And in their hurry to add another film to the Recommended listings, the clowns failed to serve the artist who needed their comments, needed their attention, needed the benefit of their critical faculties.
It is altogether too easy to say that Repulsion is the closest thing to a perfect film of fear we have had since Lewton. Too easy, because of the obviousness of the comment. It is a fine film, a close-to-perfect film. But as I noted earlier, I am against what Roman Polanski did in Repulsion, in many ways. For he chose to substitute effect for logic, he chose to substitute adolescent fear for mature fear, he chose to be blatant rather than subtle, and in the final analysis, his genius carried him when he should have been relying on skill and craft.
What follows, these observations, are made in a spirit of camaraderie, with honorable intent. For it is my belief that Roman Polanski is one of the most adventurous and stimulating directors in the world of the cinema today. What they like to call a “promising” director. It is entirely possible that he bears within him the seeds of authentic greatness. And to the end that he not be whiplashed by sycophants, that he escape the too-soon adulation of those who toss away all critical objectivity in the sack-race to praise him soonest, that he not sacrifice growth for easy success, these comments are offered with respect and gratitude for bringing to the screen an individual and important talent.
But a talent that still needs comment.
Repulsion functions almost entirely on two levels. The first, a purely physical level of progression of events that sends the heroine through a series of emotional and psychological ambivalences. The second, a completely subjective fantasy-world that is reflection and refraction and distortion of the mental state of the girl. Where these two impinge, where they bisect each other, we have the most stunning and successful moments of the film. When we are helplessly drawn into the mind of the young girl and find ourselves staring down at the severed head of a raw rabbit in her purse we are assaulted by an admixture of nausea and horror. Like the child-in-fear to which Köhler referred in Part One of this article, we are both repulsed and attracted. We cover our eyes when Catherine Deneuve grapples with the lecherous landlord, but we peek between our fingers to see the moment she will slash him across the neck with the naked straight-razor.
Polanski plays on our feelings of fear toward sharp instruments, blades, knives; on our loathing of slippery men who attempt rape; on our ambivalent pity for the girl assaulted and trepidation for the man whom we know cannot stand for a moment against the assault of her insanity. We are tossed and turned by our own fears and the conditioned impulses of our upbringing.
In these areas, Polanski is a master.
But in the areas of motivation and logic, he opts rather for scintillation and pyrotechnics than for plotting.
We must line-out the basic story, first, however, before we can explain where Polanski did not do a full job: Catherine, a Belgian manicurist working in a Harriet Hubbard Ayer-type beauty salon in London, lives with her highly-sexed sister, who in turn shares bed-space with a rather hairy salesman. They make it frequently, and on the night silence comes the off-screen moaning and panting that sends sleepless Catherine under the covers in the next room. We understand almost immediately that the pretty Dresden figurine that is Catherine, conceals a mind that is torn with ambivalence at the thought of sex. She is attracted to, and repulsed by, the sight of her sister’s paramour. Catherine has a boyfriend. He is a gentleman, but she is so strange, so distant at times, that he suffers the ribbing of his pub-crawling friends with ill humor. Finally, Sis carts off to the hinterlands on holiday with her Lothario, and Catherine is left in their small flat with an uncooked coney on a plate, and the stench of encroaching lunacy. As she exists there in the somnolence, we see her illusions—great cracks suddenly ripping down the walls, hands thrusting out of a hall corridor that has turned to mud, rapists breaking down her doors, lurking under her bedsheets. Finally, as her mind disintegrates before our very eyes, she uses the razor on the landlord who comes to get the rent and stays to paw her shape. (Prior to this she has clubbed her boyfriend to death and dumped him in the bathtub, when he broke down the door to find out if she was all right or not. Hell of a way to find out.) In the end, the sister and lover return, to find Catherine in a catatonic state, and the joint surfeited with dead meat, not all of which is rabbit. Final shot, we dolly slowly in on an old photograph of the family, and we see Catherine-the-child. Her eyes. Quite mad. A twinkle of lunacy as she sees the world.
In his overwhelming impulse to show us the progression of Catherine’s madness, the rapid overtaking of her mind by a desire / revulsion of sex, Polanski handles the delusions with startling facility, presenting them so realistically, that for moments after they are over, we have to reorient ourselves that they were only wraiths of Catherine’s mind. In this, he employs the Lewton technique with great facility and impact.
But it is all demonstration, without motivation.
Questions, never asked, much less answered:
Why is Catherine afraid of men?
If she is so terrified of men, how did she get a boyfriend, and why does he persist in following her?
Is her sister so dense that she has not noticed this obvious aberrant behavior previously?
What was Catherine’s relationship with her parents, most specifically her father (as subtly hinted in the final shot of the family photograph), that brought on this derangement?
Why didn’t Polanski either tell or suggest the answers to these questions, and many others, of motive and personality?
Which brings me to my final point, on the nature of fear in films, its use, and the dangers therein present.
Fear in the hand of a motion picture maker, like a shotgun in the hands of a baby, need not necessarily be properly aimed to make a helluva bang. But to hit the target dead-on, requires maturity and thought.
