User Reviews

While this is certainly not one of Polanski's finest, it is admittedly a damn funny effort. As a warning, don't expect any real substance to this film. It's ridiculous and trivial, but there are laughs throughout. "What?" fills the gap for those who get a kick out of 70's porn plots, but get bored during the sex scenes. This being said, know that it can easily offend. Expect a movie that will get giggles out of a rape scene. It is a no holds barred comedy that breaks ground that "Happiness" will sweep in to master.

Polanski combines his psychedelic absurdity of "The Magic Christian" with the stark strangeness that he would later delve into in "The Tenant." It is a valiant attempt to create a surreal sexual comedy. For most films, the lack of any depth to the characters will turn away even the most devoted viewer; but "What?" creates entertaining caricatures that bobble and bump into one another, with surprisingly charming results. It is difficult to say whether this is a good film or not, albeit it is shot beautifully, and leaves the viewer with many a chortle, but compared to the brilliance of his other films it seems a bit empty. The film can be best likened to a scarred and matted alley cat that loves to come and visit. It is rough on the edges and not nice to the touch, but the affection it gives leaves the soft spots all the more appealing.

This film invites you into the world of some strange characters all living the same Italian house overlooking the ocean. It's shot nicely with beautiful landscape. We follow the main character, a sexy woman, into the house after she escapes some rapists, and here she interacts with the house of characters. It's like the saying "look into the abyss, and the abyss looks back", meaning these characters are living in their own worlds until our protagonist stumbles in. Here, they all have their own way of dealing with her in their own weird ways.

The early 70s were the stage for many experiments. Barriers were being broken and the boundaries were expanded. In the cinema, taboos were challenged and defeated. It was a time for change, a time for improvisation. It was in the spirit of those times that Polanski made "What?" "What?" could be defined as a surrealistic modern "Alice in Erotic Land".

An innocent young and beautiful American woman, Nancy (Sydne Rome) - She is hitchhiking in Italy. The three men that gave her a lift try to rape her, but they are in such a hurry and are so clumsy, that one of them, having lost his glasses, begins to sodomize the other. A verbal fight ensues among them and in the confusion, Nancy runs away. One of them runs after her. In her flight she sees a funicular waiting there for her as on purpose. The funicular takes her to a white villa.

This villa is peopled by very bizarre characters. Nancy, running away from the cruelty of the world, has landed in the house of dreams. Is this her dream, is she a dream dreamed by other people, or both? This luxurious white villa located by the beautiful tyrrhenian sea seems very remote from everyday life. Among the characters there is a former pimp, Alex (Marcello Mastroianni), two french lesbians, a priest that watches everything with disapproving eyes, the paraplegic patriarch of the house with his serious-looking Nietzsche-reading German nurse, and even Polanski is present, as Mosquito, that has no love left for Alex, the pimp, with whom he's always arguing.

Nancy, interpreted by the gorgeously beautiful Sydne Rome, will be the object of desire of every male (excepting maybe the priest) inhabiting the villa. Even the growling dog falls under her charm, and the same happened to me.

Sydne Rome, in an interview in the DVD (released in Italy), defined "What?" as an erotic dream. This is exactly what I think.

Alex, the pimp (Marcello Mastroianni), will persuade her to engage in kinky sexual games. But don't you expect the sleaze displayed by other Italian films of the time - by these standards "What?" can be considered tamer than its Italian brothers. Still in some scenes Sydne Rome is shown in the nude, and in many others she's wandering around the house semi-naked. In the strange sexual games that happen between her and Alex, Sydne Rome has her clothes on. But believe me, these scenes are very sensual. The beautiful Sydne Rome, with her angel face and her large innocent eyes, and Marcello Mastroianni, wearing either a leopard skin or a Napoleon costume... well, it's something to be seen and enjoyed!

As Polanki has worked with a tight script and hasn't given much way to improvisation, "What?" seems sometimes more a theater play than a film. The characters are like dream figures and the conversations are surrealistic/symbolic. "What?" is a surrealistic comedy which is based mainly on the actions and words of the characters, as it happens in any good theater play. But don't get me wrong, "What?" is a film and feels like a film. It's just that the words in "What?" seem to weigh more than necessary and stifle somewhat the spontaneity of the acting. Apparently the actors in the film were not given the freedom to improvise and this spoils the fluency and the dreamy atmosphere of the film.

