A Ship of Fools: Psychology and Body Language of the Characters in Knife in the Water

Erik Carlson
Jan. 14
MFA Filmmaking Group B
Maureen Tabor Psychology and Film 
4/22/15

A Ship of Fools: Psychology and Body Language of the Characters in Knife in the Water

In Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water, an older Polish couple pick up a young hitchhiker on their way to an overnight sailing trip and eventually allow the teen to come with them onboard. However, as the trip progresses, things steadily become heated and tense, resulting in a confrontation that turns all three character's lives upside down. This is due to the character's psychological backgrounds, which can be detected through their actions, dialogue, and body language. In this paper, I will analyze these three characters' actions and behaviors to determine their psychology issues using the theories of Erik Erikson and Sigmund Freud, as well as the method of body language.

In the beginning of the film, the husband begins very much in control and in motion, taking over the wheel of the car when he finds his wife's driving unsatisfactory, inviting the hitchhiker both in the car and on the boat without asking his wife, and continuingly advising the hitchhiker about how things should be run. However, by the end of the film, he is left conflicted in a situation that he doesn't know the answer to: does he turn himself into the police for drowning the hitchhiker, which the wife says he didn't, or does he believe his wife's account that she cheated on him with the hitchhiker and suffer the humiliation that he has lost control over her? On a visual level, this can be seen in contrast with his rapidly driving the car along the country road in the beginning and the car in a standstill at the end at both a literal and figurative crossroads, but on a psychological level, the man is stuck in certain stages laid forth by Erikson and Freud.

In Erikson's case, the husband is stuck in the Care: generativity vs. stagnation stage: At first it seems like he's offering to help the wife and the hitchhiker in their tasks of driving and learning how to sail in a father figure type of role, but he is really taking control of each situation to how he sees fit: he doesn't care much for his wife's driving, pointing out her flaws until she finally pulls over and lets him drive. When they meet the hitchhiker, the husband also assumes that the wife would have pulled over to help the hitchhiker instead of keep moving, and invites the teen along without his wife's permission. In terms of the hitchhiker, it becomes clear that the husband only brought him with in the car and on the boat was to take the hitchhiker away from his preferred method of travel, land, and taunt and humiliate him in the husband's domain, the water, as a show of his primal dominance.

Speaking of primal dominance, the husband is also shown to be stuck in Freud's oral stage: constantly having something in his mouth, such as a cigarette, or food or drink, especially when he's upset, such as right after they almost run over the hitchhiker with the car or when the hitchhiker is messing around and drops the soup. The husband is also very oral in how he treats the hitchhiker and later his wife, taking cruel pleasure and laughing in seeing the teen fumble with driving the boat, and selfishly abandoning the wife on the boat while he swims to shore to contact the police. Traits of his cruel and selfish behavior can be seen in body language throughout the film, such as his frequent blinking at the beginning when he doesn't like his wife's driving, his narrowed eyes and clenched jaw whenever the hitchhiker or his wife make him angry, and his open mouth smile, lifted eyebrows and narrowed eyes as he is laughing at the hitchhiker being pushed onto the sail. It is this clashing with the hitchhiker that eventually leads to the husband's downfall where he is back to rapid blinking, lowered eyebrows, and rubbing his face in discomfort while talking about the hitchhiker back in the car.

The hitchhiker himself is also an interesting character in terms of being stuck in certain stages of Erikson's and Freud's theories. In the case of Erikson, the hitchhiker is stuck in the Learning Identity vs. Identity Diffusion stage, to the point that he isn't even given a proper name. Both in the beginning and ending of the film, he starts out traveling on the road on his own, only getting occasional financial support from his father. When he is invited to come along on the older couple's sailing trip, he constantly tries to prove himself physically by helping run the boat and doing other tasks. 
He also tries to emulate the husband, wanting to be like him and develop a similar identity to him, despite the husband's constant berating, even to the point of seducing and bedding the wife, but ultimately fails in this search for identity and is left on his own again, this time without his special knife.

Speaking of the knife, this brings us to the Freudian stage that the hitchhiker is stuck in, which is the Phallic stage. The hitchhiker's knife is his only sense of identity and is constantly brought up in the film. Despite never actually using it as a weapon, the hitchhiker constantly has the knife on display, helping to cut food, throwing the knife at a wall below deck, and playing a game of pinfinger, stabbing the empty spaces between his fingers in rapid succession. This display earns the ire of the husband, as this is the only masculine display he has not conquered. However, this leads to him getting his revenge on the hitchhiker by first causing the hitchhiker to cut himself with the knife and later steals the knife, angering the teen, and throws the knife overboard, causing the hitchhiker to lose his "phallic symbol", resorting to fighting with his fists and badly losing by being knocked overboard. 

Without his sense of identity, the hitchhiker is further humiliated by the wife when she takes charge in having sex with him and looking after him after he falls overboard, and wanders back on land, full of inferiority. This sense of inferiority can seen in the hitchhiker's body language throughout the film such as his eyes looking downward and his eyebrows lowered whenever he's made a mistake like dropping the soup, and his moving further away from the couple and cradling his arm when he is doing so. After his encounter with the wife, he can't even look the wife in the face as she has become more masculine than he has.

Out of the three characters though, the wife has to be the most interesting in terms of the psychological stages she is stuck in because she starts out as an almost passive secondary character in the film but fully comes into her own at the end, outmanning and humiliating both male characters. In terms of Erikson, the wife starts out stuck in the Intimacy vs., Isolation stage very much letting the husband taking control and emulating some of his actions and abilities, such as being a very capable driver of the car and the boat, taking charge to fix something when the boat is damaged during the night and smoking and eating whenever she is upset, only speaking out when the men are doing something particularly stupid like the hitchhiker throwing the oar in the water or the husband berating the hitchhiker for his inexperience. Its not until the husband knocks the hitchhiker overboard, does the woman break away and become her own person, berating the husband for his actions and being a coward, and further breaking away from him by sleeping with the hitchhiker and toying with the husband on whether the hitchhiker is still alive or not. She also uses this new sense of freedom to take care of the hitchhiker when he's returned on board and warns him that emulating the husband isn't a good idea.

This sense of holding back and release can also be shown in the Freudian stage the wife is stuck in, which is the Anal Stage. The wife starts out as an anal retentive kind of person, being very quiet most of the time, only speaking up when something is going badly but taking interest in the hitchhiker, even learning more about him.. As the tension between the men build, we wonder how the wife is going to react, and the tension is finally released and she becomes expulsive when she yells at the husband for potentially killing the hitchhiker, and later slaps the hitchhiker for hiding. Finally, she defies the husband by letting her passion for the hitchhiker take over and she takes control, berating the hitchhiker for acting like the husband, but taking care of him and secretly letting him off before reaching shore, the husband's downfall in her hands. This transformation can be seen in her body language throughout the film where she starts out with lowered eyebrows and gazing eyes when the husband is criticizing her driving, to narrowing eyes and a clenched jaw when berating the husband and finally raised eyebrows in confidence and glancing eyes when seeing how stuck in a bad position the husband is at the end of the film.

In this paper, I have covered the psychological and physical behaviors of the three characters in Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water using the theories of Erikson and Freud. The characters range in different psychological behavior from the husband who is self absorbed and selfish, to the hitchhiker, who is looking for an identity, and finally the wife, who starts out held back and becomes her own person. Despite this film having come out in the 60s, I can see why this is considered a classic in that its themes and psychological behaviors are as true today as they were then. It is its own unique thriller, a thriller of the mind.