The film was introduced by Fernando Peña, who noted that Skolimowski was a screenwriter on Polanski’s Knife in the Water. The Lightship is another film set on a boat, with the unities of place time and action locked in. This solid dramatic framework is the platform for a grandstanding performance by Robert Duvall, whose arch criminal is generously allowed to steal the show by Klaus Maria Brandauer’s more understated captain, the Yin to the other’s Yan. The plot as such is rudimentary: Duvall arrives with a couple of cartoonish crooks on Brandauer’s lightship, which inevitably leads to conflict and tragedy. The taut direction makes the most of the claustrophobic intricacy of the ship, and as Peña observed the director’s craft is apparent. The film never drags and it permits a young Duvall to show off his prodigious talents: sometimes all we want from a movie is to watch great actors/ actresses strutting their stuff.
(Once again one cannot help but marvel at the remarkable roll call of Polish directors who emerged under the Communist regime.)
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