Classic 60s Movie: Repulsion

January is Classic 60s Movie month. Today’s guest post comes from Kate Hagen.

Movie Title: Repulsion

Year: 1965

Writer: David Stone, based on a story from Roman Polanski and Gerald Brach

Lead Actors: Catherine Deneuve

Director: Roman Polanski

IMDb Plot Summary: Left alone when her sister goes on vacation, a young beauty finds herself besieged on all sides by the demons of her past.

Why I Think This Is A Classic 60s Movie: While it’s impossible to discuss Roman Polanski without bringing up his incredibly troubling personal life, he created two of the most singular depictions of female madness — madness sprung forth from the violence that men allow and perpetuate — Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, just before the emergence of second-wave feminism in the early 1970s. The latter film (based on Ira Levin’s bestseller) follows a more traditional structure and has a more sensational narrative hook, but Repulsion, Polanski’s first English language film, is devoted to occupying one woman’s fractured point of view and deteriorating mental state as the horrors of modern sexuality, dating, and the male species as a whole overwhelm her entire existence, an existence that soon becomes confined to the four walls of her empty London apartment. The focus on a female protagonist who is completely paralyzed by her fears of progressive 1960s sexuality provides this film with a cultural viewpoint that reflects the changing of the guard for 1960s women headed into the sexual revolution: for Carol’s swinging sister, relaxed, changing attitudes about sexuality and dating are liberating, but for Carol, they’re absolutely debilitating.

Carol, played with distant, doe-eyed restraint by Catherine Deneuve, is a protagonist steeped in contradiction of the “right” ways a woman should look and behave: she’s a manicurist who can’t stop biting her nails and struggles to feign interest in the dating woes of her co-workers. She’s a rare beauty who could have any man she wants, but can barely make eye contact during a lunch date with a potential suitor. Trappings of the traditional feminine — preparing a meal, having a spa day, being kissed in a convertible — are transformed into grotesque tableaus of rotting rabbit and potato skins, a distorted reflection in a silver tea kettle, a thick white face mask flaking off, compulsive teeth-brushing following the kiss. The kitchen, traditional domesticity personified, is a place of particular horror for Carol, as flies gather on the aforementioned rotting rabbit, a faucet (one of many phallic symbols in the film) leaks relentlessly, dirty dishes pile up.

It’s one thing to present a female character who is a stark-raving lunatic and monstrous to those around her, but it’s a much more impressive trick to create a protagonist like Carol, who is her own antagonist throughout the film. Predatory men like a faux-paternal, lecherous landlord come into play in a major way in the film’s third act, but it’s Carol’s own fractured psyche and perception of those around her that create the most believable obstacles for Carol, especially, as with the landlord, when the imagined, nebulous horrors become personified and must be destroyed.

My Favorite Moment In The Movie: As the film draws to its inevitable conclusion in the last fifteen minutes, Carol’s apartment becomes a full-on horror show of trashed furniture, a kitchen in total squalor, and two pesky corpses Carol has no way of disposing of. Repulsion’s most famous shot — Carol moving down a hallway filled with outstretched male hands coming from inside the walls — occurs in this stretch of the film, as she’s literally pulled into the apartment in her state of extreme, male-driven paranoia. Polanski chooses not to dwell on the murder that happens on the third act, but rather its aftermath, as Carol’s sister Helene and her lover Michael return from holiday, and must deal with the results and consequences of Carol’s time alone in the apartment. Deneuve is remarkable in these final moments, as we see her lie catatonic in a room full of neighbors and family. Finally, after Carol is taken away, we end on an old photo of Carol as a child, blankly staring down an older man who we can assume is her father. It’s of course easy to assume that all of Carol’s issues regarding men and sexuality likely stemmed from an abusive father, and Polanski leaves the audience with the message that the madness of women doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and is often the product of violence that has been perpetrated against them by men.

My Favorite Dialogue In the Movie: For me, there’s no single line of dialogue in Repulsion that stands above the rest, and because the film is so based in symbolism, it isn’t particularly dialogue-driven. I have pulled a couple key lines that explore the film’s themes, and are reflective of the changing times in which the film takes place:

“She’s a bit strung up, isn’t she?”

“She’s just sensitive.”

“She should see a doctor.” — An exchange between Helene, Carol’s sister, and her boyfriend, Michael. Michael would rather pass Carol off than deal with her problems, which was the most common choice for men dealing with “unstable” women in the era before information regarding mental health was readily available.

“They’re all the same, just like children. They want to be spanked then given sweets.”- one of Carol’s salon patrons, an older woman, discussing men’s unrelenting sexual desires. The older women at Carol’s salon are presented as sage, but not at all oblivious to the changing times, and what it means to be a young, unmarried woman in swinging 1960s times.

