Chinatown's 35th Anniversary Edition and the Polanski Scandal
In one of the great ironies, the 35th anniversary edition of Chinatown came out this month, nearly at the same time that its director, Roman Polanski, was arrested in Switzerland after fleeing Los Angeles over 30 years ago following a downward guilty plea and brief imprisonment for unlawful sex with a minor.
Chinatown, the tale of a smart, tough detective investigating what he thinks, at first, is a simple case of infidelity in late 1930s Los Angeles, is my favorite film. On the surface, it's a period detective picture, a big Hollywood movie with the trappings of film noir. Beneath, it's much more. Armed with an alarmingly intelligent screenplay by Robert Towne, brilliantly cast -- from stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway down through the extras -- the film creates its own mesmerizing world through evocative music, costuming, and production design.
"You may think you know what you're dealing with, Mr. Gits. But believe me, you don't." (Words to always keep in mind, which I sometimes have not.)
Jake Gittes (LA power broker Noah Cross, deliciously played by the late Oscar-winning director John Huston, who uttered the touchstone line above, carelessly mispronounces the detective's name throughout the film) is much smarter than most people. This tough ex-cop, played by Nicholson in the role that made him a Hollywood leading man, delivers his own sardonic witticisms throughout as he shrewdly reads every situation. Only to find that he is, essentially, wrong at every major turn, because he is not grasping the dimensionality of what he's dealing with.
Working with Towne's classic script (has there ever been a better closing line than "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown"?), and famously having Towne change its less downbeat ending, Polanski renders that dimensionality on screen, cloaking it in an air of alluring and repellent mystery.
As it happens, I've never been a particular fan of Roman Polanski, though I know his story well and am sympathetic to what he endured prior to his crime, which is a bad crime. I've seen only a few of the films he's done during his exile, and a few he did before that.
But Chinatown, which is still his biggest film -- as an exile from the center of the movie business, he's been unable to work in Hollywood and thus unable to do the big movies he would otherwise have been able to do -- happens to be my favorite film.
And while this piece is about Chinatown, and its echoing impact through the decades, I clearly have to address the Polanski question. To put it bluntly, looking at the court record, he evidently sexually assaulted a 13-year old girl, a thoroughly unacceptable and reprehensible act. The crime, of course, is well known. It's not a crime to be countenanced or excused or explained away. Polanski deserves to suffer for this crime. He has suffered for this crime. The question for the reader, or anyone else, is how much larger a pound of flesh one requires. I'll address this a bit more, along with the intrigue around his arrest, and how the situation might be resolved, later in the piece.
Back to the movie.
Before talking about what Chinatown is, let's talk about what it is not. It is not an Oscar winner for Best Picture. Though it did the best of any of the films of 1974, winning best picture and other top prizes, at the British Academy Awards and the Golden Globes, it lost at the Oscars to The Godfather, Part II. Not only did Polanski not win the Oscar as best director, which he deserved, neither did Jack Nicholson nor Faye Dunaway win the top acting prizes. Only Robert Towne won, for best screenplay, making a clean sweep of all the top writing awards.
Not that Godfather II, and director Francis Ford Coppola and star Al Pacino weren't deserving winners. Godfather II is a fantastic film. Imagine if Chinatown and Godfather II both came out this year. Actually, it's unimaginable. The current cultural ADD would make it impossible for the films to be made.
Having said how great Godfather II is, I like Chinatown much more. I'm not that interested in gangsters. They don't really play a role in politics. I'd already seen the first Godfather. I'm more interested in political power and corruption, especially around Los Angeles, one of my favorite cities, and interpersonal dynamics.
The villains in Chinatown are not gangsters. They are pillars of the community, business moguls, politicians, bureaucrats, high-level flunkies and respectable thugs. They don't have to bribe the police to avoid arrest. The police already know better.
Even after all these years, I don't want to go through all the particulars of the plot -- I leave that for my Mad Men reviews here on the Huffington Post (recapping is now the fashion for television) -- because you should see this movie if you haven't, and see it again if you have.
