483 Repulsion

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cdnchris
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Re: 483 Repulsion

#51 Post by cdnchris » Mon Aug 03, 2009 3:47 pm

Haggai wrote:Actually at one point in the commentary, Polanski says that when he showed a rough cut to the Polish-born Hollywood composer Bronislau Kaper, that's when the decision was made to cut the scene in question, so apparently it was shot. Polanski says Kaper pointed out that:
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The motivation behind that murder was too "rational," in comparison to the other two murders. Carol was just killing the woman to prevent her from discovering her husband's body, while the other two murders came from Carol's psychosexual "repulsion" to men who desire her. Polanski also says he thought having the third murder pushed the film too much in the direction of straight-up horror, at the expense of the psychological thriller atmosphere he was going for.
I swore it was said somewhere it wasn't actually filmed but I guess I was mistaken. Thanks!

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#52 Post by Murdoch » Mon Aug 03, 2009 4:16 pm

This is one of the few cases where I'm glad I can't see the deleted footage, it sounds like it would completely alter the film and put a big hole in the character's motivations.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#53 Post by Tribe » Mon Aug 03, 2009 6:50 pm

Kehr on Repulsion:
July 26, 2009
DVDs
A Woman Repulsed, a Man Convulsed
By DAVE KEHR

‘REPULSION’

In the Swinging London of 1965 only one person isn’t having a good time: a painfully shy Belgian manicurist named Carol (Catherine Deneuve). When she isn’t tending to the corpselike patrons of the fashionable beauty parlor that employs her, she’s dodging the advances of a perfectly nice young man (John Fraser), arguing with her older sister and roommate, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), about the unwelcome overnight presence of Helen’s lover (Ian Hendry) or walking somnambulistically through the streets. Occasionally she casts an envious gaze at the nuns frolicking with a soccer ball in the courtyard next door. They’re free from the burdens of sexuality, just as she would like to be.

“Repulsion” was the Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski’s second feature and his first movie shot in English. Much of its deep sense of alienation derives from the outsider’s perspective that he, Ms. Deneuve (also in her English-language debut) and the French screenwriter Gérard Brach bring to the setting. On some nearby street the Beatles could well be gamboling in Richard Lester’s full-color “Help!,” but the black-and-white “Repulsion” takes place in a London of postwar ruins, splintered sidewalks and sun-beaten streets, down which creep sinister bands of cockney musicians, beating out rhythms with spoons. (One of them is Mr. Polanksi, contributing a Hitchcockian cameo to this deeply “Psycho”-influenced film.)

When Helen announces that she’s leaving on a continental vacation with her (probably married) boyfriend, it’s only a matter of time — measured by the slow rot of a skinned rabbit Carol has thoughtlessly left out of the refrigerator — before Carol finally loses touch with reality. Seemingly the last virgin in London, she soon finds herself fighting a rear-guard action against the sexual revolution, making bloody use of the straight razor that her sister’s boyfriend has left behind in the bathroom.

Mr. Polanski (in his early 30s when the film was made) occasionally seems discombobulated by the spectacle of this desirable woman repulsed by desire: “These bloody virgins are just teasers after all,” one resentful onlooker observes, suggesting that Carol’s symptoms would go away if she just got with the program.

But much of “Repulsion” is a sympathetic attempt to enter Carol’s subjectivity. Mr. Polanski uses slow camera movements, a soundtrack carefully composed of distracting, repetitive noises (clocks ticking, bells ringing, hearts thumping) and, once Carol barricades herself in the cramped, dark apartment, explicitly expressionistic effects (cracks suddenly ripping through walls, rough hands reaching out of the darkness to grope her) to depict a plausible schizophrenic episode.