One of the most interesting dialogue curiosities is the use of “bitch,” which was obviously far less ubiquitous in 1965 than today. One of Carol’s salon co-workers refers to their supervisor as “that old bitch,” while later, that same supervisor (an elderly woman herself) calls her boss “the old bitch.” When Michael’s wife calls Carol looking for Helene, one of the first things out of her mouth is to call Carol a “ lying bitch,” unaware she’s not speaking to Helene. To have three different women refer to each other as bitches within the dialogue is quite progressive, and when coupled with “old” and “lying,” it shows that the worst thing a woman can say about another woman is that she is old, lying, or a bitch within the context of this film.

Key Things You Should Look For When Watching This Movie: Repulsion is all about sexual symbolism: a tear in a bedside wall Carol can’t stop fingering, a candlestick used as a blunt murder weapon, a platter of that persistently decaying rabbit with a man’s straight razor in its blood, the rabbit’s heart carried in Carol’s handbag, potatoes that have sprouted, seeping bathroom walls. This sort of symbolism may seem a bit obvious today, but to present such an imagistic look at a modern London woman’s fear of sexuality and men in 1965 was truly radical. When bludgeoning one suitor with a candlestick or taking a razor to another, Polanski places the camera in the POV of the suitor, and we feel each desperate, trapped strike from Carol.

The black and white cinematography by Gilbert Taylor (A Hard Day’s Night, Dr. Strangelove, Frenzy, Star Wars) focuses on shades of mundane grey early on, then develops into murky blacks as Carol’s mental state declines. Polanski often fills the frame with Carol’s body rather than her face, providing a unique self-aware presentation of the male gaze. Carol’s wardrobe — whites, yellows, beige — obviously mirrors the safety and security she finds in purity, as do the nearby nuns she can’t stop spying on and their white frocks. Polanski makes Carol’s imagined rapes just as terrifying as the real thing with tight shooting and total silence on the soundtrack as Carol’s screams go unheard, The scenes are far from exploitative or tawdry, and serve as a clear screen test for the demonic rape in Rosemary’s Baby. Still, even as part of Carol’s imagination, the rapes in Repulsion are much more horrifying in their plausibility. As the film progresses, the distortion of space within Carol’s apartment — whether it’s something obvious like hands grabbing at Carol from within the walls, or something more grounded, like forced perspective on Carol’s living room through a fish-eye lens — allows the viewer to inhabit the same external space as Carol, as we’ve already been occupying her internal space.

Polanski and his co-writer, Gerald Brach, used this film to help fund Cul-De-Sac, which would also be shot in the UK. Repulsion marks the first time a female orgasm (though as heard through a bedroom wall only) was allowed on film by the British Board of Film Censors. Repulsion is clearly a major influence on Black Swan, and features another gnarly manicure mishap in addition to sharing the film’s overarching themes. Another less obvious ancestor, Lucky McKee’s May also features a sexually stunted female protagonist who resorts to violence when exploring her own sexuality yields disappointing results.

Thanks, Kate! To show our gratitude for your guest post, here’s a dash of creative juju for you. Whoosh!

Twitter: @thathagengrrl.

We already have a set of classic 70s movies, 80s Movies and 90s Movies. This month, we’re working on 60s Movies.

We have 32 volunteers. I have put in bold those who have already sent their guest post to me.

Ipsita Barik — Rosemary’s Baby
Ipsita Barik — Bonnie and Clyde
Mike Dobbins — The Sound of Music
Brandnewusedcar — Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Markham Cook — Jules et Jim
Steve Cook — The Blue Max
JasperLamarCrab — 2001: A Space Odyssey
N D — Lonely are the Brave
Drew Dorenfest — Easy Rider
Rick Dyke — Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Rick Dyke — Fail Safe
Felicity Flesher — The Music Man
PaulG — Lawrence of Arabia
D.L. Gill — Zulu
Jeff Guenther — Cool Hand Luke
Kate Hagen — Repulsion
John Henderson — Night of the Living Dead
John Henderson — The Odd Couple
John Hörnschemeyer — The Graduate
Zach Jansen — They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Will King — The Pink Panther
William Leitch — If…
Lisaisfunny — Blow Up
Jack McDonald — Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Nick — Lonely are the Brave
Daryl Powell — The Apartment
jprichard — Persona
Ally Shina — The Jungle Book
Mike Sweeney — Planet of the Apes
Mark Twain — The Loved One
Liz Warner — The Manchurian Candidate
Michael Waters — Dr. No

For those who have signed up, but have yet to email me your post, please do so ASAP.

Thanks in advance!

For the original post explaining the series, go here.