ROMAN POLANSKI

ROMAN POLANSKI

Birth name - Roman Liebling

Born - August 18, 1933 (1933-08-18) (age 74)
Paris, France

Years active 1953 - present

Spouse(s) - Barbara Lass (1959 - 1962)
Sharon Tate (1968-1969)
Emmanuelle Seigner (1989-present)

Children - Morgane Polanski (b. 1993)
Elvis Polanski (b.1998)

Roman Polański (born August 18, 1933) is an Academy Award winning film director, writer, actor, and producer. After beginning his career in Poland, Polanski became a celebrated arthouse filmmaker, and 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 having unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen year old girl, Polanski fled to France, where he now resides.

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 and Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winning The Pianist (2002), and Oliver Twist (2005)

Early life

Polanski was born Rajmund Roman Liebling in Paris, France, the son of Ryszard Liebling (aka Ryszard Polański), a painter and plastics manufacturer, and Bula (née Katz-Przedborska). Polanski's parents were agnostics; his father was a Polish Jew and his mother, a native of Russia, was raised Catholic and had a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother

The Polański family moved back to Poland in 1937. Thereafter, in 1939, Poland was invaded and occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union troops by what is now known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact. 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 expel the Poles so Germans could settle there.

The Polański family was the target of Nazi persecution and forced into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of other Polish Jews. Roman Polanski's mother subsequently died in Auschwitz concentration camp. His father barely survived the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen-Gusen. Polanski himself escaped the Kraków Ghetto, surviving the war with the help of a Polish Roman Catholic farmer, on whose farm he had to sleep in a cow stall. After the war he found out from his sister that his mother had died.

He was educated at the film school in Łódź, Poland, from which he graduated in 1959. Polanski speaks six languages: Polish, Russian, English, French, Spanish, and Italian. Despite his Polish origins, he only has French nationality.

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 did not have a war theme. It was Polanski's first nomination for the Oscar.

Indictment on charge of rape and other sex offenses

In 1977, Polanski, 44, became embroiled in a scandal involving 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. It ultimately led to Polanski's guilty plea to the charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

According to Geimer, Polanski asked Geimer's mother if he could photograph the girl for the French edition of Vogue. Her mother allowed a private photo shoot. According to Geimer in a 2003 interview, "Everything was going fine; then he asked me to change, well, in front of him." She added, "It didn't feel right, and I didn't want to go back to the second shoot."

However, subsequent to the first photo shoot, she agreed to a second session, which took place on March 10, 1977, in the Mulholland area of Los Angeles, near Jack Nicholson's estate. "We did photos with me drinking champagne," Geimer says. "Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn't quite know how to get myself out of there." Geimer alleged that Polanski sexually assaulted her after giving her a combination of champagne and quaaludes. In the 2003 interview, Geimer says she resisted. "I said no several times, and then, well, gave up on that," she says.

Polanski was initially charged with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance (methaqualone) to a minor, but these charges were dismissed under the terms of his plea bargain, and he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

In his autobiography, Roman by Polanski, Polanski alleged that Geimer's mother had set up the daughter as part of a casting couch and blackmail scheme against him.

A fugitive

On February 1, 1978, Polanski fled to France, where he retained citizenship. He had been given a tip that the judge was going to disregard the plea bargain, in which case he would likely have been sent to prison for up to 50 years. France refuses to extradite its own citizens, which is consistent with the extradition treaty between France and the United States. In consequence, the American extradition request was not granted. The United States government could have requested that Polanski be prosecuted on the California charges by the French authorities, but this option was not pursued.

The United States could still request the arrest and extradition of Polanski from other countries should he visit them. As a consequence, Polanski 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."

Polanski cannot return to the United States since the events of 1977/1978, but he made it clear in his autobiography that he never permanently resided in the USA. At the time of his 1977 arrest, he was travelling on a visitor's visa and the arrest actually took place in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where he was staying. At that time, he had directed nine films, but only two were shot in the U.S. A regular visitor to the U.S., Polanski once rented a Los Angeles house—where the infamous Manson Murders took place (he, however, was at home in London at the time)—but by his own account, Polanski had resided in Britain (apart from a short time in Italy) for many years when he fled Los Angeles for Paris in 1978.

Later career

Polanski received another Academy Award nomination for Tess (1979). Polanski dedicated the movie Tess to Sharon Tate because, after spending time with Polanski in London, Tate left a copy of the novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles on Polanski's nightstand, along with a note saying it would make a good film. She returned to the United States and was murdered soon after. 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 several 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.

On March 11, 1998 Polanski was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

In May 2002, Polanski 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. After the announcement of the "Best Director Award", Polanski received a standing ovation from most of those present in the theater. 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, Polanski 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), Leeanne 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).

