Volume 2, Number 1 · February 20, 1964
3 1/2
By Jonathan Miller
Knife in the Water
directed by Roman Polanski
Mad Mad Mad Mad World
directed by Stanley Kramer
Billy Liar
directed by John Schlesinger
Three movies about competition, property, and rank. Knife in the Water from Poland, Mad Mad Mad Mad World from the USA, and Billy Liar from England. All three are chases and each with a beast in view but only the American film actually runs away with itself down a nightmare slope of greed and violence. The other two are painful enough but generally well in hand; especially Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water, a vigilant, metallic piece set on board a small sailing boat. In fact this movie is so artfully cool, so muted and slit-eyed that it sometimes seems downright camp. Two men compete for the favors of a bored girl who wishes the hell with both of them—a spare sexual isosceles which is nicely symbolized in clean, stripped images of sail, sky, and water which group and re-group in triangles and trapeziums of gray and white as the boatload of trouble skims trimly across the lake. A stylish three-finger exercise on the theme of pride.
Review, 1574 words
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