POLISH FILM ACADEMY

A few words about Roman Polański and his films

Ewelina Nurczyńska-Fidelska

Roman Polański and his artistic output have been described in dozens of dedicated publications; two published in Poland¹. His films have been analyzed in thousands of articles and film reviews, and his personal life has often been in the limelight, growing into a legend which with time has become a source of clues for interpreting the work of the artist. He himself has in some way contributed to the legend by writing his own autobiography, Roman by Polański².

Roman Polański is, therefore, one of the brightest stars of world cinema. I use this expression with full awareness of the connotations that these words bring to mind. His biography and his work fit into a cinema tradition where the main characters, often without their consent, become public property. That the work of artists may become such a property is a result of the character of art itself, for after the act of creation, artistic objects live a life of their own, co-created by those who engage with them. The fact that we are likely to perceive in the work of artists a reflection of their life and psyche, is also a part of centuries of cultural experience, constantly recurring and intriguing generations of readers and viewers.

Roman Polański is an artist of the cinema not only due to his works, but also his biography, enriched with the plot motifs and dramatic tensions so beloved by the film world. He was born to fulfill this adoration. He once said about himself, “ I am a man for the spectacle”.

The biography of Roman Polański is contained within the framework of two locations – his life in Poland and his life in France. Born on the 18^th  August, 1933 in Paris, he lived with his parents in Kraków. In successive years as a child he witnessed the nightmare experience of war – the loss of his loved ones, his time in the ghetto, and later with those who kept him in hiding.

The rebellious, ever-searching teenager displayed his first artistic passions in amateur theatre groups; in 1954 – 1959 he was a student at the State Film School in Łódź. Here he made seven student films which drew the attention of the school professors to the exceptional talent of the young film apprentice. One of the school films, Two Men and  a Wardrobe (1958), won numerous prizes at international festivals. But the self-assured, quick-tempered early director turned out also to be an excellent actor – he played in his own films and those of his friends, his first major successful role being that of Mały in the film Koniec nocy (The End of the Night), one of those first  films to oppose the ideas and norms of the socio-realistic model of art.

The profession of actor is to some extent an artistic passion in which Roman Polański has not achieved complete fulfillment, though in his artistic career he has had exceptional acting episodes and a main role in his own film The Tenant (1976). His great acting success took place in 2002 with his interpretation of the character of Papkin in the film interpretation of Zemsta (Revenge) by Aleksander Fredro, directed by Andrzej Wajda. He was also able to prove his outstanding acting talent when he played the title role in Amadeus by Peter Schaffer in the  theatres of Warsaw and Paris; a play which he himself directed, and in Przemiany (The Changes) a play adapted from Franz Kafka. More evidence of his acting abilities is given in comments made by actors who have taken part in his films and theatre productions, and who have contributed to the successes of performances which he directed.

In 1962 Roman Polański presented his feature film debut, Knife in the Water, the first film in the history of Polish cinema to be nominated for an Oscar. For many years this was the only film made by Roman Polański to be shown in Poland. The year 2000 brought the news of a new planned production in co-operation with Poland. In 2002 The Pianist, a film based on the memoirs of the composer and pianist Władysław Szpilman, who survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw Uprising, won the Palme d’Or in Cannes and a year later was awarded three Oscars for Best Director, Best Script Adaptation and Best Male Actor for Adrian Brody.

A year after Knife in the Water Roman Polański left for the West, where in France in 1963 he directed one part of Les Plus Belle Escroqueries du Monde, and then ventured to Britain to make films highly acclaimed by critics: Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-sac (1966), Dance of the Vampires (1968).

Almost every person of the cinema dreams of reaching its Mecca. Hollywood then became a  stage in the artist’s journey for whom film-making had become his life. Getting to Hollywood did not signify success in Hollywood style. By making Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974) and achieving a great artistic and commercial success Roman Polański had managed to break through a certain barrier. For the first time Hollywood success was achieved by an artist from Eastern Europe, and what’s more, a surprise to many, from a communist country. But the American years of Polański were not just years of artistic and social successes. This was also the time of a personal drama for the artist which also terrified a broader public – the murder of his wife, the actress Sharon Tate, who was expecting their child, and at the end of the seventies, the scandal in consequence of which he has not been able to return to America.

