Repulsion (1965)

Director: Roman Polanski
Country: United kingdom

A cracking, scary film with many implications: sexual trauma, paranoid-schizoid personality disorder and supernatural forces. Roman Polanski is one of the greatest artists in the history of filmmaking and visual arts along with Buñuel, Hitchcock, Fellini, Chaplin, etc, and as an old-school filmmaker, Polanski does not explain anything to the audience, you gotta decide and judge by yourself, that's why those filmmakers were transcendental, because their works got substance (something lacking nowadays) and fortunately and wisely Polanski did not made a big Hitchcockian-Pyscho mistake here and nor did it later when completing  The Apartment Trilogy (with Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant) 

Polanski's deftly use of narrative, camera angles, lighting, music and silence, and theatrical images perfectly adapted for the screen, resulted in a first class supense-horror-psychological-thriller that engages the viewer from the beginning 'til the end. 

The legendary cinematographer Gilbert Taylor (Dr. Strange Love, A Hard Day's Night) set up a wonderful staging, full of dramatic shadows and detailed and jump shots (like the one when Deneuve's character sees a man in the mirror) not to mention the iconic image of the film, when Carol (Deneuve) sees the hands coming out from the wall, is disturbing and beautiful at the same time. 

Catherine Deneuve made an amazing job too, performing a character with little dialogue, which is not always easy, but she did it in a masterful way (in part because of Polanski's directing perfectionism) with the right gesticulation, pantomime and expresiveness, succesfully projecting the isolation and phobias suffered by Carol. Without a doubt Polanski is a real master both in the writing and the direction departments, he has been able to craft powerful claustrophobic movies like this one, with only one character (and the other being the flat itself), and that accomplishment is brutal. 

The new DVD version is simply beautiful, forget about the "old-school" bullshit about the grain, if you haven't seen this one, you gotta do it whether on Blu Ray or in the latest DVD release right now!