Review of Cul-de-sac (1966) by Jose Luis M — 20 Aug 2014

This is one of my absolute favorite movies. We're talking top 5 here. What frustrates a lot of people about this film is that it's hard to classify: is it a film noir thriller? a slapstick comedy? a gangster picture? a character-driven melodrama? a study of eroticism? a horror film? Cinema of Absurdity? political allegory (director Roman Polanski fled Poland to escape Soviet persecution)? Many people don't realize that it pisses them off when a film can't, or simply doesn't, 'decide what it wants to be'.

Cul-de-Sac is one of those films that just IS. Take it or leave it. It's Polanski's most original film. The plot is, on the face of it, rather familiar, even conventional: a pair of gangsters on the run after a botched robbery hide out in the home of an unhappily married pair of neurotics.

Lionel Stander as the leader of the two crooks, and Donald Pleasance and Francoise Dorléac as his motley hostages, give career-best performances here. Cul-de-Sac makes a difference by taking as much from Beckett, Pinter, and Ionesco as from the classic films noir of the 1940s and 1950s; the suspense is complemented by grotesque humor and numerous cinematic/literary/theatrical allusions.

Polanski, in only his third film as a director, is at his very best, aided by Gilbert 'Dr Strangelove' Taylor's beautiful cinematography. Working from a script he co-wrote with Gerard Brach (with whom he'd previously written Repulsion), Polanski builds atmosphere with economy and elegance, presenting beautiful monochrome compositions that perfectly suit the film's bleakly funny tone.

On my first viewing I was left slightly cold by Cul-de-Sac, but like many great films it rewards repeat viewings. Over time it has risen in my estimation and I now feel that it stands alongside Chinatown as the best work (albeit at a very different point on the spectrum) that Polanski ever did as a film director.

It is a masterpiece.