The film embraces the manner of film noir as it rejects its conventions. The detective is the protagonist, unafraid to venture down those mean streets, but he is not the hero. That is the nerdy, oddly bird-like chief engineer of the LA Department of Water and Power, Hollis Mulwray. First glimpsed by Gittes in a beautifully rendered city council meeting in LA City Hall, he's cast first as the philanderer of the piece, and an unlikely one at that as Nicholson's subtle reaction in this first sighting has it.
Nicholson is simply superb in Chinatown, tough yet affecting, effortlessly spouting Towne's wicked dialogue with a noticeable relish. He is Jake Gittes, and he's Jack Nicholson, too, but there's never a ham sandwich delivered in the entire two hours.
As for the leading lady, Jane Fonda was apparently much in evidence for the part of the elegantly damaged Evelyn Mulwray at one point. I think Fonda is one of the greatest actresses of all time. It would have been very interesting to see her in the role.
But Faye Dunaway played Evelyn Mulwray. Or, I should say, Faye Dunaway became Evelyn Mulwray. She's indelible. It's hard to imagine Chinatown without her.
She's not the femme fatale you're expecting, though she has the obvious trappings of beauty and glamour and mystery. She's a "California Yankee," as Towne calls her on Chinatown's new commentary track. She sweeps through life with elegance and assurance, yet she is deeply neurotic and wounded. All these characteristics are at once at play in Dunaway's portrayal.
Polanski discusses Chinatown, crediting writer Robert Towne and producer Robert Evans.
I've seen the film many times, though not for a few years before this 35th anniversary edition. Four or five times when it came out in general release. Then many more times some years later, when it played in a nearby repertory theater. This was before widespread cable or home video. So if I had nothing else going on late at night after studying, I'd walk over to the theater for the late showing of Chinatown.
It was a great place to watch it, an old movie palace, giant screen, big soundtrack, Jerry Goldsmith's haunting score immediately drawing me into another world -- yet a world with uncanny similarities to the present -- as the sinister black-and-white Paramount logo and elegant titles rolled past.
The production design by Richard Sylbert (who brilliantly positioned Nicholson's character in the opening scene with a credenza holding a portrait of FDR and a Degas dancer figurine, showing him to be a populist dandy), the costume design by his then sister-in-law Anthea Sylbert, the cinematography by John Alonzo, all combined to create a vivid period world.
I knew every character's lines by heart. And naturally loved Nicholson's lines the best, as a very young man would. (Incidentally, it's not at all easy to get away with talking like Nicholson in the real world unless you are Nicholson.)
This time around, I found it difficult to take my eyes off of Dunaway's Evelyn Mulwray, a vision of intelligent elegance and neurotic, erotic glamour. Even with Nicholson zinging away in the frame. She's the heart of the picture.
While it would be difficult for most to describe John Huston's Noah Cross as Chinatown's soul, he is its hinge.
Evans, Towne, and Polanski discuss Chinatown.
When I was younger, it was Nicholson's lines as Gittes that most struck my fancy, to the point that I used some of them in real life, with varying degrees of success, as you might suppose. (Such lines as "You're dumber than you think I think you are" are to be employed very judiciously.)
Now it's Huston's lines as Noah Cross that reverberate most.
Which I suppose is a big reason why I prefer Chinatown to Godfather.
Cross is not a mob boss divvying up receipts from the rackets for his capos. He's an entrepreneur, a power broker, a pillar of society. He's not a criminal trying to go legit. He's a visionary.
When asked why he does what does, what he "can buy that he can't already afford," Cross has a ready answer: "The future, Mr. Gits, the future."
Chinatown's 35th anniversary edition arrives in not only an alluring but a fact-filled package, with the picture itself looking better than ever. There are three earnest documentaries on the facts of the water situation of Los Angeles, with possible greener solutions, in part at least.
As a character in Chinatown establishes early on, LA is next to an ocean but it exists on a near desert. There was ample water there only for a much smaller city than has emerged. Today, LA gets 85% of its water from other sources; namely, Northern California, as part of the California water project built by the late Governor Pat Brown, the Colorado River, and the Owens Valley, a place hundreds of miles to the north next to the Eastern Slope of the Sierra Nevada range.
