Knife in the Water (1962)

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Initially, Polanski wanted to make a criminal story about a couple which takes a young hitchhiker to a boat trip, and at the end the boy dies in mysterious circumstances. In his version the trip was about a week long a involved some other characters. It was Jerzy Skolimowski who proposed to shorten it to one day and limit the number of characters. The final script was created in only three, four days by Polanski, Skolimowski and Jakub Goldberg in Polanski's apartment. While writing the script they were playing the dialogue, changing the roles all the time.
Roman Polanski had intended to take on the role of the young hitchhiker himself, but Jerzy Bossak, head of the Polish film unit KAMERA (under whose auspices the film was made), turned him down because he didn't consider the director attractive enough. The character's voice, however, is Polanski's, who later dubbed the part over. Zygmunt Malanowicz had a strong, developed, bass voice, which was quite inappropriate for the character.
The first scene in the film shows Andrzej and Krystyna driving a car. As shooting from the platform in front of the car was not yet available, the crew was tied to the car, standing on its mask. To get the proper light effects, they held a blanket with a small hole for the camera. Leon Niemczyk (Andrzej) was really driving this car quite fast (this was crucial to this scene), but he couldn't see anything. He drove the car using the tops of the trees to imagine where the road is.
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