Polanski's next film will be Pompeii about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It is based on the bestselling book of the same name by Robert Harris, who is also writing the screenplay. Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson were rumored to star, but the film's start date has been pushed back and both actors were forced to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. He appeared in Rush Hour 3 as a French police official.

In 2007, a novel by the Dutch writer A. F. Th. van der Heijden was published based on parts of Roman Polanski's life. In the novel called Schervengericht (the ancient Greek practice of voting using shards of pottery, also known as ostracism), set in 1977, a famous Polish movie director called Raymond is put under psychological surveillance in a fictional Californian prison called Choreo, after being accused of having raped a thirteen-year-old girl. In the prison he spends his time with a man covered in bandages, who calls himself Scott Maddox and who later on turns out to be the man behind the murder of Raymond's wife, which took place eight years before.

Style

Most of Polanski's films are intelligent 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). Death and the Maiden star Stuart Wilson said of Polanski, "Roman is very deep water pretending [to be] shallow water."

Filmography

Film director

• Zaczarowany rower (aka Magical Bicycle) (1955)
• Morderstwo (aka A Murderer) (1957)
• Uśmiech zębiczny (aka A Toothful Smile) (1957)
• Rozbijemy zabawę (aka Break Up the Dance) (1957)
• Dwaj ludzie z szafą (aka Two Men and a Wardrobe) (1958)
• Lampa (aka The Lamp) (1959)
• Gdy spadają anioły (aka When Angels Fall) (1959)
• Le Gros et le maigre (aka The Fat and the Lean) (1960)
• Ssaki (aka Mammals) (1961)
• Nóż w wodzie (aka Knife in the Water) (1962)
• Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (aka The Beautiful Swindlers) - segment: "La rivière de diamants" (1964)
• Repulsion (1965)
• Cul-de-Sac (1966)
• The Fearless Vampire Killers (aka Dance of the Vampires) (1967)
• Rosemary's Baby (1968)
• The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971)
• What? (aka Diary of Forbidden Dreams) (1973)
• Chinatown (1974)
• Le Locataire (aka The Tenant) (1976)
• Tess (1979)
• Pirates (1986)
• Frantic (1988)
• Bitter Moon (1992)
• Death and the Maiden (1994)
• The Ninth Gate (1999)
• The Pianist (2002)
• Oliver Twist (2005)
• To each his cinema (2007)
• Pompeii (2008)

Actor

• Trzy opowiesci (aka Three Stories) as Genek 'The Little' (segment "Jacek") (1953)
• Zaczarowany rower (aka Magical Bicycle) as Adas (1955)
• Rower (aka Bicycle) as the Boy who wants to buy a bicycle (1955)
• Pokolenie (aka A Generation) as Mundek (1955)
• Nikodem Dyzma as the Boy at Hotel (1956)
• Wraki (aka The Wrecks) (1957)
• Koniec nocy (aka End of the Night) as the Little One (1957)
• Dwaj ludzie z szafa (aka Two Men and a Wardrobe) as the Bad boy (1958)
• Zadzwoncie do mojej zony ? (aka Call My Wife) as a Dancer (1958)
• Gdy spadaja anioly (aka When Angels Fall Down) as an Old woman (1959)
• Lotna as a Musician (1959)
• Zezowate szczescie (aka Bad Luck) as Jola's Tutor (1960)
• Do widzenia, do jutra (aka Good Bye, Till Tomorrow) as Romek (1960)
• Niewinni czarodzieje (aka Innocent Sorcerers) as Dudzio (1960)
• Ostroznie, Yeti! (aka Beware of Yeti!) (1961)
• Gros et le maigre, Le (aka The Fat and the Lean) as The Lean (1961)
• Samson (1961)
• Nóz w wodzie (aka Knife in the Water) voice of Young Boy (1962)
• Repulsion as Spoon Player (1965)
• The Fearless Vampire Killers as Alfred, Abronsius' Assistant (1967)
• The Magic Christian as Solitary drinker (1969)
• What? as Mosquito (1972)
• Blood for Dracula (Andy Warhol) as Man in Tavern (1976)
• Chinatown as Man with Knife (1974)
• Locataire, Le (aka The Tenant) as Trelkovsky (1976)
• Chassé-croisé (1982)
• En attendant Godot (TV) as Lucky (1989)
• Back in the U.S.S.R. as Kurilov (1992)
• Pura formalità , Una (aka A Pure Formality) as Inspector (1994)
• Grosse fatigue (aka Dead Tired) as Roman Polanski (1994)
• Hommage à Alfred (aka Tribute to Alfred Lepetit) (2000)
• Zemsta (aka The Revenge) as Papkin (2002)
• Rush Hour 3 as Detective Revi (2007)

Writer

• A Day at the Beach (1970) after a novel by Simon Heere Heeresma from 1962