England, Italy, and most of all, France where he has lived since 1978 and whose citizenship he received in 1976, became the main place of work of Roman Polański, the European. These were also the countries where he made: Macbeth (1971), The Tenant (1976), Tess (1979), Pirates (1986), Frantic (1988), Bitter Moon (1992), Death and the Maiden (1994), The Ninth Gate (1999), Oliver Twist (2005). Many of Polański’s films won awards and honourable mentions at prestigious festivals: nominations, and in different categories, three Oscars,  a César in France, twice the Golden and Silver Bear in Berlin. For life-time achievement in December 1999 Roman Polański received the Feliks Award for his “European contribution to world cinema”, and in 2003 the earlier mentioned Oscar for The Pianist; he is also a member of the elite French Academy of Arts. In 2000 Roman Polański was awarded the doctor honoris causa title of the Łódź State School of Film, Television and Theatre, as well as Honorary Citizenship of the City of Łódź. He possesses his own star in the Łódź Alley of Fame.

I consider this short recollection of the main themes and stages in the biography of Roman Polański as important since many recent publications, articles and film reviews often subject the work of the artist to a biographical interpretation. Though he himself objects strongly to such an approach, focus on the self of the author is believed to be one of the main characteristics of his work. To quote Grażyna Stachówna, “ In my view Polański mostly plays a game with the viewers, at different levels of interpretation, the rules of which he creates and which are sometimes also those imposed by the viewers. And so, at a certain time, his biography, his physical presence on the screen as an actor, his obsessions and favourite topics had become permanent elements of that game, conducted by him, which is difficult to perceive, in a more or less conscious manner. The screens, masks, costumes disguising and hiding the director became (...) a part of the fiction of the film, but also a part of the building of the tension in the game with the viewers.”

Bearing in mind Roman Polański’s films, what themes, or in the words of some, what obsessions could one consider dominant in his work? Summing up, one could mention the juxtaposition of good and evil, love and hatred, and also themes of madness and loneliness, as well as cruelty and violence as destructive forces damaging the individual and those affected. This image of the world,  terrifyingly powerful in its expression, contains dramatic diagnoses whose main themes include the problem of evil and psychological destruction, the forces hidden within man waiting to be unleashed. These emotions and the resulting experience of individuals are no doubt the dominating themes in the construction of the fate of the films’ characters. Sometimes, though, out of the darkness there is a ray of hope and the rebirth of a moral force; the factor which brings this about is often the shock of a brutal experience or of love.

The comments made so far seem to present the artistic output of a gloomy artist submerged in the horrors of this world. Though none of the things said so far are not true, such a claim would provide a totally false picture of Polański’s work. His work contains some kind of magic, due to which the way we perceive his work, and the character of that perception is always at many levels.  It seems that almost every one of the director’s films possesses a double dimension. It is a film genre that is very well recognizable by viewers and with which they associate a certain degree of comfort since they find themselves in a familiar area where they know what to expect from a melodrama, a crime film, a thriller, an adventure film, a “satanic” or “ vampire” film. At the same time we are aware that most of Roman Polański’s films, due to their diagnoses and deeper sense of purpose, exceed our expectations of experiencing only the pleasure characteristic of the reception of a certain film genre. These impressions are confirmed by Roman Polański’s very personal though rare encounters with literary classics in such films as Tess and Oliver Twist.

