Space & Environment: Secret Liars

The Mise-en-Scene Film Review

Repulsion (1965)

Directed by Roman Polanski. Based in London during the SwingingSixties period, Carol is left alone while her sister goes on holiday only to experience a frightening, never-ending dream that almost seems real. Throughout the film Carol doesnt show any emotion towards anything, which gets very frustrating as your just waiting for her to react to a situation. As the film goes on you get more of an understanding of why she acts how she does, Bosley Crowther says: It is also a haunting adumbration of a small but piercing human tragedy, and it is almost a perfect specimen of a very special cinemasound technique. (Crowther, 1965) Everything points to the question could something have happened in her past? The constant cycle of repetition from the tunes suggest shes been in the situation Figure 1 before; when shes lying in bed and all to be heard is bells ringing - this gives tension to the audience almost as if their waiting for something to happen next but nothing ever does. The entire film turns up side down by the end or it does in her mind, the more shes allowing her fear to take over. A big scene in the movie: where hands begin to emerge from walls could suggest different men are seducing her. David Jenkins asks a good question: The famous set piece where groping hands protrude through cracks in the wall is clearly fantasy, but how much of the rest of it really happening? (Jenkins, 2012) Then another small scene when her hands are pressed up against what she thinks is a wall but turns out to be a wall of soft clay leaving hand marks behind suggesting her will power to forget has turned soft and all the old, horrid thoughts are sinking back. The bathroom also starts off white and clean but the more her mind is being messed up, the darker the house gets.

Figure 2

By the end after being taken on a journey through the mind of a tormented woman Polanski just closes in on a family photograph to drop hints about the roots of the blonde angels insanity. Rather than making a mad person scary, the film terrifies by giving an audience a sense of what its like to lose sanity. (Newman, 2013).

Figure 3

Figure 4

Bibliography
Text: Crowther, Bosley. Available at: http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?res=EE05E7DF1739E4 71BC4C53DFB667838E679EDE (Accessed online on 19th November 2013.) Jenkins, David. Available at: http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatricalreviews/repulsion-22822 (Accessed online on 19th November 2013.) Newman, Kim. Available at: http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=134914 (Accessed online on 19th November 2013.) Images: Fig. 1 Repulsion (1965) From: Repulsion. Directed by Roman Polanski [Film Poster] British. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059646/?ref_=rvi_tt Fig. 2 Repulsion (1965) From: Repulsion. Directed by Roman Polanski [Film Still] British. http://www.thelmagazine.com/binary/a54e/repulsion.jpg Fig. 3 Repulsion (1965) From: Repulsion. Directed by Roman Polanski [Film Still] British. http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/posts/20445d1c0e6713202381b41b499aa9890d5a/One_Scene_Repulsion_Still_video_still.j peg Fig. 4 Repulsion (1965) From: Repulsion. Directed by Roman Polanski [Film Still] British. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Xh8OsdXukAM/TQE_ugl11oI/AAAAAAAAAh4/vOvtp JWZ8H8/s1600/repulsion+photo.jpg