Madness Monochrome and Mythic: Repulsion and The Lighthouse as Psychological Pillars
Two lighthouses of the psyche: one flickering in urban decay, the other raging against the sea’s eternal fury.
In the vast canon of psychological horror, few films capture the inexorable slide into insanity with such visceral precision as Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) and Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse (2019). These works, separated by over half a century, dissect the human mind’s fragility through isolation, repression, and hallucinatory descent. Both invite viewers into claustrophobic realms where reality unravels thread by thread, revealing profound truths about desire, power, and the self.
- Shared motifs of sensory overload and isolation propel protagonists toward madness, contrasting urban apartments with remote outposts.
- Cinematographic mastery—black-and-white starkness versus monochrome intensity—amplifies psychological turmoil in distinct eras.
- Performances by Catherine Deneuve and the Pattinson-Dafoe duo elevate personal neuroses into mythic confrontations with the subconscious.
Cracks in the Facade: Isolation as Catalyst
At the heart of both films lies isolation, not merely physical but profoundly existential. In Repulsion, Catherine Deneuve’s Carol inhabits a decaying London apartment that becomes a labyrinth of her repressed sexuality and trauma. The walls literally close in, sprouting hands that grope and violate, symbolising her aversion to male touch. Polanski crafts this space as a microcosm of Carol’s psyche, where everyday sounds—ticking clocks, dripping water—amplify into auditory assaults, foreshadowing her violent outbursts.
The Lighthouse mirrors this entrapment on a storm-battered New England island in 1890s, where Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) share a cramped keepers’ quarters. Eggers transforms the lighthouse itself into a phallic tower of forbidden knowledge, its beam a siren call to madness. The men’s routines—endless scrubbing, gulls screeching, waves crashing—erode sanity much like Carol’s household drudgery. Both narratives weaponise confinement, turning solitude into a pressure cooker for buried impulses.
What unites these isolations is their sensory bombardment. Carol’s apartment reverberates with intrusive male presences, real and imagined, while the lighthouse men’s rivalry devolves into grotesque rituals. This parallel underscores psychological horror’s reliance on environment as antagonist, predating modern films like The Witch (2015), Eggers’s own debut, which similarly mines Puritan repression.
Shadows and Storms: Visual Descent into Delirium
Polanski’s black-and-white cinematography in Repulsion, shot by Gilbert Taylor, employs stark contrasts to mirror Carol’s fracturing mind. Long, unbroken takes traverse hallways distorted by wide-angle lenses, evoking German Expressionism’s warped sets. Hands emerging from walls, a man decaying in her bed—these practical effects rely on shadow play, making the unseen terrifyingly tangible. The film’s aspect ratio tightens like a noose, compressing Carol’s world into paranoia.
Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke push monochrome further in The Lighthouse, using 35mm black-and-white with an almost square 1.19:1 ratio to mimic silent-era films like F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). The result is a fever dream of chiaroscuro lighting: oil lamps flicker on weathered faces, storms rage in high-contrast fury. Practical effects dominate—prosthetics for sea creatures, wind machines for tempests—creating a tactile hyperreality that blurs Winslow’s visions of mermaids and tentacles.
Both films shun colour to heighten emotional rawness, a technique rooted in film noir but elevated here to psychological extremes. Polanski’s static compositions fracture with Dutch angles during hallucinations, while Eggers’s swirling camera work during the climax evokes vertigo. This visual language not only immerses but implicates the viewer, forcing confrontation with the protagonists’ unraveling.
Auditory Assaults: Sound as Sanity’s Underminer
Sound design proves pivotal, transforming mundane noises into harbingers of doom. In Repulsion, Chico Hamilton’s sparse jazz score underscores Carol’s dissociation, punctuated by amplified heartbeats and ragged breaths. The piano plinking obsessively mimics her repetitive trauma, a motif Polanski drew from his own experiences of loss and exile. Silence dominates, broken by imagined rapes that echo through empty rooms, heightening dread.
The Lighthouse assaults with a foghorn’s bellowing drone, layered by Mark Korven’s shrieking analogue synths evoking H.P. Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Dafoe’s sea shanties warp into incantations, while gulls’ cries pierce like accusations. Eggers, influenced by folkloric soundscapes, crafts an aural mythology where sound becomes character— the ocean’s roar devours reason.
Comparing these, Polanski favours subtlety, building tension through absence, whereas Eggers overwhelms with excess, reflecting era shifts from 1960s arthouse restraint to contemporary immersion. Both, however, prove sound as psychological horror’s sharpest blade, influencing scores in films like Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018).
Repressed Desires Unleashed: Sexuality and Power
Sexuality fuels the madness in both. Carol’s repulsion stems from an implied incestuous trauma, manifesting in violent rejection of suitors. Her rabbit carcass rots as a metaphor for purity corrupted, a grotesque tableau Polanski insisted on for its shock value. This feminist reading sees Carol as victim of patriarchal gaze, her apartment a battleground against objectification.
In The Lighthouse, homoerotic tensions simmer between Winslow and Wake, the older man’s dominance evoking Oedipal strife. Masturbation fantasies, Prometheus myths, and Neptune’s curse intertwine, with the light symbolising forbidden orgasmic enlightenment. Eggers draws from queer subtexts in sailor lore, critiquing toxic masculinity’s self-destruction.
These explorations differ yet converge: Repulsion internalises female hysteria, echoing Freudian theories Polanski subverted, while The Lighthouse externalises male rivalry. Together, they dissect desire’s dark underbelly, presaging #MeToo-era reckonings with power imbalances.
Performances that Pierce the Soul
Deneuve’s near-silent portrayal in Repulsion is a masterclass in physicality—eyes widening in terror, hands trembling in recoil. At 22, she embodies fragility weaponised, her beauty a curse. Polanski pushed her to exhaustion, yielding authentic breakdown.
Pattinson and Dafoe in The Lighthouse spar like titans: Pattinson’s feral unraveling contrasts Dafoe’s bombastic Proteus. Improvised rants and physical toll—saltwater diets, raw fish—forge raw intensity, earning Oscar nods.
These feats elevate scripts, proving psychological horror thrives on actor commitment, akin to Gielgud in Shining (1980) but more primal.
Effects Forged in Reality
Practical effects ground both films’ horrors. Repulsion‘s hallway hands used latex and wires, decaying corpse via mortician techniques—raw, stomach-churning realism. No CGI; pure analogue terror.
The Lighthouse builds sea gods with animatronics and miniatures, storms via 70 wind machines. Blaschke’s lenses distort organically, preserving tactile dread.
This commitment rejects digital gloss, harking to The Thing (1982), ensuring madness feels inescapably real.
Echoes Through Time: Legacy and Influence
Repulsion birthed apartment horrors like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), influencing Hereditary. The Lighthouse nods to it via isolation, impacting The Northman (2022). Both endure for unflinching psyche probes.
Production tales enrich: Polanski’s UK exile funded Repulsion; Eggers’s Kickstarter roots led to A24 glory. Censorship battles—X-rating for Repulsion, MPAA skirmishes—highlight boundary-pushing.
Director in the Spotlight
Roman Polanski, born Rajmund Roman Liebling Polański on 18 August 1933 in Paris to Polish-Jewish parents, survived the Holocaust hidden in Kraków’s countryside after his mother’s Auschwitz execution. This early trauma infused his oeuvre with paranoia and loss. Post-war, he studied at the Łódź Film School, debuting with shorts like Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958), blending absurdism and menace.
Emigrating to the UK, Repulsion marked his English-language breakthrough, followed by Cul-de-sac (1966), a claustrophobic thriller. Hollywood beckoned with Rosemary’s Baby (1968), a Satanic pregnancy nightmare grossing $33 million. Tragedy struck with wife Sharon Tate’s 1969 Manson murder, halting Day of the Dolphin (1973). Exiled after 1977 statutory rape charge, he helmed Tess (1979), earning Oscar nods, and Pirates (1986), a swashbuckling flop.
Resurgences included The Pianist (2002), winning him Best Director Oscar for Holocaust survival tale; The Ghost Writer (2010), a political chiller; and Venus in Fur (2013), adapting sexual power plays. Influences span Hitchcock and Buñuel, his style marked by moral ambiguity and visual poetry. Filmography highlights: Knife in the Water (1962)—tense yacht thriller; Chinatown (1974, uncredited polish)—neo-noir masterpiece; Bitter Moon (1992)—erotic obsession; An Officer and a Spy (2019)—Dreyfus affair drama. Polanski remains a polarising auteur, his exilic gaze sharpening horror’s edges.
Actor in the Spotlight
Catherine Deneuve, born Catherine Dorléac on 22 October 1943 in Paris, grew up in a theatrical family, debuting at 13 in Les Collégiennes (1956). Jacques Demy’s Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964) launched her as musical icon, her porcelain beauty masking steel. Repulsion followed, showcasing dramatic depth.
International stardom via Belle de Jour (1967)—Buñuel’s bourgeois prostitute; Tristana (1970)—another Bunuelian subversion. Hollywood flirtations included The April Fools (1969) with Jack Lemmon. French New Wave ties: La Chèvre (1981) comedy hit. Awards abound—César for Indochine (1992), Cannes for Dans la ville de Sylvie (1985).
Recent roles: The Truth (2019) with daughter Chiara Mastroianni; De son vivant (2021)—Benoît Magimel drama. Influences from Bardot to Bergman, her 150+ films span 81⁄2 (1963 cameo), Hustle (1975) with Burt Reynolds, François Ozon collaborations like 8 Femmes (2002). Deneuve embodies enigmatic allure, her Repulsion gaze haunting generations.
Craving more descents into dread? Subscribe to NecroTimes for the latest in horror analysis!
Bibliography
Farrell, J. (2019) Robert Eggers. University of Texas Press. Available at: https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477319679/ (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
Grossman, J. (2001) Repulsion. Wallflower Press.
Harmetz, A. (2002) Roman Polanski: The Making of The Pianist. Applause Theatre & Cinema Books.
Kauffmann, S. (1973) Figures of Light: Film Criticism and Comment. Harper & Row.
Korven, M. (2020) ‘Sounding the Abyss: The Audio Design of The Lighthouse’, Film Score Monthly, 25(4), pp. 12-18.
Leaman, O. (2003) Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film. Routledge.
Magny, J. (1999) Roman Polanski: An Illustrated Biography. Granta Books.
Polanski, R. (1984) Roman. William Morrow.
Schwartz, R. (2005) The Films of Roman Polanski. Scarecrow Press.
Vincendeau, G. (2015) ‘Catherine Deneuve: Stardom and French Cinema’, Screen, 56(2), pp. 210-228. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/56/2/210/1641025 (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
Wood, R. (2003) Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. Columbia University Press.