Arts FA Entertainment
Case Reopened
Polanski documentary at Detroit Film Theatre revisits 1970s scandal, legal travails.
Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News
R
oman Polanski's life is the stuff
that nightmares, and dreams, are
made of. Only an extraordinary
person could have weathered the traumas he
endured, and only a remarkable artist could
have transmuted this suffering into brilliant
films such as Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown
and The Pianist.
Marina Z,enovich's riveting documentary
Roman Polanski; Wanted and Desired, revisits
the 1977 sex scandal and legal perversions
that ultimately impelled the charismatic
Jewish director to flee Los Angeles for Paris.
Still subject to arrest, he's never returned to
the States. (The Oscar he won for directing
The Pianist in 2002 was presumably deliv-
ered to him in Europe.)
Roman Polanski; Wanted and Desired
depicts the unholy intersection of celebrity,
sex, mass media and justice with uncom-
mon rigor and intelligence. The film, which
screens at the Detroit Film Theatre in the
Detroit Institute of Arts Sept. 25-27, down-
plays the most sensationalist aspects of the
case in favor of the deeper currents of char-
acter and ego.
In 1968, with the box-office and critical
success of Rosemary's Baby, Polanski was
the hottest director in the world. He also
was happily married to the gorgeous actress
Sharon Tate and had seemingly escaped,
once and for all, the shadow of his tormented
childhood in Poland.
Polanski's parents were deported by the
Nazis, and his mother died in a concentra-
tion camp. Roman was reunited with his
father in 1945, but the lad had to survive the
war years largely by his own wits.
Indeed, his childhood is mentioned sever-
al times by friends in the course of the docu-
mentary. It isn't offered as a defense for his
crime but to suggest that, for all his charm
and sophistication, Polanski is scarred.
Tate's murder at the hands of Charles
Manson's followers in 1969, while Polanski
was in London, was an unimaginably dev-
astating blow. Adding grievous insult to hei-
nous injury, tabloid and serious publications
alike ran slimy rumors and allegations.
The press even hinted that Polanski had
somehow invited this hell on himself as the
director of frightening films about the cor-
ruption of innocence.
In hindsight, it appears that the media
establishment mounted a vengeful terror
campaign against the advocates and partici-
pants of the era's sexual revolution. The Tate
killing, the papers suggested, was a warning
that depravity and death were the inevitable
consequences of pleasure.
(As an aside, we might consider the initial
media coverage of the AIDS epidemic from
the same perspective.)
In the years following the pregnant Tate's
death, Polanski built a reputation in L.A.
as a womanizer. Warren Beatty and Jack
Nicholson likewise cut a swath through
Hollywood, but their public images weren't
shaded with death and darkness.
Then Polanski turned a 1977 photography
session with a 13-year-old — arranged by
her mother to launch the girl's modeling and
acting career — into a sexual encounter.
She told her mother; her mother went to the
police; and Polanski was arrested.
Polanski's actions are indefensible, even
if it was seduction rather than rape. He pled
guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with
a minor and, following a court-appointed
psychiatrist's determination that he was not
a threat as a sex offender, was on course to
receive probation. That's when it began to
get weird, as the judge crossed one line after
another.
The admirably focused Wanted and
Desired omits peripheral observers, experts
and pundits and sticks to participants
and direct witnesses. Only the publicity-
conscious Judge Laurence J. Rittenband
(who died in 1993) and Polanski, who told
Zenovich his participation would likely be
perceived as self-promotion, aren't inter-
viewed.
But we get plenty of the sexy, self-pos-
sessed and super-smart Polanski in archival
news footage and TV interviews, and he is as
compelling and complex a personality as will
grace screens this year.
No one would place Polanski's travails
with the justice system on par with the
Dreyfus Affair that plagued France at the
turn of the 20th century; but after all he'd
been through in his life, Polanski must have
felt persecuted.
A scene from the documentary Roman
Polanski: Wanted and Desired, an eye-
opening discourse on the nature of
celebrity in America
Roman Polanski; Wanted and
Desired will be shown 7 p.m.
Thursday and 9:30 p.m. Friday
and Saturday, Sept. 25-27, at the
Detroit Film Theatre in the Detroit
Institute of Arts, located at 5200
Woodward Ave., in Detroit. Tickets
are $6.50-$7.50. (313) 833-4005
or www.dia.org/dft.
❑
Shirlee Bloom, Ron & Maggie Asmar,
Cookie & Bart Chimoff and the entire Staff
at the Vineyards wish our customers and friends
a very happy and healthy Rosh Hashanah!
Last
Minute
Rosh Hashanah
and Yom Kippur
Specials!!
Free Coffee Cake, Apple Strudel
or 7 layer cake with
All Dairy Trays...
3 2418 Northwestern Hwy. (Between Middlebelt & 14 Mile Rd. )
Dinner Orders: 248.855.9463
Rosh Hashanah Holiday Gifts shipped nationwide.
Gift Orders: 248.737.8088
B44
September 25 • 2008 JN
Bloom's uses Kosher ingredients only.
www.VineyardDeli.com
NibblesAndNuts.com