Take another Italian film made at the time - "L'Occhio nel labirinto" (Blood) by Mario Caiano. The script was probably hastily written. The characters are somewhat poorly developed, the film is a giallo that has psychoanalytical motives - a labyrinth, a killing, loss of memory, a white villa by the sea (yes!). It has flashbacks, fast hand-held cameras following the characters and unveiling the landscape. The story may seem to some a patch-up work - sex, crimes, psychoanalysis, the beach and the sun mixed together - but the film is entertaining and intriguing, even if it was made to earn a fast buck. The same cannot be said for "What?".

Polanski with "What?" wanted to make a sunny, dreamy and sexy film, and, in a way, he almost got there, but if he had let himself really go and had given the actors more freedom .... "What?" could have been something! As it is, "What?" is a half-successful psychedelic film, intellectual and slightly theatrical.

In spite of all, I think that "What?" is an interesting film - theatrically dreamy and psychedelic, and very, very sexy.

A direct quote from Polanski "My wish was to make a film without costumes first of all, preferably without clothes at all. And without catapults and stage fights. MacBeth exhausted us all to such an extent that we were truly ready to change professions." What? For the most part is a throwaway sex comedy, a film to pick up the spirits at the time depleted director - An absurd Italian Sex farce for which in Italy at least was a success.

It's no more than a series of vignettes with no real beginning, middle or end. Things just happen for no apparent reason and without any explanation. Nancy (Sydne Rome) after escaping a trio of inept rapists stumbles into a rambling coastal estate wearing little more than an napkin throughout.

Certainly a misstep in Polanski's oeuvre but it's not without its moments of genuine humour and flashes of his trademark shots. Moments of wit in the script but most of the shortcomings are in the direction itself What? Indeed were they trying to say? A running time of 2 hours does test the patience, a film for completists mainly instantly forgettable, but maybe this is what was needed to recharge the batteries to make his next film "Chinatown".

What? Is a psychedelic fairy tale about an American hippie who wanders into the decadent environment of a seaside villa in Italy after nearly being raped while hitchhiking. She is given a room and, within moments, begins undressing under the peeping eye of a perverted former pimp played by Marcelo Mastroianni, which causes the hippie girl to embark on a mysterious sexual journey. Things are, at the very least, strange within the villa. One inhabitant constantly groans in his room; a mysterious voyeur watches the girl through a hole in her wall; two women wander through the terrace both wearing fancy hats but only one wearing clothes; and of course Mosquito played by the man himself, Roman Polanski. A day after the girl stays in the house, she starts believing she is having déjà vu, each sexual fantasy after the next haunt her over and over again.

I certainly don't consider this to be one of Polanski's best. Due to the content, it is rather sad to see a great actor like Mastroianni in such a poorly developed film like this. Polanski, a filmmaker that previously showed the world he could make great films then decides to make such a poor film as this. Then again this is a hippie film, so for the times I guess it was ok. Nothing impressive to say the least, but since I'm a Polanski fan; lets just say I was just curious to see what he had to offer.

A young American woman (Sydne Rome) traveling through Italy finds herself in a strange Mediterranean villa where nothing seems right.

The film opens with a rape attempt -- very odd for any comedy, even more odd coming from Polanski, given his reputation now. Of course, he also has rapes in his other films... hmm...

Does this film have excessive nudity? Sydne Rome spends a fair amount of this film topless, bottomless or both. And then she is attacked by a tiger from Africa. Yes, a tiger from Africa. (The scene immediately called Monty Python's "Meaning of Life" to mind.)

The dreaded Marlboro cigarettes show up that appear in so many of Polanski's films. If I ever meet him, that will be the first thing I ask. And then the film breaks the fourth wall... making the absurdity even more absurd.

