What?

Excerpt: The first release from Severin Films, Anthony Nield takes a look at their Region 2 disc of What?, arguably the forgotten film in the Polanski oeuvre. Review: What? could lay claim to be the forgotten film in Roman Polanski’s extensive cinematic cv. Situated between the Sharon Tate-infected horrors of Macbeth and his most highly regarded work Chinatown, it has never received the reappraisals granted other “minor” works such as The Tenant or Bitter Moon. For this reason alone Severin’s new Region 2 disc becomes highly desirable to Polanski completist; after all, pretty much everything else he directed – including a number of the early shorts – have become available on DVD over the past decade. Yet whilst the disc itself has been superbly produced (fine presentation, contextualising extras), the film itself perhaps... [read full story]