I really wanted to talk about Shelley Winters today because I think she was a fabulous actor and I especially liked her in Cleopatra Jones. But I have to talk about Roman Polanski who turns 92 today.
We live in a world where the biggest pricks live long and happy lives. I have to be careful what I say because Polanski sues a lot. But I think he’s a pedophile and a rapist. The courts seem to have established this.
But what makes this worse is that so many fans and colleagues have done so much to defend him. Sam Seder summed this up in a tweet, “Don’t care re Polanski, but I hope if my daughter is ever raped it is by an older, truly talented man with a great sense of mise en scene.” (Note that right-wing hacks twisted Seder’s tweet. As a result, “liberal” MSNBC fired him. In other words, Seder faced more career damage than Polanski.)
That’s enough. Roman Polanski is a solid director who has made a number of films I quite like. But as with so many “great” directors, I don’t find anything amazing in his work. Well, there is one thing: he gets good performances out of his actors. Of course, he generally works with great actors.
Chinatown is my favorite of his films. I watched it again just a couple of weeks ago. But what really stands out is that Robert Towne wrote an incredible screenplay with novel-level detail. And Robert Evans oversaw an amazing production. Polanski did a great job with it! But so would several dozen other directors I could mention.
I reviewed a number of his other films: The Fearless Vampire Killers, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant, The Ninth Gate, and The Ghost Writer. I liked them all except for The Ninth Gate. But I still don’t know why.
What better time is there to watch Chinatown for free from a Russian website? Note that it is Polanski who cuts Jack Nicholson’s nose. My film history professor assured me this had great meaning and was indicative of his great sense of mise en scene. But I don’t see it.
Roman Polanski mugshot via Wikipedia. It is in the public domain.
Hmm. A toughie. I watched Chinatown again last year, after watching a really good American Experience on California’s water wars. It’s neat to see what Towne did in adapting the real story into his story. It’s pretty close to what happened! Not exactly, but closer than some movies that claim to be “inspired by a true story.”
Polanski IS a pretty amazing director, with a really good compositional eye. He knows how to use the frame to create a claustrophobic feeling — think of the shot with Mia Farrow in the phone booth. But obviously his loathsome behavior is a real problem. (P enjoyed watching that American Experience, and when I asked if she wanted to watch Chinatown with me her answer was “I don’t think I can.” I totally understand.)
Claire Dederer’s “Monsters” is a really interesting read, she wrestles with this stuff in a serious way. Like, if you love Bowie, well, he had sex with teenagers when he very much wasn’t a teenager. It’s quite likely a huge number of 60s/70s stars did, too. If you got rid of everything in your music collection by an artist who behaved badly, your music collection would probably just be Harry Belafonte and the Indigo Girls. I like both! But I still want my Stones, too.
I suppose these things will be personal. What nobody should do is say “oh, if you’re bothered by such and such, you’re being a uptight prude.” That’s ridiculous. That’s like saying nobody should have any principles at all! It’s nihilistic.
I like the script of Chinatown, and the acting, and the crisp cinematography, and the music — heck, the music. It’s once of Goldsmith’s best, and he was one of the best, so that’s saying something.
I’m torn on whether to see An Officer and a Spy. It’s a story I’m interested in. Obviously Polanski and his family suffered enormously during the Holocaust, so antisemitism is a personal subject. But…. I could see the movie making the Dreyfus case into a whine about how HE, Polanski, was unfairly persecuted. And that would be disgusting. (I wasn’t disgusted by Death and the Maiden, even though it was a sort of pleading for mercy for an old monster… because, at least in that, it’s quite clear that the past behavior was, absolutely, horrifying.)
I’m with you on pretty much all of that. It’s on the “pretty amazing director” that I’m not sure. I do like a lot of his films. And he is good, no doubt about that. And I like that he didn’t make a fetish of a small set of techniques. But I keep going back to Rosemary’s Baby. Would the film have been worse if William Castle had directed it? Well, probably. But only because he never could have gotten the kind of budget he got with Polanski directing. Over the last few years, I’ve come to see art as more about solving problems than anything. In my most recent screenplay, there are a couple of things that people would think of as artistic choices that were just me fixing problems. And I think that’s true of directors. But clearly: there are directors who have a certain vision. Wes Anderson is a clear case. But the thing is: I mostly don’t care. I like Wes Anderson films when they tell a story I care about. And that’s it. But I really don’t think that Polanski is better than Castle or even low-budget directors like David DeCoteau. But maybe it’s like my thing with Hitchcock: I like his films; hate his fans. Or acting Oscars: more about the role than the actor. How else could it be when there are so many people working at the very top of their professions?
It’s hard to say what Castle would have done with big budgets. He might have ended up like Joe Dante! Or George Armitage. Or he might have been like the mega-budget Peter Jackson.
Polanski really has a brilliant compositional eye, but that’s not all there is to directing. Altman doesn’t use the camera to create strong images; he uses it to find them. And his movies are richer for it.
Look at Polanski’s Tess. He gets the period details right, but he completely misses Hardy. Hardy loved his characters, and when they hurt, you know it hurt Hardy, too. When a character suffers in a Polanski movie, it’s usually to grim the audience out, not to make us feel for their suffering. Think of what Pfeiffer goes through in Dangerous Liasons when Malkovich destroys her. You are COMPLETELY on her side.
I forgive Hitchcock super-fans if they’re French. They get a pass. They’re still boring, but they get a pass. I chalk it up to the French being weird.
Don’t start me on the Oscars. That’s so right about it being the role, not the actor. Every now and then you DO see a part nobody else could have played — Jackie Gleason in The Hustler, say. But how much of that is the writer? Awards is stoopid!
There is one important point about bigger budgets that I don’t think is discussed enough. They not only allow more time for shooting, they allow more time for pre-production. Castle was a studio man. He pumped out a lot of films quickly and cheaply. I don’t think he had any kind of keen vision. It’s mostly that I just don’t care as much as I used to. In fact, I increasingly find stylistic touches annoying. And that’s especially true of directors who had interesting ideas at one time and then repeated them over and over and over.
Have you seen Forman’s Valmont? Curious what you think. I tend to think Forman is better than Frears. But they both made films based on the same book, with similar budgets, at the same time. I should probably go back and watch it again, but I recall really not liking it. At very least, what Forman thought was interesting just didn’t align with me.
No, I never saw that! It would make a good post, comparing the two. I think I’m closer to Frears in terms of sensibility, but both filmmakers are gifted and thoughtful. And of course the different screenplay contributors/actors would have had a major role as well.
We have been dealing with a major ransomware attack that hit Saint Paul and interlibrary loan’s been down for over five weeks now! It’s hugely frustrating. All you can get is random s**t you grab off the shelf. Makes finding the movies I want difficult.