When producer Robert Evans was trying to coax Roman Polanski to direct Chinatown (1974), he found Polanski thoroughly absorbed with this film, to the extent that he had bought a 50% share in it. Evans eventually lured Polanski by saying that whatever "What" made in its opening week, he would pay him as his salary for directing "Chinatown". Polanski readily agreed to this, expecting "What" to do well as he considered it the best thing he had done up to that point. Unluckily for Polanski, "What" only grossed $64 on its first week.

Marcello mastroianni, sydne rome. When nancy is attacked and robbed in italy, she runs into a mansion on the hill to escape. And finds some very strange house guests. The women are mostly nude. Polanski himself plays one of the crazy houseguests. Everyone is having sex, of some sort. The trivia section tells us this is on the list of 15 garbage movies with a ton of skin! An hour in, noblart the owner, (hugh griffith) shows up and makes a giant hullabaloo! And who keeps stealing nancy's clothes? It's all nonsense. Nothing happens. Over and over. And i'm not sure if we learned anything by the end of the film. (you call that an ending??) directed by roman polanski. This was after the sharon tate murders, but before he fled the united states. Certainly interesting, as a bit of history surrounding polanski. Otherwise....

A miserable sex "comedy." It's plot-less (the idiotic IMDb spell checker insists on the hyphen in "plot-less"), endless, and painfully dated -- though it's hard to believe it was remotely funny even in 1972. "What?" is a pathetic soft-porn version of "Alice in Wonderland" that fails as both parody and comedy. It's sad to see Marcello Mastroianni wallowing in this mess.

This is Polanski's worst film by a wide margin. It makes "Pirates" look like "Seven Samurai." (This is not intended as an endorsement of "Pirates," which is eminently mediocre by normal standards.)

2/10. Ghastly.

What a surprise, and what fun! Although I remember seeing promotional shots of this movie back in the 70s, hearing no more about it, I eventually decided it must never have been made. But, here it is in all its craziness. The beginning is rather edgy as the delectable, Sydne Rome is almost gang raped before the action swings into slapstick and she escapes, albeit with ripped t-shirt. This is as fully dressed as she ever is in this ending up fully nude and leaving the madhouse as quickly as she entered it. An amazing cast clearly had great fun and Hugh Griffith is as animated as I've seen him as the lecherous old head of the household. Mastroianni is marvellous throughout (in and out of the tiger skin). But everybody enters into the spirit and if we never see Lollipop because she is always on her back being serviced by one of the ping pong players, we hear her shouting her encouraging, 'Give it!' in accompaniment to his, 'Take it!'. Polanski is suitably quirky in a particularly quirky role and if the whole thing appears like some LSD inspired wonderland, it has been lovingly made with some style and is a joy to watch.

"What" is Polanski's absolute nadir .It's incredible that,helped by his excellent collaborator Gerard Brach ,he could produce nothing but this drivel:it's an insult to mention such names as Carroll (the elevator is the mirror ?) or Borges .The dialog is never funny,being mean,vulgar, pretentious,almost exclusively revolving around sex .Polanski himself appears as he did in "the fearless vampire killers" and later would in the highly superior "Chinatown" and "Le locataire" (the tenant).

At a pinch ,you might find something "polanskiesque" in this turkey:the conspiracy against a lonesome hero ,like in his masterful "Rosemary's baby' or "the tenant" ;the claustrophobia which is present in almost all Polanski's canon,not only the two mentioned works ,but also "repulsion" "cul de sac" "knife in the water" "death and the maiden" ,all these stories which happen "in camera".

The Carroll/Borges subject will be used again by Claude Chabrol in 1976 in his "Alice ou la dernière fugue" with much better results.

For Polanski's diehards.Barely.

If you've ever longed to see Marcello Mastroianni being flogged in a tiger skin, What? is the film for you. He plays Alex, a smarmy ex-pimp who lives in one of those terminally fabulous villas that only seem to exist in Italian movies. He gets his other kicks by dressing up as Napoleon or crushing ping-pong balls with his feet.

Among the villa's other denizens are an arthritic pianist, a clutch of sex maniacs, an American husband and wife who bicker endlessly about time zones, a stone-faced German nurse who reads Nietzsche, a pair of sun-bronzed lesbians and a dying millionaire who expires with a blissful smile on his face - after getting a glimpse of the heroine's private parts. Sounds like a normal weekend round at my house...

