Cul-de-Sac

Cul-de-Sac is a 1966 film by Roman Polanski that has been issued in a pristine copy by Criterion Collection. It is an odd film, at times quite intriguing, at other times at loose ends, but never boring.

The film begins wonderfully, with two men in a car. Or, precisely, one man is in the car, another is pushing it. They are both wounded. The man in the car is sitting on a machine gun. It appears they are escaping from a botched criminal enterprise, and are now on a road on the English sea coast. We never do find out what the job was, or how things went wrong.

The man pushing the car, wearing a sling, is Lionel Stander, the great gravel-voiced character actor. He goes off to look for help, not realizing the road they are on will be swallowed up by the tide. He finds an ancient castle, where a married couple live. He forces them to help him retrieve his colleague from the half-submerged auto.

There have been a number of films and plays about people being taken captives in their home by crooks, but this one is a rara avis. The husband is Donald Pleasance, a rich but noodle-spined man with a shaved pate. His beautiful and much younger French wife is played by Francoise Dorleac, who is first seen canoodling topless with a young man who lives across the bay. In their opening scenes together, Dorleac has Pleasance wear one of the nighties and puts makeup on his face, completely emasculating him.

Stander, by force of personality more than the gun he is carrying, keeps the two at bay, and awaits his boss, the mysterious Mr. Katelbach, to rescue him. During that time there is a psychosexual game of cat and mouse, and then guests arrive, and Stander is forced to play the role of a servant. It is here than Pleasance grows a spine, and eventually will confront Stander.

The film was shot on Holy Island in England, and the photography by Gilbert Taylor is striking, especially the use of the various extremes of light, either at dawn or dusk. Pleasance gives a very antic performance--at times it was difficult to understand what he was all about. Dorleac, who was Catherine Deneuve's sister, is very good as the trophy wife who has the husband wrapped around her finger. Her story is quite tragic--she died at the age of 25 in a fiery car crash.

While Cul-de-Sac is not classic filmmaking, it's illustrative to Polanski's later career, carrying the creepiness of Rosemary's Baby and the noir elements of Chinatown. It's worth a look.