Los Angeles essentially colonized the Owens Valley early in the 20th century, locking up its water supply, bringing the water south via an aqueduct. The process left the once verdant Owens Valley, a place I know well, nearly a dust bowl. (A shot from the Sierra's Eastern Slope is part of the logo of my NewWestNotes.com.)
For dramatic purposes, Robert Towne conflated the Owens Valley with the San Fernando Valley (which is now part of LA) in Chinatown, referring instead to an amorphous "the Valley" throughout the movie. Actually, he means both places in this complex tale of land, water, and power.
Gittes has his first encounter with Evelyn Mulwray.
The commentary for the picture is done, in Polanski's absence, by screenwriter Robert Towne, the natural choice, as his is the Great American Screenplay, and a Chinatown aficionado, director David Fincher. Along with a few amusing suggestions as to how he would have shot it differently, Fincher adds intelligent observations and a sense of having sought out the film's locations. Which are not that easy to find nowadays.
Towne described the phenomenon of having been able to discover, by dint of driving on the right streets, the LA of the 1930s in 1974. Today you can still find the LA of the 1970s if you drive on the right streets. But so much of the classic LA has been lost.
This stands in stark contrast to the situation with one of San Francisco's signature films, Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 classic Vertigo.
While very different films, they each evoke the noir genre and make extraordinary use of their two magnificent cities. Each has a detective protagonist who is an emblematic figure of his city's time and place. Each features a powerful, mysterious woman, who could be good or bad, but turns out to be a victim. Each ends in sudden tragedy.
But, while you can actually steep yourself in the ambiance of Vertigo by touring its locations today in San Francisco, that sort of thing is hardly possible now in the disposable culture of Los Angeles.
In the end, all that may remain of LA's history in any experiential sense is cinema. Which makes Chinatown all the more valuable.
Towne went from Chinatown immediately onto another classic film about LA, this time set in the late 1960s, Warren Beatty's Shampoo, which Towne wrote with Beatty.
Chinatown was to have the been the first of a trilogy about power in Los Angeles, centering on Nicholson's Jake Gittes character. As the DVD extras make clear, Nicholson was so taken with the character that he wouldn't play the other detective roles he was naturally offered after the huge success of Chinatown.
But Polanski's scandal of 1977 and 1978 ultimately made that impossible. Three of the biggest players from Chinatown were still available -- Nicholson and Towne, of course, and someone I haven't mentioned yet, producer Bob Evans.
Evans hired Towne to write the screenplay for Chinatown, which Towne preferred to Evans' original idea that Towne adapt The Great Gatsby. As Towne amusingly puts it in the DVD extras, he didn't want to be known as the guy who screwed up F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Evans did a remarkable job of running interference with the studio on Chinatown, a big, complicated project that could be daunting to the average suit. Evans was aided in his ability to do this by virtue of the fact that he, well, ran Paramount as the studio's production chief.
Evans hired Polanski to direct Chinatown, then brought in Jerry Goldsmith to do the score -- in only nine days! -- when the first score proved not to work. Which proved to be pivotal to the movie's evocative nature.
With Polanski in exile, the Chinatown trio had trouble deciding on a director for the sequel. The stories around this are worthy of a long article in its own right.
Suffice it to say that, when the sequel to Chinatown, The Two Jakes, was finally shot and released in 1990, it was not Chinatown. Nicholson directed it, and under his own direction, talks much more slowly and deliberately than he does in Chinatown, in which Polanski urged him constantly to pick up the pace. I watched it again the other day. It's very interesting and thought-provoking, but it's not Chinatown.
Gittes is back from World War II, in which he won the nation's second highest award for heroism, the Navy Cross, which is never mentioned per se, it's simply there in his office, hiding his real wall safe. The mystery of Chinatown continues, this time playing out on a power canvas of oil and real estate development.
The third film in the trilogy has not been made, and probably never will be.
"See, Mr. Gits, most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of ... anything."
All of which brings us back round to Roman Polanski. Since he is in exile, he's not on the Chinatown commentary track with Robert Towne. He was interviewed, a few years back, for the DVD extras, which are extensive and interesting. He's very intelligent and engaging, insightful and incisive. You get the sense that, had he not committed this thoroughly unacceptable crime, he would have directed some of the biggest movies of our time in addition to Chinatown. (And yes, I know he won the Oscar for The Pianist, a very fine work that I haven't seen.)
