All About Jewish Theatre - Roman Polanski :Film and theatre director, script writer, actor and producer

Roman Polanski, the film and theatre director, script writer, actor and producer, was born in Paris in 1933. When he was three, his family moved to Poland. During the war Polanski spent two years in the Cracow's ghetto - his family being Jewish - but then escaped and went into hiding. Polanski's mother, however, perished in a concentration camp.

As a teenager Polanski acted in children's radio plays and on the stage. His film acting debut took place in 1953.

A student of film directing at the National Higher Film School in Lodz, Polanski made his graduation film in 1959, but did not write a thesis and thus never formally graduated. As a student, Polanski made a few etudes and short films, including the acclaimed TWO MEN AND A WARDROBE.

Following the authorities' hostile response to the KNIFE IN THE WATER, his feature debut, Polanski left Poland. 1964 and 1968 are the respective dates of his first films made in Europe and the United States. When Charles Manson's sect had murdered Sharon Tate, his second wife, in 1969, Polanski left the States, to return in 1974. It was not before long, however, that he was charged with seducing a minor, and had to seek refuge in Europe, where all his later films and theatre plays were directed. Alongside directing, Polanski likes to act in his own or others' films, appears on the stage, and is an occasional producer.

Polanski has received a number of awards (some of them for life achievement), including the Golden Lion at the International Film Festival in Venice in 1993, the Felix European Film Award in 1999, the Golden Sceptre of the Polish Culture Foundation, the World Achievement Award, and the Eagle Polish Film Award for life achievement in 2003.

In 1991 Polanski became a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts. In 2000 he received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the National Higher School of Film, Television and Theatre in Lodz, became the town's honorary citizen, and his star was unveiled in the Star Alley in Piotrkowska Street.

Starting from his first etudes and short films made while still a student, Polanski's movies have possessed certain features which are indicative either of his workshop or of his favourable topics.

As observed by Jerzy Plazewski, Polanski likes to use the structure of closed dramaturgy. When structuring the plot, he bases it on a few, or even only a couple of protagonists isolated from the surroundings. This method, usually used more often in the theatre than in movies, makes it possible to follow the evolution of characters and mutual relationships in laboratory-like conditions, allowing the viewers to study the human nature, a subject-matter of all of Polanski's films. Polanski examines evil in its nearly clinical form as it lurks in people and comes free in certain situations with all of its disgusting force.

Fascinated by the murky areas of the human mind and the sadomasochistic relationships between people, Polanski uses them to convey the existential truth about man and his miserable condition. Grazyna Stachowna, the author of two monographs on Polanski's life and work, points out his fascination with the system of the dominant and of the subordinate, becoming a relationship between the hangman and the victim in extreme cases. This is what happens in Polanski's earlier films such as THE MAMMALS and THE THIN AND THE FAT, and in the later ones, such as DEATH AND THE MAIDEN, BITTER MOON, and others. Likewise, whether these are Polanski's short films, a movie as gruesome as THE TENANT, or a comedy such as THE PIRATES, "the oppression of the weak by the strong leads to the sanctioning of violence and changing of what is almost a primeval ritual", observes Janusz Wroblewski in the weekly "POLITYKA".

Indeed, evil is Polanski's main subject. There is the evil which comes from the depths of human psyche, born out of the untamable need to torment others; the evil originating from mental illness (REPULSION), and the evil which is non-definable, metaphysical, natural to the world and causing irrational fear, sometimes called the power of the devil and which seeps, unnoticed, into ordinary lives. The latter kind of evil was portrayed in a masterly fashion in ROSEMARY'S BABY, to reappear in the excellent comic disguise of THE VAMPIRE BALL and in the less successful NINTH GATE.

