In defense of Roman Polanski

by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
January 24, 2010

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/445/in-defense-of-roman-polanski

On Friday [January 22, 2010], a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied director Roman Polanski's request to be sentenced while he remains under house arrest in Switzerland. This upheld the judge's prior ruling demanding that the director return to the United States in order to reach resolution on the case. Polanski's lawyers argued that the judge who originally presided over the case had plans to jail him for no more than 90 days — a short sentence that would not force the director to be extradited to the United States.

Polanski fled California after being convicted of having unlawful sex with a minor 32 years ago. He has been held in Switzerland since September, when he was arrested on his way to a film festival.

In an open letter, the filmmaker Roman Polanski has offered his gratitude to people who have written him letters of support while he was jailed in Winterthur prison, near Zurich, and while he remains under house arrest in his chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, The Associated Press reported. In a letter to his friend Bernard-Henri Lévy, Mr. Polanski wrote: "I would like every one of them to know how heartening it is, when one is locked up in a cell, to hear this murmur of human voices and of solidarity in the morning mail. In the darkest moments, each of their notes has been a source of comfort and hope."

Roman Raymond Polanski [born 18 August 1933] is a French-born and resident Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Polanski began his career in Poland, and later became a critically acclaimed director of both art house and commercial films. Polanski's first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made in Poland, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has since received five more Oscar nominations, and in 2002 received the Academy Award for Best Director for his film, The Pianist. He has also been the recipient of two Baftas, four Cesars, a Golden Globe and the Palme d'Or. He left the People's Republic of Poland in 1961 to live in France for several years, then moved to Britain, where he collaborated with Gérard Brach on three films, beginning with Repulsion [1965]. In 1968 he moved to the United States, immediately cementing his burgeoning directing status with the 1968 groundbreaking Academy Award winning horror film Rosemary's Baby.

In 1969, Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered while staying at the Polanski's Benedict Canyon home above Los Angeles by members of the Manson Family. Following Tate's death, Polanski returned to Europe and spent much of his time in Paris and Gstaad, but didn't make another film until he filmed Macbeth [1971] in England. The following year he went to Italy to make What? [1973] and subsequently spent the next five years living near Rome. However, he traveled to Hollywood to direct Chinatown (1974) for Paramount Pictures, with Robert Evans serving as producer. The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, and was a critical and box-office success; the script by Robert Towne won for Best Original Screenplay. Polanski's next film, The Tenant (1976), was shot in France, and completed the "Apartment Trilogy", following Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby.

In 1977, Polanski visited Los Angeles again to shoot photographs for Vogue magazine and was arrested for the sexual assault of a thirteen-year-old in Los Angeles, and later pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. To avoid sentencing, Polanski returned to his home in London, but quickly moved on to France the following day, and has had a U.S. arrest warrant outstanding since then and an international arrest warrant since 2005. Polanski avoided visits to countries that were likely to extradite him to the United States. In September 2009 Polanski was arrested by Swiss police, at the request of U.S. authorities, when he traveled to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival. The United States formally requested his extradition on October 23, 2009.

Polanski continued to make films such as The Pianist [2002], a World War II-set adaptation of Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman's autobiography of the same name, which echoed some of Polanski's earlier life experiences. Like Szpilman, Polanski escaped the ghetto and the concentration camps while family members were killed. The film won three Academy Awards including Best Director, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, and seven French César Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Harrison Ford accepted the awards on his behalf.

Polanski was born as Rajmund Roman Thierry Polański in Paris, France, the son of Bula [Katz-Przedborska] and Ryszard Polański, a painter and plastics manufacturer. His mother had a daughter, Annette, by her previous husband. Annette managed to survive Auschwitz, where her mother died, and left Poland forever for France. His father was nominally Jewish and his Russian-born mother had been raised in the faith of her own Polish Roman Catholic mother. His mother's father was Jewish, but not observant. Ryszard Liebling had changed his surname to Polański in early 1932. The Polański family moved back to the Polish city of Kraków in 1936, and were living there when the World War II began with the invasion of Poland. Neither of Roman Polanski's parents was religious. Kraków was soon occupied by the German forces. Nazi racial and religious purity laws made the Polańskis targets of persecution and forced them into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of the city's Jews.

His father survived the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, but his mother perished at Auschwitz. Polański himself escaped the Kraków Ghetto in 1943 and survived the war using the name Romek Wilk with the help of some Polish Roman Catholic families. As a Jewish child in hiding, he behaved outwardly as a Roman Catholic, although he was never baptized as such. After the war he was reunited with his father and moved back to Kraków, now part of the Communist People's Republic of Poland. Roman Polanski's father married Wanda Zajączkowska, but Roman disliked his stepmother, who further estranged father and son, who had never been able to establish an intimate relationship. Ryszard Polański died of cancer in 1984.

Polanski's first wife, Barbara Lass [Kwiatkowska], was a Polish actress who also starred in Polanski's 1959 When Angels Fall. The couple were married in 1959 and divorced in 1961.

Martin Ransohoff introduced Polanski and rising actress Sharon Tate shortly before filming The Fearless Vampire Killers, and during the production the two of them began dating. On 20 January 1968, Polanski married Sharon Tate in London. In his autobiography, Polanski described his brief time with Tate as the best years of his life. This marriage ended with the death of Tate in the Manson murders, leaving Polanski devastated.

In 1976, Polanski started a romantic relationship with Nastassia KInski, when she was 15 years old and he was 43 years old. In 1979, their relationship ended at the completion of filming Polanski's Oscar nominated "Tess", in which Kinski had played the lead role.

In 1989 Polanski and Emmanuelle Seigner married. They have two children, daughter Morgane and son Elvis.

On March 11, 1977, Polanski was arrested for the sexual assault of a thirteen-year-old, Samantha Geimer, that occurred the day before at the Hollywood home of actor Jack Nicholson The girl testified that Polanski gave her both champagne and Quaalude, a sedative drug, and despite repeated protests and being asked to stop, he performed oral sex, intercourse and sodomy upon her. A grand jury charged him with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under fourteen, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor. At his arraignment Polanski pleaded not guilty to all charges.

In an effort to preserve her anonymity, Geimer's attorney arranged a plea bargain which Polanski accepted, and, under the terms, five of the initial charges were to be dismissed. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of engaging in unlawful intercourse with a minor, a charge which is synonymous under Californian law with statutory rape. The judge received a probation report and psychiatric evaluation, both indicating that Polanski should not serve jail time, in response the film maker was ordered to a 90 day psychiatric evaluation at the Chino state prison.

On January 28, 1978 Polanski was released after 42 days. Despite expectations and recommendations that he would receive only probation at sentencing, the judge "suggested to Polanski's attorneys" that more jail time and possible deportation were in order. Upon learning of the judge's plans Polanski fled to France on February 1, 1978, hours before he was to be formally sentenced. As a French citizen, he has been protected from extradition and has mostly lived in France, avoiding countries likely to extradite him. Because he fled prior to sentencing, all six of the original charges remain pending.

Geimer sued Polanski in 1988, alleging sexual assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress and seduction. In 1993 Polanski agreed to pay her at least $500,000 as part of a civil settlement. Geimer and her lawyers confirmed the settlement was complete.

On September 26, 2009, Polanski was taken into custody at the Zurich airport by Swiss police at the request of U.S. authorities, for a 2005 international arrest warrant, as he traveled to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival. After initially being jailed, on December 4 Polanski was granted house arrest at his Gstaad residence on 4.5 M bail, while awaiting decision of appeals fighting extradition.

Till date, Roman Polaski has very successfully directed 25 feature films. He has received numerous international awards for his films. Meanwhile, plaintiff, who lodged the sexual assault case against Roman Polanski, Samantha Geimer and her attorneys confirmed to the court that a settlement of US$ 500,000 was already paid by Roman Polanski to Geimer. In this case, it is well understood that the matter was already amicably settled. The celebrated filmmaker has sufficiently suffered during his days in prison as well in exile. Would it be wise to further harass him?

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