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    Roman Polanski

    Is not dead or anything, I've just watched Cul-De-Sac - which I'd only heard mentioned in passing for Komeda's soundtrack before - for the first time, and I'm gobsmacked at how good it is.

    I can't think of any other black comedies that have cinematography you could pause at any moment to make a perfect still. It's a real one-off. There's a great documentary on the DVD I watched (hired from Lovefilm - looks like you can only buy it for crazy money now) too, and the biogs are well worth reading. Francois Dorleac, the Catherine Deneuve-lookalike woman who plays the impulsive trophy wife, looks exactly like Deneuve because she's her sister. You've not heard of her (unless you're linus, I bet) because she died in a car crash before the film was released.

    I watched Repulsion recently and didn't think it was that good (would have been great at the time, I'm sure, and I respect its originality, but it's kind of slow and clunky). But Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby are incredible too.

    So anyway, Polanski. We've never had a thread about him. What an astonishing talent. What should I watch next?

    #2
    Roman Polanski

    Well:

    If you haven't seen Knife in the Water you really should, first because it's an excellent directorial debut by any standards, second because it introduces the type of unspoken interpersonal psychological tension/threat that is so prevalent in his later films.

    I'd rate The Tenant very highly, though others disagree. In some ways it reprises Repulsion in it's portrayal of a descent into madness but it's more gothically melodramatic and, as the central character, features Polanski's most assured performance (IMHO he is a very fine actor.) It has one particular scene I'll carry with me to thegrave.

    Although it's a comedy-spoof (though a pretty dark one at times) I love The Fearless Vampire Killers — called Dance of the Vampires in the UK I think. It's got a great cast including Brit stalwarts like Jack McGowan and Alfie Bass, Polanski himself, looking about fifteen, and the devastatingly gorgeous Sharon Tate in her last film. Everyone's having a great time and the film walks an interesting edge between Carry-On farce and Hammer style horror surprisingly successfully.

    You've not heard of her (unless you're linus, I bet)

    Hey! Remember how old some of us are sunshine.

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      #3
      Roman Polanski

      Haha, I'd surmised that she wasn't known outside the Francosphere, but obviously I was wrong.

      Thanks for the recommendations, Amor. I'll definitely check those out.

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        #4
        Roman Polanski

        'Chinatown' is perfect. And Polanski does that brilliant little turn as the hoodlum with the switchblade.

        Hmmm ... I'm going to give that yet another watch this weekend.

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          #5
          Roman Polanski

          erwin wrote:
          'Chinatown' is perfect. And Polanski does that brilliant little turn as the hoodlum with the switchblade.

          Hmmm ... I'm going to give that yet another watch this weekend.
          Yes, its brill.

          I got it for Xmas.

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            #6
            Roman Polanski

            Yeah, it's superb. There's a nice little precursor of its nose-cutting scene in Cul-De-Sac.

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              #7
              Roman Polanski

              Chinatown is first rate but it signals, if not the beginning of his decline, then the end of Polanski as an auteur style director.

              Up until Chinatown his films were as characteristic as those of Godard, Kubrick or Fellini. Roundabout the time of Vampire Killers however he announced his intention to make each of his future films in a different genre, and he seems to have followed through with that, at least until quite recently: Macbeth (historical epic), Chinatown (noirish detective), Tess (romantic), Pirates (adventure), Frantic (suspense), I may have missed a couple. Chinatown aside, the overall quality is at best lumpy and, more significantly, his work after this period lacks directorial definition. His recent films bear few Polanskian hallmarks. Even The Pianist, grounded in his own experience and strong as it is is not self evidently "his," and the young Polanski could, I'm sure, have made something truly terrifying out of Oliver Twist not, the merely competent piece of TV costume drama it turned out to be.

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                #8
                Roman Polanski

                Brilliantly put, AdC.

                His later films definitely lack the idiosyncracies of his earlier work. There's some decent films amongst them but there's also the sense that anyone could have directed them.
                I wonder if this is because he wants to show the money people in Hollywood that he's capable of making "normal" films? He could quite easily, I imagine, stay and make personal, lower budget films in France if he wanted but it seems he still desires the biggest stage.
                Perhaps another reason his films now lack his earlier hallmarks is that, by all accounts, he's now a happily-married father who's maybe found some kind of inner peace and doesn't wish to revisit the deep terror, pessimism and paranoia that once seemed to characterise his life.

                Or maybe he's just lost it. The Polanski who made the awful Bitter Moon and The Ninth Gate certainly doesn't seem like the one who made Cul-de-Sac and Rosemary's Baby.

                In my opinion, the best "Polanski" film in recent years was the Coens' Barton Fink. He clearly recognised something in it as he was the head of the Cannes jury that awarded it the Palme D'or.

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                  #9
                  Roman Polanski

                  Gee thanks.

                  I'd guess your "happy family-man" scenario is more likely than feeling he has to prove anything to Hollywood. Lord knows he's had more tragedy and crisis in the first half of life than most people experience. It may have served his talent but I'm sure he wouldn't trade it for his life now.

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                    #10
                    Roman Polanski

                    Yeah, AdC is spot on here.

                    And I'd forgotten that Bitter Moon was one of his. Dear God, that's a poor film.

                    I was obsessed with Repulsion when I was about 14. Now, I'd say it looks like a very, very good film school project rather than the work of a great director, but I still enjoy it.

                    I appreciate that using the phrase "about 14" in a thread about Roman Polanski is asking for trouble.

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                      #11
                      Roman Polanski

                      I wonder if this is because he wants to show the money people in Hollywood that he's capable of making "normal" films? He could quite easily, I imagine, stay and make personal, lower budget films in France if he wanted but it seems he still desires the biggest stage.
                      If that's true then I also wonder if his "exile" from Hollywood hasn't damaged him in that regard. On the face of it he ought to be able to finance and produce films outside of the US, but quite a bit of dealmaking/networking does require face time with major Hollywood players. Hard to do from a distance as it becomes a case of the mountain having to go to Mohammed. Not the best circumstances to get a studio type project financed, packaged, produced and distributed.

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                        #12
                        Roman Polanski

                        There's a suggestion here that being an 'auteur' = good.

                        Is that necessarily the case? Isn't moving away from a set style, and experimenting with other styles, a healthy thing, showing versatility (even if it might not always come off)?

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                          #13
                          Roman Polanski

                          No that wasn't my intention. The term doesn't imply value, at least not to me. There are many, many crushingly dull auteurs. It's more a question of how how much individual identity a film possesses. Without seeing the credits, if you walk in, sit down, and start watching would you know who the director was? Traditionally European film making tends to favour the auteur system, it's the way the craft evolved and it's the one Polanski grew into, that's all.

                          I also don't blame him at all for wanting to extend his range, it's not just admirable but a necessary risk for any artist. I'd maintain however that his genre-hopping was not a success. Largely because his very dark, comically edged, gothic-romanticism just couldn't be spread so widely. Polanski couldn't make a movie like Pirates anymore than Hitchcock could have directed Guys and Dolls but I certainly applaud him for trying, even though the cost, for me and everyone else who was spellbound by his early work, was probably several better movies.

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                            #14
                            Roman Polanski

                            Ok ... I can see that, AdC.

                            (A Hitchcock 'Guys and Dolls'? Now there's an idea.)

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                              #15
                              Roman Polanski

                              Traditionally European film making tends to favour the auteur system, it's the way the craft evolved
                              I had always thought it was an invention of the nouvelle vague, who then cast around for examples to whom it could be retrospectively applied.

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                                #16
                                Roman Polanski

                                Sure. It probably came from Cahiers de Cinema but, even retrospectively, it's a valid way of distinguishing between a European directorial approach and that of, say, Hollywood especially before the late sixties.

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                                  #17
                                  Roman Polanski

                                  Like Lucia, I've been meaning to see the Komeda Polanskis (fearless vampire killers and cul de sac), looking forward to those, especially given that Françoise Dorléac is in CdS.

                                  Chinatown is great, but Tess, Frantic, The Pianist are pretty generic flat movies, the well had gradually run dry. that's the pattern for a lot of directors like Stanley Kubrick, who went from the heights of American cinema with stuff like 2001 to run of the mill crap like Eyes Wide Shut. I would imagine some of Polanski's lesser known early movies must be really good though. The guy is a total sleaze (to put it mildly) but he was talented.

                                  I just saw Françoise Dorléac's most famous movie earlier this weekend, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (one of the greatest French musicals) as part of a local Jacques Demy retrospective. Quite a treat to see the restored version on the big screen, Demy's widow Agnès Varda (was that the most talented couple in the history of cinema?) lovingly brought back its colorful tones. I played the most famous song from that movie (cared adn shared below), which Françoise did with her sister Catherine Deneuve (who starred alongside her as the blond twin sister) on my last radio show (the score was by Michel Legrand):



                                  http://www.zshare.net/audio/54668655e20b03d6/







                                  Dorléac was as beautiful and talented as her sister, her early death was a great loss to french cinema. Her other great movie role was alongside J-P Belmondo in L'Homme de Rio:

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