By the time Mr. Polanski made “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), another subjective study of an isolated, sexually threatened woman, he seemed more in control of his themes and more subtle in his technique. But “Repulsion” remains a commanding film, its festering detail enhanced by an excellent new transfer from the Criterion Collection, available in both standard definition and Blu-ray. Extras include a commentary track with Mr. Polanski and Ms. Deneuve carried over from Criterion’s 1994 laserdisc release, and a fascinating French documentary from 1964 shot on the London set, illustrating Mr. Polanski’s millimeter-precise direction of actors. (Criterion Collection, Blu-ray and standard definition, $39.95, not rated)

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#54 Post by Haggai » Mon Aug 03, 2009 7:38 pm

cdnchris wrote:I swore it was said somewhere it wasn't actually filmed but I guess I was mistaken. Thanks!
I've been listening to the commentary just over this past weekend. I think Polanski did say something early on in the track that made it seem like the scene hadn't been filmed, but his story about getting advice from Kaper on cutting the scene following an early screening had a lot of specific detail, which probably means that's the definitive word on it.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#55 Post by Ron Reagan Mask » Fri Dec 11, 2009 1:49 am

Has anyone in the NYC area been to the Rubin Museum of Art Cabaret Cinema? They're showing this tomorrow night and I'm thinking about bringing a date there. Is it a pleasant venue?

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#56 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Mar 05, 2011 5:08 pm

It has been such a long time since I last saw this film so was kind of astounded by how beautiful the film was on sitting down to watch the Blu-ray today. I don't know whether the way that I can now more easily see the cracks in the walls before they snap open or the round spots in the hallway from which the arms reach before they do so reveals the cinematic trickery too much or actually adds to that effect of some weird shifting in reality - the fear of something frightening being about to occur before it actually does.

And this was the first time that I noted that Carol's workmate at the beauty parlor is played by Helen Fraser, who was the rather naive, suburban fiancee in Billy Liar! It was amusing to think that even this character might have abandoned Billy in his small town up north, moved down to London and become more worldlier with regard to men in the interim!

While watching I was thinking about how influential that this film feels - for example I thought of J.G. Ballard's short story The Enormous Space (which involves an 'average man' simply deciding one day never to leave the house, existing just on the dwindling contents of his fridge and whatever pets stray into his garden, ignoring the calls from his wife (whose leaving 'appears' to have caused the crisis), and work colleagues until his secretary breaks in and has the same kind of fate as Colin does in Repulsion. A big part of the story is the way that in the consciousness of the main character the rooms of the house appear to grow huge, which also seems similar to the way that as Carol's madness in Repulsion grows, so do the rooms of the flat) or Apartment Zero, which seems to focus its attentions more on the quirky neighbours surrounding the secluded protagonist's apartment

I especially wondered whether Dario Argento picked up some pointers from Repulsion, given the use of distortions through peepholes (which reached its fullest expression in Opera) and the way that the main character in Stendhal Syndrome traumatised by a prolonged assault begins taking revenge on men (including on her potential love interest) until she is carried from the scene of her last crime in a similar position to the way Carol is carried from the flat in a Pietà position.

I'm especially amused that Repulsion is followed in the Criterion number system by Jeanne Dielmann. The scene where Carol is vigorously ironing only for the camera to pan down to show the iron is unplugged made the film jump to mind, but I think that we could see Repulsion as occupying the middle ground between Akerman's explicitly destructive Saute ma ville and the slightly more successfully hidden dysfunction of Dielman.

Plus, although this may not go down well, but I think of Fat Girl as in some ways updating these tropes from Repulsion of self serving masculinity versus overly nervous (verging on attempting to create situations in which they feel exploited in order for their fears to be justified) feminity.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#57 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Mar 05, 2011 5:37 pm

The following spoils Argento's Bird With the Crystal Plumage, so don't read if you haven't seen it.
I especially wondered whether Dario Argento picked up some pointers from Repulsion,
The razorblade killing in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is shot similarly to the one in Repulsion, with the camera acting as the victim's pov as the killer slashes directly at it/the audience.

