Scandal and
the cineaste

One of the strangest cases of celebrity
justice is examined in Roman Polanski:
Wanted and Desired

by MATTHEW HAYS

The strange brilliance of Roman Polanski’s career is only matched by the strangeness of his own life. Survivor of the Holocaust, he became a bright wunderkind of the Polish cinema, his unique sensibility felt powerfully even in his early short work. Upon arriving in America, he became a potent symbol of the New Hollywood, a director who created two of the most memorable films of the ’60s and ’70s (Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, respectively).

But then came the horrid and the weird. The sordid and surreal parts of Polanski’s existence—and they are sizable chunks indeed—are given a detailed going-over in Marina Zenovich’s remarkable documentary, a feature-length examination of the sexual tryst that made the filmmaker flee America for good.

But Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired also details one of the grisliest incidents in Hollywood history, when the Manson Family gained entry into a Beverly Hills compound and slaughtered several people, including actress Sharon Tate, Polanski’s wife. She was then pregnant with their child, and the details of the murder were so bizarre and horrifying as to induce nausea: the foetus had been cut out of Tate, apparently while she was still alive.

Through clips here, one can see why Polanski hates the press: despite the fact that he was in Europe when the crime occurred, many journalists pounced on the eerie coincidence that the murders occurred but one year after the release of Rosemary’s Baby. That, concluded some, meant that Polanski must have been involved in some satanic rituals or an orgy, or some combination of the two, and that’s how Tate died. It’s grisly stuff, and when Zenovich is serving it up, Polanski appears an entirely sympathetic figure.

But that doesn’t last for too long. In 1977, then at the top of his career, Polanski accepted a fashion-magazine assignment to photograph a series of girls. One of the girls he photographed, then 13, he gave a glass of champagne and a downer. She felt tired, and when she lay down, he had sex with her. He was then charged with statutory rape, and the case became the celebrity scandal of the ’70s.

Zenovich scores some brilliant interviews here (among them Mia Farrow), with the pro and con divide appearing somewhat predictable: cops say throw the book at him, friends suggest he was made example of by a judge who was loving the media limelight. Some of Polanski’s pals are pretty hard to take, especially when they question the 13-year-old’s mother’s motivations for leaving her daughter alone with Polanski. The girl had a bad mom—that means drugging and banging her was okay?

Though there’s no fresh Polanski interview with this film, it doesn’t really matter. Zenovich artfully uses media clips, court documents and clips from Polanski’s own films to paint this strange portrait of film lore. Polanski emerges as a great artist who is also a crass boor, an utter mess of contradictions—the best kind of subject for a documentary.

ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND
DESIRED OPENS THIS FRIDAY, SEPT. 5
AT THE CINÉMA DU PARC

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