he owns to buy a castle for himself and his wife Teresa, the latter played with an intense and lively authenticity by Françoise Dorléac, the older and strikingly beautiful sister of Catherine Deneuve. This couple has quite the strained relationship, what with the two of them living on Holy Island amidst ten million chickens, roosters and eggs, the island being surrounded, as islands tend to be, by lots and lots of water. But the water only cuts them off from the rest of civilization during high tide. The rest of the time people seem to come and go, speaking of everything except Michelangelo.
One of the comers is Lionel Stander, who works out a sensational version of Dickie, a criminal with a voice like that of a frog that swallowed a sheet of sandpaper. Dickie and his mortally wounded friend Albie are on the run from a crime that we never learn anything about. Heck, we're not even certain it is a crime. All we know is that Dickie thinks George and Teresa are a handful of idiots. He's using her to prove something to himself and she's using him--period.
Stander mocks the pretensions of George and Teresa's lifestyle, yet manages to imitate it flawlessly when he pretends to be a servant upon the arrival of some of George's so-called friends. Dickie thinks everyone on the island is nuts, and he may be right.
This film, with its use of humor as a device of horror, also is one of the most beautiful visual experiences you'll ever encounter. Polanski, who directed and co-wrote the script, utilized cinematographer Gilbert Taylor to outstanding effect. Even in the uncomfortable close-ups of Pleasence, the result is as revealing as an Annie Leibovitz photograph.
This is a film for the ages. Nothing here is topical or lost within a melange of hipness. On the contrary, the values are straight out of a Utah bank depository. As the audience, we are in on the joke from the second reel, but by the end we begin to suspect that we are the joke. That the visitor Dickie waits for never quite arrives is only half the fun.
