#14 - Repulsion (1965)
(dir. Roman Polanski)
Carol is a beautiful yet fragile young woman who lives with her older sister in their London flat. She seems distant, haunted, and generally just not all there. When her sister goes away for a two-week vacation, leaving Carol all alone in the apartment, her mind begins to deteriorate as she is tormented by threats both real and imagined. This is a beautifully shot and haunting film, about the tragedy and horror of losing one's mind.
This is first film in Polanski's "apartment trilogy", three of his early films that share common themes about the horrors of apartment life. The most famous of these is Rosemary's Baby, but I think that Repulsion is actually the superior film. The whole movie is permeated with a surreal feeling of dread - one of my favorite moments occurs near the beginning, when Carol becomes inexplicably transfixed by a crack in the sidewalk and ends up staring at it for hours. The confusion and terror that she experiences is expertly communicated to the audience, both through Catherine Deneuve's tremendous performance and Polanski's use of camera tricks and surreal imagery.
I can't recommend this one enough. This is one of my favorite films of the 60's in any genre, and as a psychological thriller it is second only to Psycho. Carol is never psychoanalyzed, and the reasons for her breakdown are never directly addressed, but I think that she is a more realistic and sympathetic character because of this. We can read between the lines, and the hints that we are given about her past only enhance the tragedy of her slide into madness.
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