Argento's movie is also about the victim of a sexually-based assault who becomes a killer, although there is a novel switch up in that instead of attacking male victims as substitutes for her attacker, the killer adopts the gaze of her attacker and continuous his crimes herself (which is sneaky in how it gets you to discount the actual killer as a suspect because you assume that since the killer's gaze is male the killer must also be male).

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#58 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Mar 11, 2011 1:34 pm

You're right Mr Sausage - it had been too long since I last saw The Stendahl Syndrome to so confidently note the gender of our lead character's victims!

Something that I noted from re-watching Knife In The Water again recently is the way that many of Polanski's films all seem to involve inciting events to 'motivate' the plot but which do not define the manner in which subsequent events surrounding them occur. We could call them MacGuffins,even though most of these incidents are much more tied into the main themes of the film (the threatening/attracting masculine figures of Repulsion; the class conflict in Knife In The Water; the mock trial of torturer by the victim in Death and the Maiden, which Knife In The Water to me most closely resembles; the water plot in Chinatown; the Politician's memoirs in Ghost Writer, and so on) rather than simply acting as a general goal. But once the momentum of the film is underway those events used to power the plot become almost unimportant.

They serve to bring the far more powerful, and much more interesting, conflicts between the characters to the surface - these incidents might serve to sell the film, giving them a marketable, easily understandable hook, however they are not inherently interesting in themselves but the effect that the events have on the characters and their trust in each other (either strengthening or ripping them apart) is far more important.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Nov 15, 2019 12:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#59 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Mar 11, 2011 3:43 pm

colin wrote:You're right Mr Sausage - it had been too long since I last saw The Stendahl Syndrome to so confidently note the gender of our lead character's victims!
I haven't seen the Stendahl Syndrome, actually. My post only described Bird With the Crystal Plumage. If I offered a correction it was by accident!

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#60 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Mar 11, 2011 3:56 pm

Ah! I wonder why the description didn't match up to my memory! This means though that I'll have to watch Stendahl again to be absolutely sure of my original point!

On Bird With The Crystal Plumage, I like the mention in the Kim Newman and Alan Jones commentary of the way that Bird was written after Bertolucci gave Argento Fredric Brown's book The Screaming Mimi. Newman mentions that although Bird is not an official adaptation of the book, it is apparently more faithful to the source material than the 1958 Anita Ekberg version!

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#61 Post by peerpee » Mon Dec 24, 2012 8:52 am

The 22 minute French "1964 television documentary filmed on the set of Repulsion, featuring rare footage of Polanski and Deneuve at work" is a huge treat! Polanski in a London boozer talking about the film mid-shoot, and superb footage of Polanski discussing what they're about to shoot with Deneuve. Magic!

In the other documentary, the 2003 Blue Underground UK documentary, it's interesting that Polanski mentions the same anecdote he repeats in the 2012 ROSEMARY'S BABY documentary, about women being easier to direct than men.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#62 Post by escobar741 » Mon Feb 11, 2013 12:51 am

I don't know where the best place to post this here but I am trying to find out if anyone can see what I think I see in the final scene of Repulsion. When the group of tenants crowds around the stricken Carol, one of the younger tenants looks to me incredibly like Polanski in drag, not that dissimilar to his later incarnation as Simon Choule in The Tenant. I've posited this on IMDb but have had no takers, and I certainly can't find any reference in the commentary or elsewhere to my theory. Hope someone can take the time to look at this. It would be a nice conceit if it was true. Btw, Polanski did admit to a cameo in the film, but apparently that one of the spoon musicians and you can barely see him as it's a long shot.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#63 Post by cinemartin » Mon Feb 11, 2013 10:35 am

Not sure about that, but it definitely has precedent - aside from the Tenant example you cited, he also played a woman (in long shot) in his thesis film When Angels Fall.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#64 Post by escobar741 » Tue Feb 12, 2013 9:32 am

Yes, that's an image that he reprised later in Tess, I realised the other day (the young woman wrapped in a shawl at the misted window, and also maybe in Dance of the Vampires, for that matter, though maybe with the younger actress at the window rather than Polanski in drag in the case of Angels). I hope some people here take the time to look at that scene in Repulsion very carefully and tell me what they think.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#65 Post by Ged Parsons » Tue Feb 12, 2013 4:33 pm

escobar741 wrote:When the group of tenants crowds around the stricken Carol, one of the younger tenants looks to me incredibly like Polanski in drag, not that dissimilar to his later incarnation as Simon Choule in The Tenant.
I've just had a look at that final sequence, escobar741, and I think you're right! I've seen this film maybe 15-20 times, and I never spotted that before. Yet now that you've drawn attention to it, it seems to leap out at the viewer.

The character seems to hold back at the rear of the group at first, and then is fleetingly seen centre-frame, directly behind Carol, who's lying at a right-angle to 'Polanski-woman.'

Also, in the brief shot of one of the male neighbours opening another room-door in the flat, (to the right), we can see 'Polanski-woman', (to the left), standing in the first doorway, at the back of the group, with the left edge of the door-frame obscuring the front part of his/her face.

For me, this was a reminder of the scene in 'Rosemary's Baby', where Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon) goes into Rosemary's bedroom to phone Dr. Sapirstein for the first time - the whole sequence is disconcerting because, as she speaks on the phone, the front part of Minnie's face is also obscured by the edge of the door-frame, in exactly the same way as 'Polanski-woman' is, in the 'Repulsion' shot. The effect is to make the viewer unwittingly, and illogically, want to 'peer around' the edge of the door-frame, to get a clearer view of what's happening, or being said.

This 'disconcerting' effect appears to be exactly what Polanski was aiming for, as the whole 'Minnie on the phone' sequence is described at length by Polanski's DP, William A. Fraker, in the 1992 documentary, 'Visions of Light'. So, a signature shot, one might say?

I'm off now to check through all my Polanskis, and to take a closer look at every woman under 5 foot 6 !

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#66 Post by escobar741 » Wed Feb 13, 2013 3:13 am

What a relief that someone else can see it. I have often thought of trying to find out from Polanski's office in France if they could confirm it. It's not like that actor/actress has actually has a credit (?). What I find bizarre is that Polanski makes no mention of it (if it him) in the commentary.

Fascinating that you saw the back-view of the Polanski-woman, because I've seen the film a similar number of times and could never have recalled that shot! (On a total tangent, that bit with the P-woman and the blonde does look a but Lynchean, in Lost Highway mode, opposing light and dark.) I also thought a lot about that part where the P-woman is centre screen and in profile. I was trying to match his/her nose with Polanski's own very substantial proboscis and it just about fits. If you think about it, that's quite a lot of screen time to favour what you at first take to be almost an extra or at least an inconsequential character who is introduced right at the end.

I get what you mean about Minnie, which in turn makes me think of Vermeer compositions, not to mention Antonioni, though in part of her phone conversation she is revealed in full profile.

Speaking of doorways, one scene in Rosemary's Baby, where Guy and another minor figure do a comical loping motion as they sneak a room at the end of a short hallway while Rosemary is desperately trying to ring Mrs Dunstan always makes me laugh; I think it's reprised in another Polanski film, only I can't quite remember which one.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#67 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:14 am

I'm not sure if this adds anything to the discussion, but I'm pretty certain that Polanski appears uncredited in his latest completed feature CARNAGE as an apartment tenant whose face is almost completely obscured by a half-closed door. No idea if he is dressed as a woman, however. :lol:

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#68 Post by Forrest Taft » Wed Feb 13, 2013 2:24 pm

Was his face obscured? I seem to recall one could clearly see that it was Polanski, as well as hearing that it was him.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#69 Post by escobar741 » Wed Feb 13, 2013 7:58 pm

Actually, now that you mention this, you can hear the Polanski-woman in Repulsion say something under her breath and to me it does sound like the higher, affected female voice that he puts on in The Tenant when he dresses up. I'll have to go back and transcribe what you hear. As for the previous poster, I want to check that nice detail. Whether it adds anything or not, if it's there, it's there.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#70 Post by Roger Ryan » Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:36 am