I've looked into his arrest a bit, and it's not easy to see why he was arrested now. As distinguished from, say, any other time. There was a theory that Polanski's backers irritated the LA District Attorney's office with a very sympathetic documentary about Polanski last year, which I haven't seen.
But then it emerged that the Swiss notified American and LA authorities that Polanski was arriving in Switzerland to receive an award at a film festival. Yet Polanski owns a villa in Switzerland and has been there frequently. It doesn't quite add up.
In any event, I hadn't known this but it turns out that Polanski has finished principal photography on a new movie, and was in post-production when he took a break to go get his award in Switzerland. It's based on a novel that I missed while covering the presidential race called The Ghost.
Written by best-selling British novelist Robert Harris, who collaborated on the screenplay with Polanski, it's about a ghostwriter for pop stars who takes on the assignment of finishing the memoirs of a beloved and hated former British prime minister. Harris, as it happens, is an ex-friend of Tony Blair. And his Adam Lang, played in Polanski's new movie by the former James Bond, Pierce Brosnan, is uncannily Blair-like.
The Ghost, to put it bluntly, is a roman a clef. Its title character, whose name we never learn, played by Ewan McGregor -- better known in certain circles as Obi-wan Kenobi -- takes on the task of writing the ex-British leader's memoirs after his predecessor, a stalwart Labour Party operative, dies in strange circumstances off Martha's Vineyard, where the former prime minister is trying to wrap up.
Now, I like Tony Blair, who may well be the first president of the European Union. But I must say I loved Harris's novel when I read it earlier this month. I laughed throughout, and especially at the ending. It's knowing, and delicious, and quite vicious in its way. Though ultimately rather kind to Blair, er, Lang.
Harris had a big falling out with Blair over the Iraq War, and his view that Blair's Britain was simply too mirroring an ally of America in the war on terror.
With Olivia Williams as Cherie Blair, that is to say, Ruth Lang, and Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall as Lang's close aide, in Polanski's hands, this looks like a big movie.
Once it's finished, that is. I don't know its status now.
So, whither Polanski?
What he did in 1977 was very bad. There is no question about that. I know that he survived the Holocaust as a child, I know that his mother was murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz, I know that his wife Sharon Tate and their unborn child were slaughtered by the Manson Family. None of that excuses his actions with the 13-year old girl. Some say otherwise. They're wrong.
He deserves to be punished for that. He has been punished for that. He pled guilty, he served a brief amount of time in prison, he fled before final sentencing (with the judge reportedly reneging on a plea agreement), his name was forever attached to a reprehensible crime, and in exile he achieved far less than he would have in Hollywood. He apologized to his victim, who has forgiven him. Of course, she received a lot of money, so her motives can be questioned if one is so inclined. (Though the revival of the scandal is certainly not good for her life.)
Is that enough? Apparently not. The question is, how much more of a pound of flesh should Polanski have to give up?
I think Polanski should return to Los Angeles, make a statement of contrition, and throw himself on the mercy of the court. That's likely to work better for him than his current strategy of fighting extradition from Switzerland, since the Swiss apparently dropped the dime on him in the first place.
Incidentally, with regard to the fate of Polanski's new film, The Ghost ... One of the things I learned from the 35th anniversary edition of Chinatown is that Polanski wasn't on hand for much of the post-production work. He was off in Europe directing an opera. He consulted by phone with producer Evans and editor Sam O'Steen.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.
Vicki Iovine: Girlfriends' Guide: A Year Of Sexual Blunders By Powerful Men: Blame It On High School
David Letterman is this week's Exhibit A in the ongoing case of Powerful Men v. Sexual Integrity, having climbed over Roman Polanski, who was last week's winner. Congratulations, David.
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So, may I gather that no one has actually bothered to check out The Ghost?
Hey...I haven't even had a chance to check out the 35th anniversary edition of Chinatown, yet...apparently, it's a rare commodity in my neck of the woods.
You have to be more patient with us...comments won’t close here for a while yet. :).
