About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Roman Polanski

Encyclopedia : R : RO : ROM : Roman Polanski

 

Roman Polański at Cannes with Adrien Brody, 2002
Enlarge
Roman Polański at Cannes with Adrien Brody, 2002

Roman Polański (born August 18, 1933) is an Academy Award-winning Polish-French film director and actor. A celebrated Hollywood director of such films as Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974), he is also known for his tumultuous personal life. In 1969, his wife Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson Family. In 1978, after pleading guilty to a sexual offence, Polanski fled to Europe. Unwilling to return to the United States and face arrest, he has continued to direct films in Europe, including Frantic (1988), the Academy Award-winning The Pianist (2002), and Oliver Twist (2005).

Contents

Biography

Early life

Polański was born in Paris, France as Rajmund Roman Liebling to Ryszard Polański (aka Ryszard Liebling), a Polish Jew, and Bula Polanska (née Katz), who was born in Russia to a Jewish father and Roman Catholic mother.

Because of growing anti-semitism in France, the family moved back to Poland in 1937. Poland was occupied by German and Soviet troops in 1939.

On November 13, 1939, the Polish city of Kraków became the seat of office of Hans Frank. The General Government surrounded parts of the Polish state, which had not been annexed to Germany. The declared goal of the German occupiers was to make the General Government judenfrei, and to expel the Poles, so that Germans could settle there.

The Polański family was therefore the target of Nazi persecution and was forced into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of other Polish Jews. Roman Polański's mother subsequently died in Auschwitz concentration camp; his father barely survived the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen-Gusen. Polański himself escaped the Kraków Ghetto, and survived the war with the help of a Polish farmer, where he had to sleep in a cow stall. He was informed of his mother's death only by his sister after the war.

He was educated at the film school in Łódź, Poland, from which he graduated in 1959. Polański speaks six languages: Polish, Russian, English, French, Spanish, and Italian.

Polański with his future wife Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
Enlarge
Polański with his future wife Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

Several short films made during the study gained considerable recognition. His first major film Knife in the Water (1962) was the first significant Polish film after the war that was not associated with the war theme. It was Polański's first nomination for the Oscar.

Polański then made films in the United Kingdom; Repulsion (1965), a tale of madness and alienation; Cul-de-Sac (1966) tells the story of a couple (Donald Pleasence and Françoise Dorleac) living on a remote island, who are visited by two gangsters (Lionel Stander and Jack MacGowran).

Polański and Tate photographed in 1968.
Enlarge
Polański and Tate photographed in 1968.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) is the American title for Dance of the Vampires, a combination of comedy and horror.

Relationship with Sharon Tate

Polański met rising star Sharon Tate while filming The Fearless Vampire Killers and during their time together doing the film they began dating. In 1968 Polański went to Hollywood, where his reputation was enhanced by the success of the sophisticated psychological thriller Rosemary's Baby (1968), based on Ira Levin's book of the same name, about a woman (Mia Farrow) who discovers she is pregnant with Satan's baby. On January 25, 1968, he married Tate in London, England.

On August 9, 1969, Tate, who was eight months pregnant, and four others (Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent) were brutally murdered by members of Charles Manson's "Family", who entered the Polański home on Cielo Drive in the Hollywood Hills with the intention that they would "kill everyone there". Distraught and heartbroken, Polański returned to Europe shortly after the killers were arrested.

Also in 1969, Polański lost friend and collaborator Krzysztof Komeda (1931 - 1969). Komeda had been a popular jazz artist in Poland when the director first approached him to score a short film. He went on to score almost all of Polański's feature films until a head injury resulted in the composer's premature death. He is probably best known in the US for the haunting soundtrack to the movie Rosemary's Baby, but Komeda is also considered one of the most important figures of the Polish jazz scene of the 1950s and 1960s.

The seventies

Polański's next feature was a film version of Macbeth (1971). This was followed by What? (1972), a surreal comedy about a young woman (Sydne Rome) and her adventures in a remote villa.

Chinatown (1974), from a screenplay by Robert Towne and starring Jack Nicholson, is a tale of corruption in pre-war Los Angeles.

Polański took the lead in his next film, The Tenant (1976), the story of a Polish immigrant living in Paris.

Criminal indictment

In 1977 Polański, 43, became embroiled in a scandal involving 13-year-old girl Samantha Geimer; it eventuated with Polański's guilty plea to the charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.[link] Polański was initially charged[link] with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance (methaqualone) to a minor, but these charges were dismissed. The grand jury transcript describes the alcohol that Polański allegedly supplied before engaging in oral, vaginal and anal sex on the girl. (In Roman by Polański, Polański alleged that the mother had set up the daughter as part of a casting couch and blackmail scheme against him.) It was alleged that the director drugged her with quaaludes and alcohol, during a "photo shoot", and then proceeded to have sexual intercourse with her at the empty Hollywood Hills home of actor Jack Nicholson. The sister of the girl overheard her describing this to her friend over the phone, and the mother reported the incident to the police. After being indicted and spending 45 days in psychiatric evaluation, Polański fled the United States for Paris when it seemed that the judge would not honour his plea bargain deal for no prison sentence.

