(1962, b/w; Nóz w Wodzie, Polish) Director Roman Polanski's first feature film, for which he also wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Jerzy Skolimowski and Jakub Goldberg, is a psychological thriller.

On a Sunday outing, driving to a marina (across the windshield passes a reflection of treetops and sky as the car moves through an arboreal lane), Andrzeg (Leon Niemczyk), a sports writer, with his mistress Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) brakes hard, swerving to avoid hitting a hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malannowicz) standing in the middle of the road. Angry at first, Andrzeg allows the young man, calling him a bum, to accompany them in the car, offering as well to take him aboard his sailboat, Christine.

"You need quick reflexes and discipline," say Andrzeg of taking command at the helm to the passenger. The younger man, a student (whose name is never mentioned), providing black radishes from his rucksack for their breakfast, displays his knife with retractable blade, which he says comes in handy when hiking through forests.

Acting as skipper, Andrzeg toys with the novice. Andrzeg begins to relate the tale of a stoker who jumped off a table onto broken glass, attempting to demonstrate just how tough he was. Sometimes the three get along; other times the young man gets frustrated with Andrzeg's ordering him about and efforts at humiliating him, asking to be let off the vessel.

When the boat runs aground, the knife comes in handy to cut the halyard. Going below deck during a rain storm, they play jackstraws; Krystyna sings a song (the soundtrack otherwise devoid of music during the voyage) and the student recites a poem while Andrzeg listens to a boxing match on the radio.

"Why did you bring him along?" asks Krystyna of Andrzeg (observing similarities between the two men's personalities, though the young man in having half as many years acts twice as dumb) while their guest doses off. Unable to sleep, Krystyna goes up on deck in the early hours before dawn, followed there by the young man. Andrzeg wakes, collects his pipe tobacco and the young man's knife into his robe pocket, and joins the other two above.

After directing the young man to swab the deck, Andrzeg refuses to give back the knife when the young man asks for its return: "Come get it." The blade falls into the water as the two men scuffle. Later the young fellow is knocked overboard. After futile attempts to find him (he'd said he couldn't swim), Krystyna accuses Andrzeg: "You've drowned him."

Andrzeg ends their quarrel by jumping into the water and swimming away, leaving Krystyna alone. When she brings the sailboat back to the dock, he's there waiting.

From behind the steering wheel, denying that he's scared, he says they will go to the police to report the young man's death. She tells him that the young man didn't drown; instead, she made love to him. Allowing that she may be trying to relieve him of guilt for the accident, Andrzeg dismisses her story, especially the cheating on him, as a fantasy.

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