In a way, Polanski has himself fallen victim of the suggestive language of his movies. After the macabre murder of his wife and friends, some of the critics and the movie goers seemed to believe that Polanski himself had summoned the evil forces, the death of those near to him being payment for his dealings with the devil. Indeed, the films made by Polanski after the tragedy were worse than his previous movies, but equally the climate around him was not helping rational judgment. The problem was that Polanski started to go for schematic, conventionalized genres, seeking to convey a profound truth about the human condition through the popular cinema, refining it and revitalizing the rules by which it had lived. "If you like movies, you tend to like stereotypes", said Polanski in an interview, explaining his formal choices. Not all of his films, however, were considered artistic. Some, like THE PIRATES and THE NINTH GATE, were regarded as a downfall of a director who had failed to make creative use of stereotypes and, instead, was overwhelmed by them. An example of a creative use of a stereotype was TESS. Set in a framework of a melodrama, the movie was made more profound by a reflection on the issue of guilt and punishment, unknown to the melodramatic genre. All in all, even artistically inferior films agree with Polanski's overall filmmaking philosophy.

Polanski's latest work, THE PIANIST, seems to be the culmination of his ebbing creative pursuits. Made by a director pushing seventy, THE PIANIST may be seen as a breakthrough not only in Polanski's filmmaking but also in his life. It is for the first time ever that Polanski reaches out for the topic of the nightmare of war lived through as a child, a trauma he had warded off till now. It is for the first time that he depicts real events in which man has revealed his cruelty towards his fellow beings in an extreme form and which make all the horrors Polanski ever showed on the screen fade. Polanski would till now reject all suggestions to take up the topic of the Holocaust, refusing to direct the SCHINDLER'S LIST and to put Jerzy Kosinski's PAINTED BIRD on screen. Made in Poland and shown as a Polish film, THE PIANIST marks in a way Polanski's return to his native country as a director, for THE KNIFE IN THE WATER and a theatre performance of AMADEUSZ (1981) were Polanski's only two Polish projects.

Filmography

Etudes and short films directed by Roman Polanski:

1955 MAGIC BICYCLE (lost). A scene based on a true childhood event. As a child, Polanski was knocked senseless by a thief who stole his bike.

1957 MURDER. A crime scene. A murderer comes into a room and stabs a sleeping man dead with a knife.

1957 LET'S SPOIL THE PARTY. A group of hooligans interrupts a party. Polanski had hired Lodz hooligans to have a fight with his friends having a party and filmed the fight he had arranged. Polanski got a warning for this provocation from his school authorities.

1957 TEETHED SMILE. A snoop watches a woman from a bathroom window. The woman's face cannot be seen through the hair. The snoop goes away for a moment and when he is back, he can see a grinning man instead of a woman.

1958 TWO MEN WITH A WARDROBE. Two men carry a wardrobe with a mirror. This serves as a pretext to show a variety of cruel, shocking and sometimes funny scenes. The idea of a wardrobe with a mirror was undoubtedly inspired by Franciszka and Stefan Themersons' 1937 film Adventures of a Kind Man. Awards: Special Award for experimental work at the San Francisco International Film Festival; award of the Film weekly for direction at the Warsaw Etude Festival of the National Higher School of Film, Television and Theatre; Honorary Diploma at the Oberhausen International Short Feature Film Festival.

1958 WHEN ANGELS FALL. A feature etude based on Leszek Szymanski's short story THE TOILET WOMAN. Polanski's diploma work. An old woman working in a public toilet, played by Polanski, reminiscences on her life while the toilet is visited by the customers. Far-from-romantic present-day reality clashes with retrospectives of romantic past with mallows, uhlans and characters from sentimental songs. Illustrated with archetypal paintings styled as canvasses by Kossak, Grottger, Malczewski and other painters of Poland's glorious past, and as cheap paintings bought on Church feast days. An ironic film mocking the lofty tone of "the Polish School" of filmmaking.

1959 LAMP. After a toy shop is closed, a fire bursts out and consumes doll bodies resembling human bodies.

1961 LE GROS ET LE MAIGRE (THE FAT AND THE LEAN). A film produced in France with Polanski playing the Lean One. The Fat One sits in an armchair and takes advantage of his position to bully the Lean One. The Fat One is the master, the Thin One his obedient servant. This is a film about the arbitrariness of the notion of freedom.