A fugitive

On February 1, 1978, Polański fled to France, where he retained citizenship. He believed that the judge was going to disregard the plea bargain, in which case he could be sentenced to a prison term of up to 50 years. Like many countries, France refuses to extradite its own citizens, which is consistent with the extradition treaty between France and the United States. As a consequence, the American extradition request was not granted. The United States government could have requested that Polański be prosecuted on the California charges by the French authorities (The Washington Post, February 3, 1978 [link]), but this option was not pursued.

The United States could still request the arrest and extradition of Polański from other countries, should he visit them. As a consequence, Polański has since avoided visits to countries that were likely to extradite him, such as the United Kingdom, mostly travelling between France and Poland.

In a [2003 interview], Samantha Geimer said, "Straight up, what he did to me was wrong. But I wish he would return to America so the whole ordeal can be put to rest for both of us." Furthermore, "I'm sure if he could go back, he wouldn't do it again. He made a terrible mistake but he's paid for it."

Vanity Fair libel case

In 2004, Polański sued Vanity Fair magazine in London for libel. A 2002 article in the magazine written by A. E. Hotchner recounted a claim by Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's, that Polański had made sexual advances towards a young model as he was travelling to Sharon Tate's funeral, claiming that he could make her "the next Sharon Tate". The court permitted Polański to testify via a video link, after he expressed fears that he might be extradited were he to enter the United Kingdom. [link][link]. The trial started on July 18, 2005, and Polański made English legal history as the first claimant to give evidence by video link. During the trial, which included the testimonies of Mia Farrow and others, it was proved that the alleged scene at the famous New York restaurant Elaine's could not possibly have taken place on the date given, because Polański only dined at this restaurant three weeks later. Also, the Norwegian model disputed accounts that he had claimed to be able to make her "the next Sharon Tate".

Polański was awarded £50,000 damages by the High Court in London. Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, responded, "I find it amazing that a man who lives in France can sue a magazine that is published in America in a British courtroom." Samantha Geimer commented, "Surely a man like this hasn't got a reputation to tarnish?" [link] 

-->

Later career

He received another Academy Award nomination for Tess (1979). Pirates (1986), a lavish period piece, was a commercial and critical failure. This was followed by Frantic (1988), which features actress and model Emmanuelle Seigner, whom the director married in 1989. She starred in others of his films including Bitter Moon, in 1992, and The Ninth Gate (1999). They have two children: Morgane and Elvis, the latter named after his favourite singer, Elvis Presley.

In 1997 he directed a stage version of The Fearless Vampire Killers, a musical, which debuted on October 4, 1997 in Vienna as Tanz der Vampire, the German title of the film version. After closing in Vienna, the show had successful runs in Stuttgart and Hamburg, Germany.

In May 2002, Polański won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes Film Festival for The Pianist, for which he also later won the 2002 Academy Award for Directing. He did not attend the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, because he still faces sentencing and possible prison time if he enters the United States. In 2004 he received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

During the summer and autumn of 2004, Polański shot a new film adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. The shooting took place at the Barrandov Studios in Prague, Czech Republic, based on Ronald Harwood's screenplay. The actors included Barney Clark (Oliver Twist), Jamie Foreman (Bill Sykes), Harry Eden (the Artful Dodger), Ben Kingsley (Fagin), Lee-anne Rix (Nancy), and Edward Hardwicke (Mr Brownlow). Besides the cast, the director gathered some collaborators from his previous movies: Ronald Harwood (screenplay), as noted, Allan Starski (production designer), Pawel Edelman (director of photography), and Anna Sheppard (costume designer).

Style

Most of Polański's films are psychological thrillers. A recurring theme in his work is the relationship between victim and predator (Death and The Maiden, Bitter Moon, Cul-de-Sac, Rosemary's Baby). His films depict a world that is cruel, grotesque and filled with brutal sex and dark humour. Polański likes to shoot his films from the position of a voyeur. Death and the Maiden star Stuart Wilson said of Polański, "Roman is very deep water pretending shallow water."

Other facts

Filmography

Film director

|- style="text-align: center;" |}

Actor

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
[NNDB
  • [Roman Polański @ pHinnWeb]
  • [Media coverage of the Polański rape trial]
  • * [interview with Samantha Geimer]
  • [Why Polanski Lives Over There] (March, 1977 Grand Jury Testimony of Polański's victim)
  • [The Guardian profile: Roman Polański]
  • [Stills and posters gallery]
  • *from the British Film Institute (navigation on the left).
  • [The Religious Affiliation of Director Roman Polanski]

    •  

    From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
    All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

    Search Titles
    0123456789
    ABCDEFGHIJ
    KLMNOPQRST
    UVWXYZ?

    E-mail this article to:

    Personal Message: