Famous clinical case from the 60s returned to movie theaters

For some people, Roman Polanski It’s a bad word, and a bad person. On the other hand, for psychologists, psychiatrists, the general public and spectators in particular, “Repulsion” It is synonymous with a captivating film, precise description of a traumatized woman, and remarkable performance by the then young Catherine Deneuveall from the hand of the then young filmmaker. Released in 1965, it was re-released this week in a remastered copy.

Although born in Paris, 1933, Polansky He grew up in the land of his elders, Poland. He was still a child when his parents were arrested by the Nazis. Her father was Jewish, her mother Catholic, but she was also killed in Auschwitz. The boy had to fend for himself in the Warsaw ghetto.

Already under communism, he was able to study at the prestigious Lodz Film School. There he made his first masterpiece, “Two men and a wardrobe”, a very sad and beautiful short that clearly paints his idea of ​​the world and society. There she also made his first full-length, “The knife under water”, an acid humor drama so good that it was nominated for an Oscar. He beat him “Eight and a Half” by Felliniwith full justice, but the stained glass window allowed him to start a new life.

Associated with the librettist Gerard Brach They made an episode of the film in Amsterdam “The most beautiful scams in the world”. From there they contacted an American producer to make a black comedy in England. The American turned out to be Polish, Gene Gutowski, more coincidentally, also a survivor of the ghetto. The project, then, was going to be completed without problems, but as long as they first did a commissioned work.

Repulsion

It sounds strange, but “Repulsion” It was a commissioned work. The small company Compton Films wanted to make something quality, psychological and low budget, that described the characteristics of a person with a mental disorder.

Gerard Brach She studied the topic and created the story of a young woman who avoids men. She is even bothered by the seduction attempts of a good boy, and even more so by hearing her sister’s moans of pleasure with a guy who is married to boot. But she has no choice, they both live in the same apartment. When the couple leaves, she is left alone with her phobias and nightmares.

On that basis, Polansky developed the staging, with attention to details, the elements that could surround (and repel) the patient, the mixture of reality with what goes through your head, the creative management of sounds and silences, the location of a childhood photo that can be keyand, of course, the public’s reception of what they were seeing and hearing.

Little anecdote, This was the first film where you could hear without any concealment the moment when a woman has her orgasm.courtesy of the British Board of Films Censors, the British rating board, which raised no objections. Luckily at that moment she was driving her Lord David Ormsby-Gore, a member of the Conservative Party who is quite permissive regarding art and soft porn. Besides, The Sexual Revolution of the ’60s was already beginning.

After

Towards the end of the movie, Polansky makes a small cameo. She is one of the gossiping women in the building. With a budget of £65,000, the play grossed more than double that amount in the UK alone. At the Berlin Festival it won the Special Jury Prize. Polanski, Brach and Gutowski they started filming “Cul-de-sac”, black humor, and “The Dance of the Vampires”a global success.

Then each one went their own way. Polansky was reunited with Brach on several occasions, to act crazy “That?”with Sidney Rome saving on clothing, “The tenant”the beautiful and hurt “Tess.” and “Frantic search”with Harrison Ford. In his adventures, he twice visited Argentina, to promote “Chinatown” and meet Borges (The first thing he asked was to meet personally Borgesthe press manager said that she had to make the contacts) and years later to present “Tess.” at a historic French film festival full of great figures, where he arrived accompanied by the film’s protagonist (and his then partner) Nasstasja Kinski, then only 19 years old.

And much later, already mature, he joined again with Gutowski, and they made “The pianist”, partly with his own childhood memories, and partly as a necessary revenge. They had had a very bad time, but they were survivors.