Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Pianist: Roman Polanski has directed some of modern Hollywood's greatest works, but arguably none would have happened without the success of this, his startling debut feature. Polanski had gained some notoriety from his student shorts in Poland, but Knife in the Water was unlike anything the West had seen from behind the so-called Iron Curtain: modern, sleek, boasting a cool jazz score and a contemporary bourgeois setting, but with something exquisitely sinister bubbling under the surface. A weekend boating trip is the setting for a battle of wits between an insufferable middle-aged stuffed shirt and an equally cocky young drifter, with the real loser being the older man's trophy wife, who's forced to put up with them both. Preening about the boat like peacocks in the sun, the men seem determined to conquer each other, whether emotionally, mentally, or physically. Even in the new postwar world of cleanliness, comfort, and class, Polanski hints, some things never change.