Lady Caroline Lamb, spurned by her lover Lord Byron, coined the bruising and infamous taunt that the aristocrat was ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’. For periods of his extraordinary life, the same could be said of Roman Polanski. Hated by some and equally adored by others, the French-Polish director of Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, The Tenant and The Pianist sits down for a lengthy interview with producer and friend, Andrew Braunsberg, in Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir.
Expectations are high for the doc, but disappointment soon sets in as Polanski is not going to pour his heart out in naked fashion. Only when discussing his wartime experiences does the doc approach anything like riveting viewing. The stories are heart-breaking and Polanski, clearly a marvellous storyteller in life as in the movies, cries on camera remembering the last time he saw his mother (she was shipped off to Auschwitz and never seen again), almost being killed by a Nazi soldier taking random potshots with his rifle and being reunited with his father and older sister, after the war. Here, you cannot but feel the greatest sympathy for the guy. But tragedy was not yet done with the film-maker.
Structured around a kitchen table chat with an old buddy, cut with clips and photos, the documentary by Laurent Bouzereau is no-frills, meat and potatoes stuff, filmed during Polanski’s house arrest in Gstaad, Switzerland. In September 2009 he’d gone to accept a lifetime achievement award at Zurich Film Festival, but ended up being re-arrested for his 1977 sex crime. The US authorities had learned of his movements and issued an international warrant.
The film does soft pedal around the subject, most definitely, perhaps because extradition proceedings were still underway at the time of filming, or Braunsberg didn’t want to annoy his mate. In fact, Braunsberg is a bit too nice and in awe of Polanski, making his questioning a bit one-sided and biased.
Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir isn’t the most revealing portrait of the man or his illustrious career. Yet he comes across as charming, funny, haunted and perhaps, most controversially of all, even likeable.
Martyn has awarded Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir three Torches of Truth
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