Cul-De-Sac (1966)

Bored bourgeois dilettante and his bored faux-bohemian wife live out their empty, aristocratic dreams in an isolated castle full of chickens. Chickens for life. Chickens at life. Chickens for eggs. Roosters without purpose, without worker-hens to do their dirty work; the trash piles up. The empty wife is at constant sexual readiness; but she's disappointed with the game and its players. Excitement is desired. And then in walk the criminal element, proletarian in taste, practical in nature. What a mix! There is even a visit to the castle on the hill by other bored bourgeois acquaintances, to punch up the empty, cold idiocy of the scene. And the prolo-crims, loyal to their patriarchal boss, wait to for rescue, for their Godot. But there is no more honour amongst thieves than there is amongst bourgeois and all round, disappointment reigns to the rat-tahtat-tat of gunfire and death. In the end, one betrayal is as good as another and the ultimate alienation which is the product of a narrow, individualistic lifesyle is left to howl in its usual shriveled, muted manner.

Fmovies: "Cul-de-Sac" is another strange kind of a suspense filmÂ… It is about a hoodlum invading the privacy of a rich, highly eccentric couple, impresses with its darkly comic account of power games and communication breakdownÂ…

Here Polanski isolated his characters in an old castle on Holy Island, off the Northumberland coast... And what characters they were: Donald Pleasance, putting on his wife's nightie and using her make-up in the retreat to which he had escaped from the unappealing world; Francoise Dorléac as the stunning bird; and Lionel Stander as the savage intruder blundering in…

A lot of critics gave a lot of praise to this film – presumably on the precept that if it's bizarre and a bit perverse and nobody understands it, it must be good… I found it just too bizarre, too perverse, too incomprehensible to sustain the suspense that must have been intended…

Roman Polanski's third feature Cul-De-Sac is a more comedic take on an age-old premise: a couple (Donald Pleasance and Francoise Dorleac) are put upon by a criminal on the run (Lionel Stander) and the film becomes a power game of their interactions. It doesn't have much in the way of narrative, but instead builds itself around the ups and downs of their power struggles and the way they confront one another, as a whole or in individual pairings. It starts off well enough with a solid opening act that had quite a few laughs, mostly thanks to Pleasance, but after a while it began to wear thin.

The entire thing relies on your interest in the characters and their games of power and sexual undertones with one another, but I couldn't have cared less about any of them so I found myself dreadfully bored for most of it. The final act raised my interest a little bit as everything goes wildly out of control, but it took too long for me to get there. Lionel Stander is a solid presence, creating a very uneasy feeling whenever he walks in the room, but Dorleac and Pleasence began to grate on my nerves rather quickly. I've always been a big Polanski fan and he still shows here his ability to create a complete atmosphere that is fully in tune with his vision, along with his fetish for isolating his characters in secluded locations, but I unfortunately didn't care about the characters in a film that is all about them.

Cul-De-Sac fmovies. If we think of Roman Polanski's pieces, Nóz w wodzie (1962)is more important, Repulsion (1965)is in my opinion almost the best movie ever made, Rosemary's baby (1968)is more horrifying and Le Locataire (1976) is more interesting, not to talk about Chinatown (1974) etc.

So why should you see Cul-de-Sac? Because it's polanski and it's not crappy. And because of Catherine Deneuve's sister Francoise Dorleac, who died way too early (in 1967, just some time after she co-starred Les Demoiselles de Rochefort with her sister).

Once again, the main characters are separated from the world and stranger's are getting in from the outside. The movie is fun, weird and of course a must-see for a Polanski fan.

As 'Cul-de-sac' was Polanski's first movie after his brilliant psychological thriller 'Repulsion' it can't help but be a slight disappointment. Even so, I thought it was an interesting movie and I found it to be much more enjoyable than his next one the totally unfunny spoof 'The Fearless Vampire Killers'. 'Cul-de-sac' is quite difficult to catergorise. In some ways it reminded me of Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' (filmed much later than this but originally staged in the late 1950s), in others of Jack Hill's cult favourite 'Spider Baby' (made earlier but not really released until afterwards), and you could almost see it as prefiguring 'Performance' (old school gangsters meet the new world of the swinging 1960s). But really it quite an odd and unique black comedy. It may not be 100% successful, and it does have a few dull spots, but overall it's worth tracking down if you want to see something different. The main reason it succeeds for me is the unusual location of Lindisfarne, England (which I have visited), and the performances of Donald Pleasence, Francoise Dorleac and Lionel Stander. Pleasence was one of Britain's most underrated character actors, the beautiful and doomed Dorleac had appeared alongside Jean-Paul Belmondo in the entertaining thriller 'That Man From Rio', and Standish, who later appeared in movies by Leone and Spielberg, is best remembered as Max, the craggy manservant on the popular 1980s TV show 'Hart To Hart'. All three are excellent in this movie, and their interaction make it fascinating viewing. The supporting cast also includes Jack MacGowran ('The Exorcist') and an early appearance by 1970s sex symbol Jacqueline Bisset. 'Cul-de-sac' is without a doubt Polanski's most underrated movie, and fans of the unusual and the off beat will enjoy it very much. A DVD with a commentary from Polanski would would be wonderful. Any chance?

Cul-de-sac is a very beautiful black and white movie. It belongs to the lightweight category. The story is weird in an entertaining way, often amusing and sad at once. If the director tried to be willingly shallow, he was very successful. And I do not mean that ironically but say it with awe.

The place is Holy Island, on the east coast of Northern England. It actually gets cut off with the tide. Polanski makes very good use of the location and was very lucky with the casting. All characters are rather detestable in a detached sort of way. Donald Pleasance gives the performance of his life as the emasculated, utterly humiliated owner of the castle on the island. The other two main characters are the brisk yet elf like Françoise Dorléac and Lionel Stander as a gruff, brutal gangster. There is a very strange, truly unique chemistry between Dorléac and Stander. Dorléac does something to Stander. «We call dees a bicycle», she says gleefully with her funny accent, and it nearly knocks me off my chair every time I see that well filmed, suspenseful scene. I won‘t tell you what «de bicycle» is – it may need parental guidance to watch it but does not belong to the restrictable area. Cul-de-sac has a very memorable musical score.