Into this dislocated universe steps a wide-eyed, Henry James-ian innocent abroad. Sydne Rome plays a backpacking American hippie chick who escapes from an attempted gang rape on the Italian autostrada. (In their impatience to get at her, the would-be rapists get confused and start raping each other by mistake.) She hitches a ride to the villa in a giant metal cage, only to become the sexual plaything of all and sundry.

What? is one of those few movies to play on the obvious notion that 99% of all pornography is just plain silly - hence unwatchable to any viewer with even an elementary sense of the ridiculous. Its 'parody porn' screenplay reads like an LSD-fueled collaboration between Escher, Borges and Lewis Carroll. Not only is it far and away Roman Polanski's funniest film. It is also, quite possibly, his most stylish.

A well-timed revival of What? might do wonders to rescue Polanski from the Oscar-winning solemnity in which he has lately become mired.

It's dumbfounding that "What?" was the film Roman Polanski made prior to his masterpiece, "Chinatown" (1974). "What?" is also disturbing as a sex comedy given the subsequent criminal charges brought against Polanski. In the film, the protagonist, Nancy, is sexually assaulted twice--plus a dog tries to mount her--and her clothes are incrementally stolen. She also has seemingly more-so-consensual sexual encounters involving whipping. A Nietzsche-reading nurse is also sexually assaulted in one scene. Sydne Rome, as Nancy, basically plays a dumb blonde stereotype who, in one instance, is literally drop dead gorgeous. Another regrettable pun involves Polanski himself as "Mosquito," so-called because "I sting with my big stinger"--a harpoon gun, it turns out. Polanski's Mosquito also mentions how he's usually turned on by women's posteriors rather than their breasts. Get past that cringe-inducing line, and the rest of the picture is downhill, albeit if still a stupid mess of sexploitation.

Some reviewers give "What?" far too much credit as having anything to do with Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." This claim seems to rest only on that weird things happen, the stretch of a comparison between a rabbit hole and an elevator lift and of the Alex character to the Mad Hatter because he fancies tea and a broken clock. Bah, I say, the continuity here is too slipshod and vapid for sustained allusions to the Alice books. Polanski also did sex comedies better when managing a firmer framework, such as in "Dance of the Vampires" (1967, a.k.a. "The Fearless Vampire Killers"). Technically, "What?" is mostly competent, although sometimes the sound design, especially in the scene where Nancy first meets Alex, is grating. Nothing of interest is done here with Nancy being a diarist, either, and she is made to break the fourth wall in the film's final inept groping for humor.

The movie came out in 1972, and it really helps if one knows that era of film making. The print quality I watched was very good. Nancy (Sydney Rome) plays an American hippie on vacation in Italy. She is riding with three men, and things go south for her and she escapes before any harm can happen to her, and winds up in a large villa. Her portrayal of being naive is on par with that of Candy (1968). And she carries her diary with her constantly, writing everything down. There seems to be no end of totally eccentric characters that she meets. There is no deeper meaning to anything, nor any particular thread of a plot to follow. Just one crazy thing after another. There is ample nudity but not explicit. It is sort of meaningless entertainment that will soon be forgotten, but fun watching.

This is the worst movie I saw from Polanski. The "humor" goes round and round in one location, a coastal villa. With all the lewdness going around in the 1 hour and 54 minutes playtime, there wasn't anything really funny or witty. It's just close to 2 hours of boredom in a 70s scenario. Totally mindless and so it's far too long. If it was 1 hour 20 minutes, I wouldn't have wasted so much time with it's mediocreness. To tell the content, even that time is too long. Save your time, watch something better.

Because it has the name Roman Polanski attached to it, there have been (misguided, I think) attempts to understand, comprehend and give meaning to this film. If you enjoy watching it fine, but the overall impression is, "OK, let's set up a camera and get some actors to act out a bunch of nonsensical stuff". Nothing more to it.

