Roman Polanski co-wrote much of his own work with Gerard Brach, and their scripts share a structural obsession with enclosed domestic space becoming hostile. Repulsion, Cul-de-sac and The Tenant all trap a protagonist in rooms that stop behaving normally.
Knife in the Water, his first feature, is a three-hander on a boat with almost no plot and enormous tension, built entirely on the shifting power between the characters.
His writing career cannot be separated from his 1977 conviction for unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen-year-old and his flight before sentencing, and any account of the work has to include it.
