Separating the art from the artist. Do you think it is possible or moral to do so? This is a choice we each have to make for ourselves personally. You must choose if you want to read the following and see the film we have chosen as best represents the brilliance and virtuosity of Roman Polanski as a director, Chinatown (1974), at the 2024 Vintage Film Festival.
The 1977 case of Roman Polanski is a curious one. Several crimes were committed by both Polanski and the judge and judicial officer involved. The case led to the famous director fleeing the US after serving only part of his time and before the judge gave final sentencing. The judge died before he could be charged with “judicial and prosecutorial misconduct”—as found by a later US court.
Polanski’s crime was horrific. He plied an underage girl who had modeled for him with alcohol and drugs. She was a 13-year-old child. He was charged with unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. The girl’s lawyer suggested a plea bargain, dropping all other charges except this one. Polanski was put in custody to undergo psychiatric evaluation for 90 days but was released after 42. Legal submissions from two psychiatrists said that Polanski was neither a pedophile nor a sexual deviant. The plea bargain was that he would be sentenced to “time served” plus probation. The probation officer, examining psychiatrist and victim all recommended against jail time. The judge told people that he would renege on the plea bargain and throw Polanski in jail for so long that he would never get out. The girl’s lawyer asked the judge if this was in fact true and the judge confirmed it in chambers. Polanski fled the US. He surely would be judged more harshly in 2024 under MeToo.
Part of Roman Polanski is a monster. Another part of Roman Polanski is a survivor. A third part of Roman Polanski is a genius.
Born in France in 1933, at the age of 4 his family moved back to his father’s home town of Kraków, Poland and were living there when World War II began with the invasion of Poland. Polanski witnessed both the ghettoization of Kraków’s Jews into a compact area of the city, and the subsequent deportation of all the ghetto’s Jews to German death camps. He watched as his father was taken away, along with thousands of other Jews, to Mauthausen, a group of 49 German concentration camps in Austria. His mother, who was four months pregnant at the time, was taken to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chamber soon after arriving.
Polanski escaped the Kraków ghetto in 1943 and survived with the help of some Polish Roman Catholics. He roamed the countryside trying to survive in a Poland now occupied by German troops. He witnessed and endured many horrors, such as being forced to take part in a cruel and sadistic game in which German soldiers took shots at him for target practice. Polanski’s constant childhood fears and dread of violence have contributed to the tangible atmospheres he conjures up on film.
Polanski’s fascination with cinema began very early, when he was around age four or five, when his parents would take him to the cinema. After the war, Polanski watched films, either at school or at a local cinema, using whatever pocket money he had. Polanski writes, “Most of this went on the movies, but movie seats were dirt cheap, so a little went a long way. I lapped up every kind of film.” As time went on, movies became more than an escape into entertainment, as he explains:
“Movies were becoming an absolute obsession with me. I was enthralled by everything connected with the cinema—not just the movies themselves but the aura that surrounded them. I loved the luminous rectangle of the screen, the sight of the beam slicing through the darkness from the projection booth, the miraculous synchronization of sound and vision, even the dusty smell of the tip-up seats. More than anything else though, I was fascinated by the actual mechanics of the process.”
In the early 1950’s Polanski attended the National Film School in Łódź, Poland. He started with acting, but by 1955 made his directorial debut with a short film “The Rower”. He gained considerable recognition with the next 2 films he directed: “Two Men and a Wardrobe” (1958) and “When Angels Fall” (1959), the same year he graduated. Polanski’s breakthrough was with his 1962 feature Knife in the Water, a psychological thriller. This film also earned Polanski his first Academy Award nomination (Best Foreign Language Film) in 1963.
He left Poland for France where he continued to make films, then moved to England where he made three feature films: Repulsion (1965) starring Catherine Deneuve; Cul-de-sac (1966), starring Françoise Dorléac (she was Catherine Deneuve’s elder sister); and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) starring Sharon Tate and himself. He and Tate fell in love while filming and were married on January 20, 1968.
Paramount studio head Robert Evans brought Polanski to America to direct a film based on an Ira Levin novel, Rosemary’s Baby. This film, his first Hollywood production, was a box office success, thereby establishing his reputation as a major commercial filmmaker. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
On August 9, 1969, while Polanski was working in London, his wife, Sharon Tate, and four other people were murdered at the Polanski’s residence in Los Angeles by cult leader Charles Manson’s followers. Sharon was eight months pregnant with their son. Polanski gave away all of his possessions after the murders, unable to bear any reminders of the period that he called “the happiest I ever was in my life”. He remained in Los Angeles until the killers were arrested. He tried to explain his anguish after the murder of his wife and unborn son in his 1984 autobiography Roman by Polanski, saying, “Since Sharon’s death, and despite appearances to the contrary, my enjoyment of life has been incomplete. In moments of unbearable personal tragedy some people find solace in religion. In my case the opposite happened. Any religious faith I had was shattered by Sharon’s murder. It reinforced my faith in the absurd.”
Roman Polanski went to England to direct both theatre and films in the years following his wife’s murder, but returned to Hollywood in 1973 to direct Chinatown (1974) for Paramount Pictures. The film is widely considered to be one of the finest American mystery crime movies, inspired by the real-life California Water Wars, a series of disputes over southern California water at the beginning of the 20th century.
Chinatown was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including those for actors Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, and for Polanski as director. Robert Towne won for Best Original Screenplay. It also had actor-director John Huston in a supporting role, and was the last film Polanski directed in the United States. In 1991, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”, and it is frequently listed as among the best in world cinema.
A Roman Polanski Film is A Roman Polanski Film. There’s simply no other way to describe his trademark tone, foreboding subtext, subtle humor and well-balanced atmosphere. The Vintage Film Festival has decided that he has earned the accolade of “Great Director” for his art. He is a flawed human being who has committed a terrible crime and has not fully done the time to repent. We leave the decision see his film Chinatown, or not, up to all of you.