Repulsion

Polanski's first English-language film, made in London for almost nothing, and it is ninety minutes inside a woman's deterioration with almost no dialogue.

Carol works in a beauty salon in South Kensington and is repelled by men. Her sister goes to Italy for a fortnight and leaves her alone in the flat.

The flat is the film. Polanski shoots it with wide lenses that bend the walls, and as the fortnight passes the rooms get larger, cracks open in the plaster, and hands push through the corridor. A skinned rabbit sits on a plate for days.

Catherine Deneuve was 21 and barely speaks. The performance is almost entirely physical.

Gilbert Taylor, who shot it, went on to Star Wars.

The final shot is a photograph, and it retroactively explains the whole film without saying anything at all.