RobertAltman wrote:Was his face obscured? I seem to recall one could clearly see that it was Polanski, as well as hearing that it was him.
Which is probably why I was pretty certain it was him! My memory of his brief appearance is evidently the thing that is obscured; I trust your recall is better.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#71 Post by AndrewBoone » Fri Sep 13, 2013 8:03 am

Just watched this last weekend. What a fantastic film. I still need to see "Knife in the Water" and "Cul-de-sac" and "Rosemary's Baby", but this was my favorite of the Polanski films that I've seen, which is saying something standing next to "The Pianist" and "Chinatown". Polanski was masterful with this film. I love how everything in the film is static. Throughout the movie all the things in her apartment never move; they're in the exact same place every time we return to them. There's no change. Just characters moving around in an almost still-life world. The rabbit she leaves on the table slowly decays as the film progresses, echoing her state of mind. I thought "Repulsion" was beautiful aesthetically, sound thematically, and very entertaining to boot. If those other three Polanski films I mentioned (the ones I haven't seen) are as good as this one then I can't wait to get to them.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#72 Post by krnash » Fri Sep 13, 2013 11:52 am

AndrewBoone wrote:Just watched this last weekend. What a fantastic film. I still need to see "Knife in the Water" and "Cul-de-sac" and "Rosemary's Baby", but this was my favorite of the Polanski films that I've seen, which is saying something standing next to "The Pianist" and "Chinatown"... If those other three Polanski films I mentioned (the ones I haven't seen) are as good as this one then I can't wait to get to them.
In my opinion, you're still in for his best two films with Cul-De-Sac and Rosemary's Baby. Also, don't forget to see The Tenant, which you'll probably love as it shares a lot with Repulsion.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#73 Post by HerrSchreck » Wed Mar 18, 2015 3:08 pm

Christ, I had my brains blown outa my head and splat behind me watching this thing this weekend. One of the most unusual films I've seen inna dog's age for sure, I gathered my brains after a 4 day break from the blog and threw up an essay on this film.

I deffo shouldn't've waited so long to watch it, but it's sort of nice to bump into such an obvious masterpiece after all these years ignoring it screaming at me from under my nose. It also threw me narratively in ways I don't often get thrown off. Bravissimo, Roman.

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#74 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu Mar 19, 2015 6:20 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:Christ, I had my brains blown outa my head and splat behind me watching this thing this weekend.
I had pretty much the same reaction when I first saw it about 18 months ago; I had somehow come under the mistaken impression that Repulsion was "lesser" Polanski and took my sweet time in getting around to it despite loving much of his work. When I finally popped in the blu, it didn't take long to realize that I had been horribly misinformed and that this was one of Polanski's masterpieces.

Oddly, this is one of the few films period and maybe the only legitimately great film I've ever seen and immediately thought could and perhaps should be remade (by the right director, of course). Much of what it has to say about women and men and psychological deterioration could be spun off in some really interesting directions with a modern setting and sensibility, and I can think of a few actresses who could really own the role...

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Re: 483 Repulsion

#75 Post by Murdoch » Fri Mar 20, 2015 6:05 pm

This, along with Persona, was really what catapulted me into cinephilia. The low budget production combined with the claustrophobia induced by the locations had me transfixed - I was around 19 maybe, watching the terrible US release before CC put it out. I think it was Deneuve's character that pulled me in, with her blank stare and awkward demeanor around anyone, along with how the romance thrown in resolves itself as Deneuve succumbs to her insanity (a change of pace from the rosy Hollywood romances I was so used to!). Polanski really is excellent at portraying isolation, that fear of other people that develops when someone becomes a hermit locked away. I love the film and watching the various scenes of sexual assault and the absolute terror they invoked still stands as the most harrowing of anything I've seen in horror or otherwise. It's still my favorite Polanski, and one I return to fairly often.

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