The Watching Hour: Repulsion

United Kingdom, 1965, 105 Minute Running Time
Genre/Subject: Thriller

35mm presentation - The young Catherine Deneuve plays a Belgian girl stranded in '60s London, a shy beauty with no social skills. When her sister leaves their shared flat, Deneuve goes gradually, quietly, completely mad. Her world becomes Polanski's paintbox, as the director distorts reality via a series of surrealistic touches (grasping hands that protrude from elastic walls) and out-and-out murderous horror. Very few films cast the kind of eerie spell that this 1965 classic achieves, and it clearly points the way toward Polanski's ROSEMARY’S BABY. As with most of the director's work, what is unsettling is not the overt violence, but the terrifying sense of emptiness and isolation, and the boiling unease inside one's own mind. – written by Robert Horton

DIRECTOR: Roman Polanski
Producer: Gene Gutowski, Robert Sterne, Sam Waynberg, Michael Klinger, Tony Tenser
Editor: Alastair McIntyre
Screenwriter: Roman Polanski, Gerard Brach, David Stone
Cinematographer: Gilbert Taylor
Principal Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser
US Distributor: Sony Pictures Repertory