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CUL-DE-SAC
9/10
UK 1966
: Roman POLANSKI : 111 mins (alternate versions run 108-113mins)
Polanski’s
comedy of (very bad) manners shows life a series of scenic, absurdist
jokes. And the butt of most of them is the hapless George (Donald Pleasence),
a nervy, well-spoken former businessman who sold his factory, left his
wife Agnes and retreated from modern life by buying the castle on Holy
Island, off the rugged Northumberland coast. He’s been living here for
ten months with his attractive, conspicuously younger French wife Theresa
(Francoise Dorleac) when a pair of wounded gangsters turn up in a stolen
car after some kind of bungled robbery on the mainland. While the frail
Albie (Jack MacGowran) ebbs towards death, the gruff, no-nonsense, brutal
Dickie (Lionel Stander) is much more active, and contacts their boss –
a Mr Katelbach – who tells them to lie low until he can have them picked
up. As the hours pass and Dickie delights in tormenting his ‘hosts’, the
relationship between the flirtatious Theresa and the jealous, inadequate
George soon reaches crisis point…
Cul-de-Sac
can be interpreted on countless different levels, packed as it is
with clues, signs and creative ambiguities. Polanski and his screenwriting
collaborator Gerard Brach endow their simple story with the quality of
a fable, one populated by a range of characters who are all at least mildly
stylised. The dazzlingly precise use of language (no film has
so much terrific dialogue) dramatises how the film’s situations rely on
the interplay of people differentiated by nationality (George is very
English, his wife very French, Dickie American, Albie Irish) and by class.
The aggressively
unsophisticated Dickie takes particular pleasure in mocking George’s airs
and graces: “Oh I see – his lordship wishes to split hairs? Quit
gabbin!” Theresa – whose own past and motivations are, at the very
least, suspect – may sound chic, but her vocabulary is full of
British working-class slang: during the film’s classic ‘Felix Bee’ exchange,
Dickie’s claim to have “borrowed” his getaway car is greeted with a derisory
“Borrowed? My arse!” from the demure Theresa.
We also soon
realise that George, for all his cut-glass vowels, isn’t quite what he
appears – when his snooty neighbours come a-calling, he’s as unnerved
by his social inferiority and his general cuckold’s insecurities (alongside
the silky-suave William Franklyn, especially) as he is by “servant” Dickie’s
glowering presence. It’s no surprise that, in the film’s final shot, the
one-time King of the Castle has seen his dominion reduced from an island
to a sea-lapped sand-dune. “Agnes!” he cries – one of the film’s many
key references to prominent characters who are no less vivid for the fact
that they never actually appear on-screen.
There’s Albie’s
late wife Doris (who can’t have been much to look at, as the delirious
Albie thinks he’s seeing her again when he glimpses George in garish make-up
and drag), plus the enigmatic Katelbach – a truly Beckettian non-presence
as Dickie and Albie’s capo: not for nothing was this film called ‘When
Katelbach Comes’ in Germany. “He doesn’t love us any more,” opines Albie
on his deathbed, and the boss’s final message to Dickie: “You’re on your
own, count me out” confirms Katelbach as the harsh God of Cul-de-Sac’s
world, abandoning mankind to his own devices. Polanski’s triumph is to
present this existential despair in terms of comedy – life as a cosmic
prank at our expense.
“I lost it,”
wails Albie, staring up at the night sky. “What have you lost?” asks Dickie
urgently. “The Little Bear. I can’t find it any more.”
7th
March, 2003
(seen 4th March, Filmworks, Manchester)
click here
for my original review of Cul-de-Sac, based on a VHS viewing
click here
for Clive’s Cul-de-Sac tribute website
by Neil
Young
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