Knife in the Water

"Knife in the Water" is, as far as I know, Roman Polanski's first feature film. It is a Freudian allegory about a power struggle between a younger and older man, involving the older man's wife and his yacht, conveniently named after the wife.

Extremely uptight about not letting the viewer miss a single drop of its message, the film is very useful as a teaching tool. Polanski will become a more subtle director in the future, but it is already clear that he's a master of composition.

One of the things he does is to make sure there are lots of sharp angles in the frame. He constantly cuts the screen into pieces diagonally and makes the actors fill one part of it, while leaving the rest very open:





 Then there are the symbolic poses:



And the coolest thing he does is the long scenes where the camera stays in the same place, only turning from side to side to follow the actors, and letting them trade places and sizes in the frame as they fight for dominance.

Each one of these is a single shot: