Mirrors of the Fractured Soul: Repulsion and Saint Maud

Where obsession blurs the line between salvation and damnation, two women stare into the abyss of their own minds.

In the shadowed realms of psychological horror, few films capture the harrowing unraveling of the human psyche with the precision of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) and Rose Glass’s Saint Maud (2019). These works, separated by over half a century, dissect the perils of unchecked obsession—be it sexual repression or religious fervour—through protagonists teetering on the brink of insanity. Both movies wield intimate, claustrophobic narratives to probe faith’s double-edged blade, revealing how personal convictions can warp into nightmarish delusions.

• Protagonists Carol and Maud embody obsession’s grip, their descents illuminated by stellar performances that blur reality and hallucination.
• Directorial mastery in visual and auditory techniques crafts suffocating atmospheres, echoing broader evolutions in psychological horror.
• These films resonate across eras, influencing genre boundaries and underscoring timeless fears of isolation and fanaticism.

Descent into Isolation: The Protagonists’ Tormented Worlds

Carol in Repulsion, portrayed with ethereal fragility by Catherine Deneuve, inhabits a London flat that becomes her prison of the mind. A manicurist haunted by her sister’s fleeting affairs, Carol recoils from male touch, her virginity a fortress crumbling under repressed desires. As days blur, the apartment warps: walls pulse with cracks symbolising her fracturing psyche, hands emerge from shadows to grope her in hallucinatory assaults. Polanski films her withdrawal with unsparing closeness, her blank stares and trembling lips conveying a terror rooted in the body’s betrayal.

Maud, played by Morfydd Clark in Saint Maud, mirrors this isolation but channels it through zealous faith. Once Katie, a nurse scarred by a car crash and patient death, she reinvents herself as Maud, God’s vessel. Caring for terminally ill dancer Amanda, Maud’s mission to save her charge’s soul spirals into masochistic rituals—nail-pierced feet, scalding irons on flesh. Glass captures Maud’s euphoria in prayer, her eyes alight with divine fire, only for it to twist into paranoia. Both women retreat inward, their homes fortresses against a hostile world, yet incubators for madness.

The parallel lies in how obsession isolates: Carol from sexuality, Maud from doubt. Deneuve’s performance, honed under Polanski’s exacting gaze, relies on minimalism—silences that scream. Clark, conversely, erupts in physicality, her contortions evoking medieval martyrdoms. These portrayals elevate the films beyond mere scares, into studies of how the mind devours itself when gripped by singular fixation.

Key scenes amplify this: Carol’s first kill, bludgeoning her landlord with a candlestick after a spectral rape, unfolds in slow, deliberate strokes, blood pooling on rabbit carcasses symbolising tainted domesticity. Maud’s climactic beach sermon, preaching to indifferent crowds under apocalyptic skies, dissolves into a grotesque transformation, her face melting in self-inflicted stigmata. Such moments ground abstract horror in visceral reality.

Visions of the Forbidden: Faith, Repression, and Hallucination

Faith—or its absence—fuels both narratives’ hallucinatory cores. Repulsion presents Carol’s visions as eruptions of Catholic guilt, her Polish roots echoing Polanski’s own wartime traumas. Potatoes sprout in decay mirroring her stasis; a priest’s distant voice intones judgment. Absent overt religion, her torment secularises spiritual dread, obsession with purity twisting into violence against impure men.

Saint Maud inverts this, making faith explicit and ecstatic. Maud interprets Amanda’s agnosticism as demonic temptation, her visions—Jesus whispering approval—blending genuine mysticism with delusion. Glass draws from Catholic iconography: thorns, blood, transfiguration. Yet, like Carol’s, these apparitions serve obsession, Maud’s certainty blinding her to Amanda’s quiet manipulations and her own past sins.

Psychological depth emerges in thematic overlap. Both films critique how obsession perverts intimacy: Carol murders suitors, Maud rejects human bonds for divine union. Gender dynamics sharpen the blade—women policed by societal expectations of chastity or piety, their rebellions inward and destructive. Polanski’s film anticipates second-wave feminism’s gaze on repression; Glass updates it for #MeToo-era scrutiny of coercive salvation.

Sound design intensifies these visions. In Repulsion, Chico Hamilton’s jazz score fractures into dissonant echoes, heartbeats thudding like accusations. Saint Maud employs silence pierced by Maud’s ragged breaths or choral swells, her prayers a mantra devolving into mania. These auditory cues bind the viewer to the protagonists’ distorted perceptions.

Cinematography’s Grip: Claustrophobia and Subjective Horror

Polanski’s black-and-white lens in Repulsion traps viewers in Carol’s POV, fisheye distortions warping doorways into predatory maws. Long takes track her aimless pacing, shadows lengthening like accusatory fingers. The film’s economy—90 minutes of mounting dread—owes to Pierre ‘Kip’ Teisseire’s lighting, high contrasts evoking film noir’s moral ambiguity.

Glass’s colour palette in Saint Maud bursts with sickly hues: Amanda’s opulent home in golds and reds, Maud’s bedsit in ascetic greys. Shallow focus isolates Maud amid crowds, wide shots on the sea evoking sublime terror. Cinematographer Hildur Lind Austein employs slow-motion for Maud’s ecstasies, blurring pain into rapture, a technique nodding to Polanski’s subjective vertigo.

Both directors shun jump scares for slow-burn immersion. Polanski’s roving camera anticipates Rosemary’s Baby; Glass channels The Witch‘s folk-horror intimacy. Mise-en-scène details obsess: Carol’s lipstick-smeared mirror, Maud’s bloodied Bible. These craft environments as characters, extensions of the psyche.

Production hurdles underscore ingenuity. Repulsion, Polanski’s English debut, battled British censors over nudity and gore, emerging intact via Compton Films’ backing. Saint Maud, Glass’s feature bow, navigated low-budget constraints through A24’s support, its practical effects—real blood, prosthetics—lending authenticity amid pandemic delays.

Legacy’s Lingering Echoes: From 1960s Repression to Modern Fanaticism

Repulsion shattered taboos, influencing Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, and Hereditary‘s domestic horrors. Its raw femininity paved psych-thrillers like Single White Female. Critically lauded at Venice, it grossed modestly but endures as Polanski canon.

Saint Maud revitalises the subgenre, earning BAFTA nods and festival buzz. Echoing Repulsion, it probes faith post-Midsommar, its queer undertones—rumours of Maud’s past with a female patient—adding layers. Both films transcend horror, commenting on mental health: Carol’s breakdown evokes schizophrenia; Maud’s, religious mania akin to historical mystics.

Class threads enrich: Carol’s bourgeois stasis vs working-class drudgery; Maud’s nurse role amid Amanda’s privilege. National contexts differ—Polanski’s post-war Europe vs Glass’s Brexit Britain—yet both tap universal dread of fanaticism’s rise.

Influence extends culturally: Repulsion inspired fashion (Deneuve’s iconic look), music (Thom Yorke’s nods); Saint Maud fuels TikTok saint aesthetics. Together, they affirm psychological horror’s potency, obsession’s timeless allure.

Effects and Artifice: Crafting the Unreal

Special effects in Repulsion prioritise practical illusion: superimposed hands via double-exposure, walls built to crack on cue. No CGI precursor, Polanski relied on matte paintings for dream sequences, their seamlessness heightening unease. Blood effects, rudimentary yet shocking, used Karo syrup, staining Deneuve’s white slip indelibly.

Saint Maud blends practical and subtle digital: Maud’s stigmata via prosthetics and squibs, face-melt employing animatronics inspired by Cronenberg. VFX enhance sea visions minimally, preserving tactile horror. Glass’s restraint mirrors Polanski’s, effects serving psychology over spectacle.

These choices underscore era shifts: 1960s ingenuity vs 2010s polish, both prioritising performer immersion—Deneuve lived the isolation, Clark fasted for authenticity. Impact lingers in low-fi revivals like Relic.

Director in the Spotlight

Roman Polanski, born Raymond Liebling in 1933 Paris to Polish-Jewish parents, survived the Holocaust hidden in a Polish countryside farmhouse, an ordeal shaping his paranoia-laden oeuvre. Post-war, he studied at Łódź Film School, debuting with shorts like Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958), blending absurdism and menace. Exiled after Knife in the Water (1962), he conquered Britain with Repulsion, then Hollywood via Rosemary’s Baby (1968), a satanic pregnancy chiller grossing $33 million.

Tragedy struck: wife Sharon Tate’s 1969 Manson murder. Chinatown (1974) followed, neo-noir masterpiece earning 11 Oscar nods. Fleeing US sodomy charges in 1978, he helmed Tess (1979), César winner, and Pirates (1986). Later works include The Pianist (2002), Holocaust survival tale netting him a contentious Oscar, The Ghost Writer (2010), political thriller, and Venus in Fur (2013), power dynamic study. Influences span Hitchcock and Buñuel; style: moral ambiguity, confined spaces. Controversies shadow legacy, yet films like Repulsion cement mastery.

Comprehensive filmography: Three Men and a Wardrobe (1958, short surrealism); When Angels Fall (1959, documentary); The Mammals (1962, animation); Knife in the Water (1962, tense triangle); Repulsion (1965, psych breakdown); Cul-de-sac (1966, isolated farce); The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967, horror comedy); Rosemary’s Baby (1968, occult conspiracy); Macbeth (1971, bloody Shakespeare); Chinatown (1974, corruption saga); Tess (1979, Hardy adaptation); Pirates (1986, swashbuckler); Frantic (1988, thriller); Bitter Moon (1992, erotic obsession); Death and the Maiden (1994, revenge drama); The Ninth Gate (1999, occult quest); The Pianist (2002, survival epic); Olympos (documentary, 2010?); The Ghost Writer (2010, intrigue); Carnage (2011, domestic satire); Venus in Fur (2013, S&M play); Based on a True Story (2017, meta-thriller); An Officer and a Spy (2019, Dreyfus affair).

Actor in the Spotlight

Morfydd Clark, born 1993 in Sweden to Welsh parents, grew up in the Brecon Beacons, her Celtic roots informing ethereal screen presence. Drama training at Drama Centre London led to stage debuts in The Lord of the Rings musical as Young Nessa. Television breakthrough: Suffragette (2015) extra, then His Dark Materials (2019-) as Sister Clara. Film rise: The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017), Loving Vincent (2017) voice work.

Saint Maud (2019) catapaulted her, BAFTA Rising Star nominee for Maud’s fervent unhinging. Hollywood beckoned: double role in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022-) as Young Galadriel and Disa, earning Emmy buzz. Other notables: Crawl (2019, horror), Midsommar (2019, cult member). Awards: BIFA for Saint Maud. Influences: Kate Winslet, her poise masking intensity.

Comprehensive filmography: The Falling (2014, school hysteria); Wasteland (2017, drama); Loving Vincent (2017, animated Van Gogh); The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017, Dickens biopic); Saint Maud (2019, fanatic nurse); Crawl (2019, alligator thriller); Midsommar (2019, folk horror); His Dark Materials (2019-, nun); The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022-, elf/dwarf); Orphan: First Kill (2022, psycho prequel); Brian and Charles (2022, oddball comedy); forthcoming How to Train Your Dragon live-action (2025).

Bibliography

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• Bradshaw, P. (2019) ‘Saint Maud review – a thrillingly demented religious horror’, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/02/saint-maud-review-thrillingly-demented-religious-horror (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
• Giles, R. (2015) Polanski: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi.
• Kauffmann, S. (1965) ‘Repulsion’, The New Republic, 18 December.
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• Orme, J. (2021) ‘Saint Maud: Body Horror and the Female Saint’, Sight and Sound, May.
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