Jean-Luc Godard said all he needed was a girl and gun (to make a movie), Roman Polanski was perhaps trying to prove that all he needed was a half-naked girl and an Italian villa, and some lurid sex thrown in for bad measure. If his name wasn't attached this movie would be (justly) forgotten and would probably only exist as a 3rd generation video copy uploaded to YouTube.

I've never seen a movie that feels more like an off-his-rocker director who'd recently found fame and riches, likely on a drug binge, using his funding to basically say **** you and splooge all over his entire audience, by making a completely ridiculous, meandering, pointless, and entirely nonsensical "movie", which of course stars a strikingly gorgeous lead actress who is half naked the majority of the time.

I am a huge fan of Roman Polanski's early filmography (60's-70's) but I swear he must have been on a drug BINGE when he decided to make this movie. Thriving after the success of Rosemary's Baby, binging on who knows what, and thinking "I can do whatever I want, so I'm going to do this, LOL". One of the most careless celluloid jerk-off's I have ever seen. Is Sydne Rome beautiful? Yes. Is the movie hilarious? Sometimes, but not usually. Does it have a plot? No. Is there any sort of structural progression to it? No. Is it hilarious that he made it? Yes. Will I ever watch it again? Probably not.

I watch What?, Roman Polanski's movie about a woman who unintentionally enters into an Italian villa filled with folks that Luis Bunuel might have concocted after a few Martini's, and wonder, what's the point? I suppose it's about collective (and/or random) insanity, and how the most unsuspecting intruder can get wrapped up in the mayhem. Or maybe it's an allegory for the era of 'do what you like' in a morbid paradise in the Italian coast with the rooms and balconies and beaches like another silent character. What is it?

I can wonder this, but what it comes down to is the movie is funny. It's funny because of the extremes Polanski and co-writer Gerard Brach take with characters and specific scenarios. Everybody at this villa, where the protagonist arrives at, is surely demented to one degree or another. There's the pimp, played by Marcello Mastroianni, who loves the feel of crushing ping pong balls with his feet, dressing up as tigers and admirals for sexually sado-masochistic endeavors; there's the guy who plays piano beautifully and doesn't respond when someone talks to him during his incessant playing; there's Polanski himself playing a character named 'Mosquito', a fellow with a fake beard and a strange thing for Sydney Rome's character's jeans, which he steals in her sleep. This doesn't even include random people like the woman walking around naked for no reason.

There is no distinct plot, but rather it follows that illogical line of logic one could find in the Exterminating Angel (or Alice in Wonderland for that matter), or perhaps as just a parody of the creation of a 'sex diary' that Rome carries on her person everywhere. Some lines fly over my head, and others are some of the funniest and most cleverly deranged that Polanski's ever done. There's even time for the villa's wise-old dying patriarch, with his bushy beard and eyebrows who nearly passes on on at a big dinner, only to recover and become with obsessed with Rome's shirt.

This all said, it's not altogether excellent. Rome's performance wavers between competency and total flatness. That might have been what Polanski wanted (she reminded on of a slightly cuter Elizabeth Berkley), but aside from good looks there's not much going on for her here. The good news is the bevy of Italian character players, people one's never seen before (or non-Italian ones like Hugh Griffith), hit their marks and can be hysterical on the whole.

None, however, are quite as good as Mastroianni. As another proof of his genius as an actor, he makes this perverted Don Jaun all his own. He's suave, but in that slimy way, like a permanently libidinous version of his sexual fantasies in 8 1/2. So that his sudden appearances qas he spies on Rome are funny on their own, but one he gets into 'uniforn' in those sex-role play scenes (particularly that tiger, good Lord), or fetishizes that ping pong ball, it's a kind of outrageous perfection.

What? isn't top-shelf Polanski, and there is something to it being unavailable for so long in the Unites States. But if you ca find it, and are at least a decent fan of the director and/or the star, it's a hoot. That's what it is.

Probably one of the worst Roman Polanski films, maybe even THE worst. Begins with a bad rape joke, and goes from there. It's rambling, pointless (there is a germ of a "deja vu" idea that is never developed), unfunny (I literally didn't laugh once), overlong (at 109 minutes). The location (a luxurious Italian villa with a seaside view) is enviably beautiful, and Sydne Rome's (often nude) body is glorious. Those are the two main reasons for my possibly generous ** out of 4 rating.