1962 MAMMALS. Polanski wrote the script together with Andrzej Kondratiuk. Two travelers walk through a snow desert. Initially they support each other and, using the sledge, take turns to get rest. Gradually the true human nature starts to take over the principles and each traveler is ready to exploit the other to his own benefit, using ruses and force. A formally interesting and visually sophisticated film. Creative use of a white prop (bandage) against the white backdrop of the snow. Awards: Grand Prix at Tours, 1962; Main Prize at Oberhausen, 1963; First Prize at the CRACOW SHORT FILM FESTIVAL.

Feature films directed by Roman Polanski

1961 KNIFE IN THE WATER. Script written by Polanski together with Jerzy Skolimowski and Jakub Goldberg. Polanski also dubbed the hitchhiker's voice. A psychological drama. A married couple invites a hitchhiker to their yacht. Three people in a dramaturgically closed situation: an attractive woman and two men of different age and social status. The presence of the woman makes them rivals, each seeking to get advantage. The older man wants to impress others with his financial status, the younger pretends to be independent and contemptuous of material goods. While seemingly winning the rivalry, the younger man turns out a poser. The older man, in turn, proves a coward shunning responsibility. Interpreted in the context of the generation gap, KNIFE IN THE WATER was received enthusiastically for its universality, while being attacked by the Polish authorities. Wladyslaw Gomulka, the then first secretary of the communist party, disliked the film's head-turning chatter about the generation gap and its praise for the consumer life style. Awards: FIPRESCI Award at the International Film Festival, Venice 1962; Golden Duck Award of the Film weekly, 1962; Oscar nomination in the Foreign Film Category, 1963; Young West-German Critics' Award at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, 1964.

1964 LA RIVIERE DE DIAMANTS OU AMSTERDAM (THE DIAMOND NECKLACE OR AMSTERDAM). A story within the film LES PLUS BELLE ESCROQUERIES DU MONDE (THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FRAUDS OF THE WORLD). Script by Gerard Brach. A young woman commits a brilliant fraud to get into possession of a piece of jewellery, using a man she has just met. Pretending to be the man's wife, she misleads the gullible jeweler, orders the jewel delivered to the man's house, then runs away with the necklace. The theft is clearly not just art for the art's sake, for she goes on to swap the necklace for a ... parrot. The story directed by Polanski was considered the most interesting of all, but the critics found some similarities with the plot of Frank Borzage's 1936 "Temptation", and Polanski had to repel accusations of plagiarism.

1965 REPULSION. Polanski wrote the script together with Gerard Brach. The world is seen from the point of view of the central character (played by Catherine Deneuve), whose mind is being increasingly attacked by a mental illness. Alone in the flat after her sister has left, she gives in to obsessions that till then were suppressed. The fear instigated by the sick image of the world created by her imagination pushes her to committing a crime. REPULSION was compared to Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO, and the carefully dosed suspense and claustrophobic scenery contributed to its success. Favourable reviews appeared in Poland, too, though accompanied by the criticism of "cynical commercialism". Awards: Special Award of the Jury and FIPRESCI award at the Berlin Festival, 1965.

1966 CUL-DE-SAC. Script written by Polanski together with Gerard Brach. Seemingly a thriller. The life of a married couple (George and Teresa) living in a secluded castle is interrupted by the arrival of two gangsters, brought here by their own problems. The gangsters are waiting for the arrival of their mythical boss. Soon one of them, severely wounded, dies. The "cul-de-sac" applies both to the castle dwellers and to the criminals. Using black humour, Polanski entertains the viewers with his favourite topic - the analysis of the relationship between the dominant and the subjugated. The characters' fight for domination is reduced to absurdity. Critics have pointed out the movie's kinship with Ionesco and Beckett. Awards: The Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival, 1966.

1967 DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES (the shortened version also called THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS). Polanski wrote the script together with Gerard Brach, and played Alfred, the professor's assistant. A brilliant parody of a classical vampire horror, the movie tells the story of a professor and his assistant, Alfred, seeking to destroy the ancient tribe of Transsylvanian vampires. Their adventures abound in funny as well as terrifying situations. Although the professor and Alfred fail to defeat the vampires, viewers should not leave the cinema terrified. Words of praise were said for Polanski the actor and for Sharon Tate, Polanski's then fiancée turned wife, playing Alfred's beloved.