Polanski, to my mind undisputed heir to the throne left vacant by Lewton, is a master of technique and hoodwinkery. He substitutes effects for the deeper logic of the situations his stories imply. Fear in his hands is a weapon that he uses to stun the audience, to reduce them to adolescent trepidation. But when the theatre has been left alive, the fear vanishes. Instead of making us understand the nature and impetus of the horrors that grip Everyman, he has dazzled us, and when the sparklers fade, we depart untouched and our sight restored.
To be entirely successful, a film of fear must deal with logic and the explanations that logic demands.
Polanski came closest to the superlatives with which Lewton dealt. Closer than Hitchcock, closer than Dassin, closer than anyone who has attempted the film of fear in many years.
There is a lesson to be learned here. Not only for Polanski who, God willing, will persist in improving himself and create finer films of fear, but for the entire motion picture industry, currently glutting its production schedules with vapid comedies, senseless extravaganzas and ludicrous spy dramas as improbable as the Loch Ness monster. The lesson is simply that the intelligence of film audiences is a fine-honed tool, an additive that can be used to enrich any film. Moviegoers are ready to laugh, ready to shriek, ready to involve themselves to the eyeballs with films that demand something of them, as Polanski and Lewton demanded something of them.
They are saying, in the way they spend their money at certain box-offices, “There is nothing to fear but the lack of fear.”
A word to the wise ought to be sufficient. Ahead of you lie all the corridors with all the Room 101s, numbered. All that is required is that you knock.
BLIND LIGHTNING
When Kettridge bent over to pick up the scurrying red lizard, the thing that had been waiting, struck.
Thought: this is the prelude to the Time of Fast. In bulk this strangely-formed will equal many cat-litters. It is warm and does not lose the essence. When the Essence-Stealer screams from the heavens, this strangely-formed will be many feastings for me. Safety and assured essence are mine. O boon at last granted! To the Lord of t
he Heaven I turn all thought! Lad-nar’s essence is yours at ending!
The thing rose nine feet on powerfully-muscled legs; it had a sheened, glistening fur. It resembled a gorilla and a brahma bull and a kodiak bear and a number of other Terran animals, but it was none of them. The comparison was inaccurate and brief as the moment Kettridge half-turned. He saw one of the thing’s huge paws crashing toward him. The brief moment ended and Kettridge lay unconscious.
The huge beast bent from the waist and scooped up the man in the form-fitting metallic suit, brushing in annoyance at the belt of tools around the human’s waist.
Lad-nar looked over one massive shoulder at the sky.
Even as he watched, the roiling dark clouds split and a forked brilliance stabbed down at the jungle. Lad-nar squinted his eyes, unconsciously lowering the thin secondary lids over them, filtering out the worst of the light.
He shivered as the roar screamed across the sky.
Off to his left another blast of lightning fingered down, struck a towering blue plant with a shower of sparks and a dazzling flash. Thunder bubbled after it. The jungle smoked.
Thought: many risings and settings of the great warmer it has taken this Time of Fast to build. Now it will last for many more. The great warmer will be hidden and the cold will settle across the land. Lad-nar must find his way to the Place of Fasting. This strangely-formed will be many feastings.
He shoved the man under one furry arm, clasping his unconscious burden tightly. Lad-nar’s eyes were frightened. He knew the time of death and forbidden walking was at hand.
He loped off toward the mountains.
The first thing Kettridge saw when he awoke was the head of the beast. It was hanging suspended in the light from the storm. The roar of the rain pelting down in driving sheets, the brilliant white light of the lightning, all served as background for the huge beast’s head. That wide, blunt nose, three flaring nostrils. The massive double-lidded eyes—light from the fires outside blazing up in them like flickering twin comets. The high, hairy brow. The deep black half-moons under the cheekbones.
The mouth of ripping, pointed teeth.
Kettridge was a man past the high tide of youth. He was not a strong man. At the beast’s snort, the white-haired Earthman fainted.
It was a short stretch of unconsciousness. Kettridge blinked several times and tried to push himself up on elbows suddenly weak. The sight that greeted him was substantially the same as before.
Lad-nar was still sitting, powerfully-muscled legs crossed, inside the mouth of the small cave, staring at him. Only the monstrous, frightening head, with pointed ears aprick, hanging there immobile.
“What—what—are you? We weren’t expecting anything this large. The—the—survey said—” Kettridge quavered into silence.
Thought: what is this? This strangely-formed speaks in my head! This is not one with the cat-litters. They cannot speak! Is this a symbol, an omen, from the Lord of the Heaven?
What is it you ask, strangely-formed?
Kettridge felt the surge of thoughts in his mind. Felt it smash up against one nerve after another, sliding down and down in his head as the thoughts reverberated like an echo from far away. Over and over again.
“My God, the thing’s telepathic!”
Old Kettridge knew it at once. He knew it because he had never experienced it before, and there was no doubting it. There had been a first time for everything for him. He knew the first time he had touched fire. He had known instantly it was fire, it would always be fire, and he must not touch it again.
He had known the first time love spoke to him. That had been once and never again. But he had known it the once it did speak.