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Well, my quest to get it is actually a story in itself. I forgot to order it from Amazon. Then ensued a big, ridiculous search, revealing the ignorance of the young service sector.
I added your site to my home page start pages, came over to read President Obama's schedule, read you excellent column on Polanski and now I have to watch Chinatown again.
When I read the Polanski transcripts, I wished I could have had the opportunity years ago. The world was different world back then; I remember my friends and I assumed many things about this situation. Most of what we assumed was wrong.
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Thanks, I appreciate it!
I saw this movie with my future husband,. When we got home he quietly went into the bathroom and when he came out my back was turned to him, he had put a hat on and had his nose all bandaged up
that was over 31 yrs ago.
it still makes me laugh.
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Nicholson's the only big star in history who spent a third of his big flick looking goofy.
Wow. Having to choose between Godfather II and Chinatown is a real Sophie's Choice.
But I'd have to go with Godfather II which, of course, doesn't take away from the greatness of Chinatown.
Wrong Sophie... :)
The fawning over this pervert is sickening.
But not much fawning by Bradley who makes it quite clear how he feels about Polanski's crime.
Bradley focused almost exclusively on the art.
pervert?/
some of history 'S very best artists were & are perverts! know that?? da vinci,michaelago, raphael, picasso, jean genet.. the list is verrrrrrry long..
as the saying goes.. show purity and it'll show mediocrity..
What is sickening is people showing their hatred and envy.
"Cross is not a mob boss divvying up receipts from the rackets for his capos. He's an entrepreneur, a power broker, a pillar of society. He's not a criminal trying to go legit. He's a visionary."
The GodFather(s) and China Town are in fact very much more similar than you give them credit. Don Corleone was a power broker(police/political connections) an entrepreneur(Genco Oil plus the 'family business') and a pillar in HIS society(see the wedding scene in GF 1 where the whole community went to him for help/blessings).
And I'd argue that Cross was every bit the Mobster as Corleone in Crosses own world of white collar crime...not to mention nailing his own daughter.
"...When asked why he does what he does, what he "can buy that he can't already afford," Cross has a ready answer: "The future, Mr. Gits, the future." ..."
And Both men were doing their 'crimes' for the future and their own immortality.
Corleone for his family's future and his immortality through his sons continuing what he began. Cross' future and immortality to be the man that 'brought water to the desert' and created a city and his lineage through his daughter.
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Ah, sorry, no.
The Corleones were gangsters. That's why the cops hassled them and the Senate had hearings on them.
Cross had the ex-sheriff as his errand boy and elected senators.
I think the difference was actually much more subtle. The Corleones elected senators and had police to do their errands as well. As did the other families. Why did Michael kill a cop in the first movie? In fact I think that was really one of the significant things about the Godfather movies, in the past movies showed gangsters as tough guys, maybe even heroic in some ways but Godfather was the first to show that they were as much movers and shakers as the Carnegies or Rockeffelers.
I was working at Paramount at the time of "The Two Jakes" fiasco. I couldn't believe they were casting Bob Evans in the film. The only way it was going to be made, I guess. If Towne was going to object, why hadn't he voiced his feelings earlier? Perhaps he had, and no one was listening. Watching Nicholson fly up into the air from a nearby explosion was enough form me, I couldn't watch any further. Chinatown, on the other hand, is near perfect, but I always get uncomfortable when he slaps Faye during the Big Moment. One slap too many I'd say.
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Evans began as a credible actor ...
Still, not a great idea.
i saw one of the few films Evans did.. co-starring that wonderful beauty-- Susy Parker.
You have obviously taken a college course on this film. I thought Pulp Fiction was what was all the rage. You nailed it though. Must have got an A in that one. I agree almost entirely with your analysis, a brilliant film about one of US most magical cities, the City of Night.
Are you a lucky little lady in the City of Light
Or just another lost angel
City of Night
City of Night
City of Night
City of Night whoa c'mon
Written by Jim Morrison a year before he went to Paris
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Nope, never took a college class (or any other) on Chinatown or any other films.
Nor on Mad Men, Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.
You missed a lot of the piece.
Loved Chinatown, but it has no bearing on how Mr. Polanski should be punished for his crime. He should be treated exactly the way anyone else who committed the same crime would be treated. And he should be punished for fleeing, just as anyone else would be punished. The man may be a great director, but he's still a pedophile. Genius or no, for whatever traumas may have shaped him, the man's a creep. If he were small and black and from the ghetto, you wouldn't ask what pound of flesh he still owed. He owes his punishment and whatever he has added for his flight. Plain and simple. This could have been over a long time ago. He chose to delay it. It's time to pay the piper.
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He's a pedophile?
Try proving that.
I think Roman Polanski needs to face up to his crime. However, it's getting very tiring seeing people call him a pedophile. He's not. The young girl had hit puberty. What he did was take advantage of her very young age to get what he wanted and it's loathsome and rotten, but he's not a pedophile and you look ignorant calling him that.
Hey, look at this hatcheting of Polanski by the Sunday Los Angeles Times. By a reporter I never heard of. Typical of this failing newspaper.
It is so dishonest. It lies about how the arrest happened, not telling the reader that the Swiss actually initiated the arrest, even though Polanski has had a house in Switzerland for years.
The LAT constantly gets even California politics wrong, but this is a new low in dishonesty for it.
>>>> http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-polanski25-2009oct25,0,5115267.story?page=1
Here is the proper link.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-polanski25-2009oct25,0,5115267.story?page=1
Sorry, I see the old-style LAT links are too long. Typical. However, copy and paste in the browser and there it is.
Oops. Accidentally "posted the above comment" while trying to write it, so it kinda makes no sense. Anyway, this LA Times article sure is missing some things (besides not even trying to present the defense's side) and blindly accepting the entire victim's testimony as "unequivocal". For example, the reporter says that in the "sympathetic" documentary (I would say it was just fair), "Dalton (Polanski's lawyer) told the filmmaker that (Judge) Fidler was ready to hold a hearing and let Polanski go without more time in custody, but wanted the hearing televised -- a condition Polanski wouldn't accept. A court spokesman, Alan Parachini, called this a "complete fabrication."
Allow me to point up how the reporter does some whitewashing himself. 1. The statement about televised hearings was mentioned by both the defense AND the prosecution, but the reporter conveniently forgets to mention that, making it look like it was just the defense and therefore probably lying. 2. BOTH the defense and the prosecution issued a joint statement that they were in fact NOT lying and charged the court with making a "false and reprehensible statement."
As for the fact that the deputy DA lied, it doesn't really change the heart of the misconduct case as both the defense and the prosecution give damning testimony against the original judge, who was then removed from the case on a motion from both parties.
WELL, doesn't it make one just go-- duh- why the Swiss would do this NOW WITH RP when it just so happened Washington was giving them the tight squeeze to name those secret bank accounts,huh??
who ever said-- the Swiss weren't 'self-serving AND HAVING ulterior motives t o save themselves?
SO THEY SACRIFICED AN OLD MAN OF 76..
it also won't amaze me a jot IF they entrap him with this award..
ah.. it'll all come out in the wash..
"Not that Godfather II, and director Francis Ford Coppola and star Al Pacino weren't deserving winners."
It was Robert De Niro who won the Best Supporting Actor for Godfather II. Best Actor award went to Art Carney that year. Nicholson, btw, won the next year for Cuckoo's Nest.
Love the movie Chinatown. Love your taste, Mr. Bradley, and your great reviews here on HuffPo, especially your tremendous tracking of the show "Mad Men". With respect to the latter, however, I am deeply concerned that you've expressed fondness for the sweet innocence of the character Suzanne Farrell, to which I can only say.
"You may think you know what you're dealing with, Mr. (Bradley). But believe me, you don't."
Great fun. Thanks again.
I saw ALL that stuff you wrote. Longer than Bradley's very long article...
She doesn't have NPD.
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Thanks!!!!
However, if anyone has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, it is our hero Don Draper.