1968 ROSEMARY'S BABY. Script written by Polanski after a novel by Ira Levine. A young couple are expecting a child. The young woman, played by the delicate Mia Farrow, is a victim of perfidious cunning. She does not know that her husband, a member of a devil-worshipping sect, has signed a pact with the devil and that her baby will be devil's offspring. Viewers find out the truth gradually, learning about it from the woman's perspective and, like her, are suffused with lingering and seemingly unfounded fear. "Polanski is not after sensational plots. What he wants is an engrossing, overpowering climate", writes Adam Garbicz in "The Cinema: A Magic Vehicle". ROSEMARY'S BABY was considered a innovatory movie, Polanski having achieved the climate of a horror using novel means. Awards: The French Film Critics' Association Award for the best foreign film, 1970.

1971 MACBETH. Script written by Polanski together with Kenneth Tynan. Another film based on Shakespeare's tragedy, after the movies by Welles and Kurosawa. Polanski has cut the text short, gave up the poetic form, shifted the apportioning of guilt and changed the psychological portraits of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The first movie made after the tragedy which had happened in Polanski's house, it was found too gory by the critics, although the film's failure should be attributed to Polanski's biographical context rather than to its faults.

CHE? (WHAT?). Polanski wrote the script together with Gerard Brach and played the role of Mosquito. A frivolous movie made in Europe (Italy), this is a story of erotic adventures of a young hitchhiker stopping at a villa full of eccentric characters. Considered Polanski's biggest disaster, the film was not redeemed by Marcello Mastroianni nor Polanski as the buoyant Mosquito. Not shown in Poland.

CHINATOWN. Script by Robert Towne, with Polanski playing the man with the knife who hurts the detective's nose. Polanski's return to the United States after his European failures proved fortunate. CHINATOWN is a movie of the traditional thriller genre with elements of pastiche, with a melancholic detective, a beautiful woman and a ruthless man. Step by step the plot unveils a corruption affaire related to the construction of a river dam as well as gruesome, guarded family secrets. Superb acting by Jack Nicholson an Faye Dunaway. Major awards: The Oscar for the Best Screenplay, 1974; The Golden Globe for the best directed film, 1975; BAFTA Award for Jack Nicholson in the Best Actor category.

LE LOCATAIRE (THE TENANT). Script by Polanski and Gerard Brach based on a novel by Roland Topor, with Polanski playing the part of Trelkovsky. Another, after REPULSION, study of a mental illness and Polanski's favourite topic of the amazing pleasure that people take in tormenting others. Trelkovsky, a lonely émigré, does not realize the danger he is in when renting a flat in an old Parisian tenement. Soon he will commit suicide, just like the previous tenant, but first, driven into illness by other tenants, who, filled with xenophobia and dislike of foreigners and émigrés, he will masochistically submit to oppression.

TESS. Script by Polanski, Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn based on Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. A tear-jerking story of frustrated love, pain, wrongdoing, revenge and well-deserved punishment. Asked why he has reached for a nineteenth-century novel, Polanski answered that he wanted to talk about "the deepest, most important human feelings of which we have been ashamed for many years for fear of being called simpletons". While TESS, starring Nastassja Kinsky, usually gets classified as a melodrama, Mariola Jankun-Dopartowa, an expert on Polanski's work, has a point when identifying its more profound aspect of coming close to an ancient drama, manifesting itself especially in the movie's last sequence, that of the heroine's inevitable death. Awards: The Los Angeles Association of Film Critics' Award in the Best Director category, 1980; the Oscar Awards for the best cinematography, best set decoration and best costumes, 1980; BAFTA award for the best cinematography.

1986 PIRATES (also co-wrote the script with Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn). An adventure lacking in genre-specific dynamics, with slow narration and protagonists who fail to win the audience's sympathy. Found too gory for a movie targeted at teenagers.

1988 FRANTIC (also co-wrote the script with Gerard Brach). Harrison Ford as a surgeon arriving in Paris for a medical conference fighting with his wife's kidnappers, gangsters and spies. A thriller which does not aspire to much and has a banal story, but with superb acting by Harrison Ford and photographs by Witold Sobocinski, the Polish cameraman.

