In What? Polanski again proves his sensitivity as an artist by giving us an ambiguous satire of life today, using sex as a metaphor for our lost sense of innocence. He makes full use of the new candor to push back the boundaries of cinema…. [But] his film is not about sex. It is about the abuse of sex….

[Far] from being Hefnerian in its philosophy, What? is distinctly European in its origins. Its nakedness—the [American] girl's vulnerability—is completely appropriate to the absurd world of Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and others who have influenced Polanski. (p. 1179)

In the hands of Polanski, [Hugh] Griffith, who has made a career of playing the lecher, refines his role to a new pitch. And Polanski achieves an unusual juxtaposition of youth and age—life and death—and does it with great sensitivity.

Polanski manages to avoid ugly explicitness. When he...