Cul-de-sac (1966)

The partnerships of crooks and the alliances of lovers are both fragile and tenuous relationships. In either symbiosis, dead-end interplay leads to a sundering that turns the respective worlds of former mates upside down. Standing reality on its head was already a specialty of noir-hearted director Roman Polanski at the time of Cul-de-sac (1966). A pair of gangsters, wounded and on the lam, intrudes upon the balanced solace of an isolated, romantically linked man and woman in this black-and-white excursion into loyalty, betrayal, and the destructive influence of profane outside forces on sacred human bonds.