I think a person's character must be taken into consideration. Those who latch on to plot points in Polanski's movies and then try to interpret them as they see fit, are often missing the big picture. If a work of art really is a reflection of a man's character, then it is interesting to note that Polanski's films are often deeply moral. He is not just a good storyteller, he often adds an important moral element to his movies, which are often inditements of injustice and man's inhumanity to man. "Chinatown", "Death and the Maiden", "The Pianist", "Oliver Twist," etc., are all films which condemn injustice and cruelty. Even in his entertainments like "Rosemary's Baby" (still my favorite Christmas movie), or "The Tenant", or "Frantic" (not his best, but still interesting), our sympathies are always with the right people, and any action which brings harm to anyone, intentionally or not, has its consequences, which is unlike most Hollywood films. I may be wrong, but looking at his films that way, I just can't see him as a man who would intentionally hurt anyone (something that is corroborated by most people who know him), though of course harm he did whether he meant to or not. And while no one is condoning his crime, everything about this case is not as straightforward as many think, and Polanski is definitely not the monster he's been painted to be.
I think there's a lot of envy of Hollywood in the attacks on Polanski.
hmm.. I believe the ENVY started when he married Saron Tate-- even Polanski talked a bout it-- as the period when he started getting bad press.
yeah.. people wonder how this short(being called dwarf) not good looking guy-- and Pole to boot-- attract such gorgeous women!
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The unknown factors with this case have increased, not decreased.
With all due respect, Mr. Bradley, you wouldn't be saying that if you read both Samatha Geimer's Grand Jury testimony and Polanski's own testimony, under oath, at his plea bargain hearing.
See:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0610081polanski2.html
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0928091polanskiplea1.html
.
Polanski, is seemingly a witty, charming and civilized man who is rightly admired for his artistry. While he may not make a habit of harming young girls, he made two life altering decisions in 1977. He forced himself on a 13 year old girl, despite her protestations and he fled the country, rather than serve out his sentence.
It's probably the latter deed as much as the former that has him in trouble now.
I would definitely agree that he showed extremely poor judgement, arrogance for the law, etc., but I don't think he thought he was harming the girl. That doesn't make it OK, of course, even if she was "not only physically mature, but (possibly) willing" as the probation report states. But there is good reason to think that his fleeing was not only a result of his paranoia, but also judicial mishandling. The recent documentary covers it very well, (the deputy DA, David Wells, turned out to be lying, so you can ignore whatever he's saying). Here's a pretty good summary of the film from Roger Ebert, if anyone's interested.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080723/REVIEWS/694288051
A correct reply to this would never make it past the moderators. "Witty, charming and civilized?" Really?
I last properly watched this film at LACMA in early 90's-- it was a s pecial evening with some of the key figures involved in it in attendance-- ROBERT EVANS, TOWNE, SYLBERT etc-- alas, no Polanski,Jack nor Dunaway who were busy elsewhere..
it was a great symposium as they related some the behind the scenes machinations in the making of this film.. ah.. all the melodrama that happened behind t he scnes-- and dunaways request for real silk stockings and how she drove Roman crazy AS HE WAITED before each scene-- too much.. quite amusing really.. Ah.. MS Dunaway is/was a perfectionist!
Robert EVans is justly proud of this film..
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They all deserve great credit.
what really makes Chinatown is in the d etails-- so true for it's period.. including the unfiltered LUCKY STRIKES smoked in it.
yeah, in his book-- Evans does relate how Chinatown is included as one of the best ever films in the Congressional 'something'.. (sorry,i keep forgetting what word) ever made. it's in the top 3..
for this Polanski's legacy is assured.. a nd NO ONE can take this away from him.
Polanski makes a great little thug in that scene with Nicholson, doesn't he?
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He's pretty convincing. As are Nicholson's gibes at his friend ...
It's all acting.
Polanski usually made cameos in his films-- like the Vampire Killers..
"The Ghost" trailer looks fascinating.
Hey, what a coincidence Polanski is arrested in Switzerland while Blair is going for a big political office.
from the subject matter alone-- and Polanski's edge in making these sort of films.. this should be wonderful.. do hope there's a way he can do post production with his notes.. and have this film finished.
I just love political intrique type of films.
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Coincidence is our friend. Where would we be without it?
so true.
I am wracking my brains to see who can finish this film for him.. alas.. the very ones who will be excellent are no longer wirh us.. JOHN SCHLESINGER( AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD IS/WAS WONDERFUL) AND FRED ZINNEMAN. ..
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