There are those things which Man senses but once, and knows them—under whatever names he has assigned them—for what they are.
“You’re telepathic!” he said again, hardly daring to believe it was true.
Thought: what is that? What do you speak of, strangely-formed? What is it that you say, that I hear as reading of the essence? How is it you speak? Are you from the Lord of the Heaven?
Lad-nar’s thick, leathery lips had not moved. The fanged mouth had not twisted in speech. To Kettridge it seemed there was a third being in the cave. The hideous beast before him, himself…and a third. A speaker who roared in his mind, in a voice sharp and alert.
Thought: there is no one else here. This is the Place of Fasting. Lad-nar has cleansed this place of all previous fasting ones. You do not answer. There is fear mixed into your essence, like the cat-litters. Yet you are not one with them. Speak! Are you an omen?
Kettridge’s lips began to tremble. He looked intently at the great hulk across from him. The Earthman had suddenly realized that the being was not only telepathic, but two-way receptive. It could not only direct its thoughts into Kettridge’s mind, it could just as easily pluck the ideas from the Earthman’s head.
This was no animal.
This was no beast.
This was sentient life. If not of a high cultural level, at least of fantastic abilities.
“I—I am from Earth,” ventured Kettridge, sliding up against the warm stone wall of the cave.
Thought: the Heaven home! I know, I know! O thankings! The Lord of the Heaven has sent you to me as many feastings.
In the space of a few short seconds, as Lad-nar spoke in thoughts, Kettridge received a complete picture of the being’s life. He knew there was a race on Blestone—many more like Lad-nar. All in a barbaric hiding state. The preliminary survey had not indicated any life of this sort. Obviously Lad-nar’s race was dying off.
Kettridge tried to blank his thoughts. He had to wait.
Thought: you cannot hide the speaking in my head.
Kettridge became frantic. He knew what the thing had planned for him. He received a sharp, cold mental image of the being crouched over his form, ripping an arm loose from its socket. The picture was too clear. He became ill, and the being’s thoughts in his head reverberated a dislike of the Earthman’s power of imagination.
Thought: you have seen the feasting. Yet you are not like the cat-litters that squeal fear, fear, fear all the time that I feast upon them. If you are not to eat, omen from the Heaven Lord—what are you?
Kettridge felt his throat muscles tighten. His hands inside the heat-resistant gloves clenched. He felt his age settle around him as though it were a heavy mantle. “I’m an alien ecologist,” he said, knowing it would do no good.
Thought: this has no meaning for me.
“I’m from Earth. I’m from one of those—” Then he stopped, drawing breath in quickly, pulling the resilient hood of the suit against his mouth with the effort. The being could not possibly know about “one of those out there.” It could not see the stars. Only occasionally could it see the sun. Only when the clouds parted. The dense cloud blanket of Blestone hid space forever from the eyes of this monstrous being.
Thought: Urth! The Heaven home! I know! I know!
There was a jubilation, a happiness in the thoughts. Something incongruous and terrifying when the old man put them into the head of that great thing illuminated by the storm.
Yet there was a humanness, a warmth, also.
Thought: now I will sleep. Later I will feast.
With the single-minded simplicity of the aborigine the great beast put from its mind this revelation of its religion, and obeyed the commands of its body. Tired from hunting, Lad-nar began to sleep.
The thoughts dimmed and faded out of Kettridge’s mind like smoke wraiths as the huge animal slipped over onto its side, effectively blocking the open mouth of the cave. In a moment, they were gone entirely from Kettridge’s suddenly throbbing head. The beast known as Lad-nar was asleep.
Kettridge felt for the service revolver at his belt. The charges in there were enough to stop a good-sized animal.
Then he looked at the nine feet of corded muscle and thick hide that lay there. He looked at the narrow confines of the cave. There was no chance to kill that beast b
efore he could rip the Earthman to shreds.
…and did he really want to kill Lad-nar?
The thought bothered him. He knew he had to kill the beast—or be killed himself.
…and yet…
Outside the lightning boiled and crashed all around the cave. The long storm had begun.
Through the thin slit between the rocks and the beast, Kettridge could see the sky was darkening and darkening as the storm grew. Every moment there was a new cataclysm of light and flash as streamers of fire flung themselves through the air. The night flung itself against the rank jungle and howled in frenzy!
Kettridge rubbed his leathery, wrinkled cheek. The metal-plastic hood of the suit rubbed against the skin. “I’d have been blistered and boiled,” he muttered, looking at the sleeping Lad-nar.
Blestone’s atmosphere was an uncomfortable-to-humans 140–150° Fahrenheit. That would make the beast’s body heat somewhere near 130°. Which would have effectively ruined the aging career of Benjamin Kettridge, had not the Earthman’s insulated suit protected him.
The old man hunched up small against the wall, feeling the rough stone through the suit. It somehow reassured him.
He knew the beam from the Jeremy Bentham was tuned to suit-sensitive, but they wouldn’t come to pick him up till his search time was finished, and that was a good six hours away. He wasn’t the only ecologist from the study-ship on Blestone, but they were a low-pay outfit and they got the most for their money by leaving the searchers in solitude for the full time.