The parallel between the story of "What?" and "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Caroll is very interesting, and maybe this film is the most precise adaptation of Caroll's crazy story, precisely because it really shows all the sexual content of Alice's dream trip. The movie construction reminds the "passage" of Alice "behind the mirror": she escapes the cruel world (the rapists) when she goes down to the "loonies house". Mastroianni's pimp character reminds of the Mad Hatter, because he keeps asking Sydne Rome if she wants to have tea with him around five o'clock. Polanski's character can also be seen as the Mad Hatter sidekick in the book: he keeps fighting with Mastroianni all day long, as if it was some kind of game between them. Polanski is very funny as a nervous "little guy" with a splendid mustache! At the same time he was shooting "What?" in Italy, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey shot "Flesh for Dracula" nearby, and that explains Polanski's apparition with mustache in a scene of this film. Of course, the "sexual innocence" of Sydne Rome put the film on the rank of "erotic fantasy". The tribute to "Alice" is clear, but it seems that the film may have influenced a great Italian erotic illustrator, Milo Manara, whose sexy heroins really look like Sydne Rome, and are often place in similarly "unvolontary" sexual situations (oooh, the pooor girl lost her clothes, what a shame!). Anyway, this is a crazy absurd funny and sexy film, that never takes itself seriously (at the end, Rome yells to Mastroianni: "Don't worry, this is only a film!")with a very colorful and "sunny" atmosphere.

WHAT? Is a less-well known film by Roman Polanski in which a young, beautiful and extraordinarily naive American tourist barely escapes being raped by three men, only to end up in a large Italian seaside villa inhabited by all kinds of weird characters.

One gets the impression that Polanski, who also co-wrote and performed in this film, was attempting to create a visionary work of art, one transcending the boundaries of cinema.

The jarring opening throws the audience right into an ongoing conversation between the girl and three guys in a car, without any background information. It then proceeds promptly to the near-rape sequence and subsequent escape via a lift which has something of a fairy-tale quality to it.

The lift arrives at a large villa, and from there it becomes very hard to make sense of the happenings and people in it. It is as though the protagonist has entered an alternate or dream-like reality. She is confused, too, but eventually she also engages in behavior that is difficult to understand.

Whatever the meaning behind the actions and settings, there is a bit of philosophy, a bit of symbolism, bit of eroticism, a lot of absurdity and unfortunately not nearly enough laughs.

The villa is full of paintings, and, in fact, one sequence involves the transport of the huge famous romantic painting "The raft of the Medusa", which suggests that perhaps this movie is itself to be understood as the cinematic analog of a huge painting on a canvas, with the villa being the analog of a life raft which prevents the submergence of its inhabitants into reality.

The 'movie as a painting' vision is also suggested by the beautiful and colorful cinematography, and the 'weirdness at the Mediterranean' vibe is reminiscent of THE MAGUS (1968), another surrealist movie.

I don't think it is necessary to understand visionary work in its entirety to be able to appreciate it as such, but at least the basic patterns that make it so have to be accessible. That is not the case here, and it is likely the reason why the film falls short of its presumed ambition.

There are hints here and there to seemingly help the audience make at least some sense of what is happening, but they are fleeting and usually end up being dead-ends. For example, over an hour into the film, there are a couple scenes suggesting that perhaps the people are not quite as "real" as we might have supposed, as they repeat almost exactly behavior from a day earlier. Other movies have taken this idea quite successfully in different directions, such as THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975) (robots), EXISTENZ (1999) (video game characters) and THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998) (actors in a hyper-reality show) but here, this suggestion is never explored, and ends up being just another weird and difficult to parse aspect of the movie among many.

If at least the absurdism were funny, but I laughed out loud only at one scene. Overall this is mainly for Polanski completists and those who enjoy surrealism even if it is inaccessible to them.

The only interesting thing about this film is that it was filmed at Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren's Amalfi coast villa.

Even improvisation requires a focus.

You can see the villa, without the movie, various places on the internet.

Save yourself some time.