1992 LUNES DE FIEL (BITTER MOON) (also co-producer and co-writer of the script with Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn after a novel by Pascal Bruckner). Two married couples are left with each other's company while on a ship journey. Like in many other of his films, Polanski penetrates the murky areas of the human mind and analyses its penchant for cruelty, humiliation of others and perversion. The film tells the story of an attempt by the degenerate couple, its past full of mutual cruelty, to deprave the couple who, slightly bored, are an easy target to manipulate through sex.

1994 DEATH AND THE MAIDEN (also co-wrote the script with the Chilean Ariel Dorfman and Rafael Yglesias after Dorfman's play). A psychological drama set in South America. After the ruling regime has been democratically overthrown, the hunt for oppressors begins. The story of a meeting of the torturer and his victim has been staged in the manner of a thriller, with the usual suspense, mystery and an unexpected solution, skillfully telling a universal truth about the dark side of the human nature.

1999 THE NINTH GATE (also producer and co-writer of the script together with Enrique Urbizu and John Brownjohn after a novel Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverty). A horror in which a second-hand bookstore owner who traces rare books assumes the role of a detective looking for a book written by Lucifer and opening the gate to the Kingdom of Shadows. The film was found lacking in suspense and using stereotypes and cliches.

2002 THE PIANIST (also co-wrote the script together with Ronald Harwood after Wladyslaw Szpilman's memoirs). A true story of the pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman hiding on the Arian side of Warsaw after the city's ghetto is closed down and the Warsaw Rising collapses. Lonely as a Robinson in the city ruins, Szpilman - "a tragic lucky man", to use the words of the film critic Tadeusz Sobolewski - survives, helped by a music-loving German officer, while all his family and relatives perish. Szpilman's memoirs were to inspire a movie directed by Jerzy Zarzycki back in 1951. The script, loosely based on the book and written by Jerzy Andrzejewski and Czeslaw Milosz under the title of THE ROBINSON OF WARSAW, turned politically unacceptable to the then authorities, and the changes that were made, including a new name, THE UNTAMED TOWN, left it having nothing in common with the original, so much so that Milosz withdrew his name from the credits.

Major awards: The Golden Palm at Cannes IFF 2002; Nomination to Felix (The European Film Award) in the Best Film and Best European Director categories; The Boston Film Critics Award in the Best Film category; The San Francisco Film Critics Award in the Best Film category; The American National Society of Film Critics Award in the Best Film and Best Director categories; The 2003 Cesar Award of the French Academy of Cinematic Art in the Best French Film and Best Director categories; The BAFTA Award in the Best Film and Best Director categories; The Goya Award of the Spanish Film Academy in the Best European Film category; The Polish Film Eagle Award in the Best Film and Best Direction categories; The Oscar Award of the American Academy of Film Art in the Best Director category and nomination in the Best Film category; The David di Donatello Italian Academy Award in the Best Foreign Film category.

Roman Polanski is also the co-author of the script of the film DO YOU LIKE WOMEN? (1964), directed by Jean Leon, and the script-writer and producer of A DAY AT THE BEACH (1970), directed by Simon Hesara.

Roman Polanski as actor

Roman Polanski appeared in films by other directors, including JACEK by Konrad Nalecki, THREE STORIES (the role of the boy, Polanski's acting debut); THE GENERATION by Andrzej Wajda (Mundek); THE INNOCENT WIZARDS (the basist); JUST MY LUCK by Andrzej Munk (the coach); SAMSON by Andrzej Wajda; PURE FORMALITY by Giuseppe Tornatore (the Inspector); >>> THE REVENGE by Andrzej Wajda (Papkin).

Roman Polanski as Theatre Director

1974 LULU, opera by Berg; 1976 RIGOLETTO by Verdi; three stagings of AMADEUS by Shaffer: Warsaw and Paris, 1981 (playing the main part in both performances), Milan, 1999; musical version of the VAMPIRE BALL, Vienna, 1997.

Films about Roman Polanski

ROMAN POLANSKI: A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY (1982), a biographical film by Wiktor