Several examples will illustrate this. The story of the three characters in the film Knife in the Water, elegant, though full of tension resulting from frequent turns of action and changes in atmosphere is also a bitter and ironic story about the shallowness of dreams, about a career which, on one hand,  determines certain social roles, but also deprives the individual of his freedom. In the film Cul-de-sac the system of values which the main characters embody is totally discredited thus it becomes a grotesque fable about violence and psychological captivation. The films Repulsion and The Tenant  made in the thriller genre, are at the same time shocking studies of human loneliness. Rosemary’s Baby is not only a film with satanic themes, but also a penetrating analysis of the state of consciousness and the emotions accompanying a woman expecting a baby. Bitter Moon, a film saturated with eroticism or even erotic perversion is a parable full of sad afterthoughts about the destructive force of passion in which there is no room for love, tenderness or sense of attachment, which  provide the premises for a long relationship between a woman and a man. Even Chinatown, which in a congenial manner fulfills the requirements of a literary or “film noir” crime story, contains elements of an antique drama ruled by the forces of fate.

This two-dimensional functions of stories in chosen genre conventions can obviously be found in other films made by Roman Polański. Sometimes, though, they offer the viewer a purely intelligent game whose main mechanism is the game belonging to the genre. That was the case in Pirates, Dance of the Vampires, or The Ninth Gate.  The response to that last film proves how much Roman Polański had accustomed his viewers to being engaged in searching for the double-layered clues of interpretation in his work. He disillusioned some of the viewers by offering in The Ninth Gate only a sense of fun. For other viewers the film seemed to prove that the artist had achieved a personal and psychological calmness, and that he was reminding the cinemagoers of the fact that this was only the cinema and he was first of all a master of the genre that has no secrets.

To be an outstanding artist of the cinema one has to know the rules of the genre conventions,  know how to juggle them about and know how to tell the film story. Roman Polański is a master of film narration, and I would like to emphasize the term film narration, which is not  literary narration. Any film can, of course, be retold in words, but such a story is deprived of the visual beauty with which Roman Polański so intensely saturates the time and space of his story. The manner in which the narrative is carried by the artist is characterized not only by perfect logic and refined dramatic construction, but also by the artist’s awareness of the role of the characters. One is also impressed by the co-existence in the film of that which is action with that which is film visualization – the beauty of the frames and shots, their fluidity and rhythm create the meaning, atmosphere and dynamics of the narrative.

Many other characteristic elements make up the style of Roman Polański: an exceptional sense of purpose and function of spacial organization, either open to an urban or rural landscape or closed, almost claustrophobic. Similarly, is a characteristic love of the props which play a major role in creating dramatic tension or which represent a symbolic meaning, such as, mirrors, walls, wardrobes, knives and even fire and water. As a real man of the cinema Roman Polański consciously emphasizes its specific feature – he openly places the viewer in the role of a voyeur – a person who watches or spies on people and events. But this is a feature of an artist who captures the viewer and on whom he imposes his imagination and his preferences with a force that is not often encountered in the cinema.

At the same time Roman Polański always considers his audience with great care – after all he is conducting a permanent dialogue with the viewers. The dialogue takes place beyond the film stories and beyond the charming images which bring the story to life. The theme of that dialogue can be, as some interpreters claim, his own biography and his experience, but also the common cultural tradition; experience of the world and existence. The theme can also concern a common experience of the cinema, its plots, conventions and characters. What counts in that dialogue or in that game is first of all intelligence, sensitivity and often a sense of humour.

Roman Polański, a master of narration and imagery, as well as a game master of conventions, is, as mentioned earlier, perfectly capable of offering the viewers depth of meaning and reflection, but at the same time he can truly entertain, scare and make people laugh. His work clearly possesses features characteristic of outstanding cinema achievements. These place it simultaneously within the framework of what we call popular culture, and what is known as  “high culture”.

1. Grażyna Stachówna, Roman Polański i jego filmy, Warszawa – Łódź 1994, Mariola Jankun-Dopartowa, Labirynt Polańskiego, Kraków 2000. [powrót]

2. Roman Polański, Roman, przekł. K. i P. Szymanowscy, Warszawa 1989. [powrót]

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