At this year's Sundance Film Festival, director Marina Zenovich premiered her new documentary, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired". The film containing a lot of archival footage of interviews with Polanski, Sharon Tate and others was the first film to be bought at the festival.
Roman Polanski was a very interesting one to say the least. However, out of everything he went through and experienced, Zenovich chose to focus on the infamous sex scandal involving Polanski and a thirteen year old girl. (It is said he raped her in a pool at Jack Nicholson's home). While it is true, Polanski did commit the crime (there is a lot of controversy about this), the documentary focuses a lot on Judge Laurence J Ritterband who worked on this case because he used this publicity of the case to his advantage. However, he is actually not intereviewed in this documentary. Rather, the victim, attorneys, film industry reporters, Polanski's lawyer, and others were interviewed. On MSN.Com it is said that "they all revealed troubling behavior by the judge, now deceased, who was so driven by media coverage that he kept a scrapbook of clippings. Polanski presumably fled because he feared unfair treatment amid the media frenzy"
Zenovich says her documentary does not apologize for the French-Polish director, but rather a take on the murky justice and media hype around the Polanski case.
Interesting fact:
"Perhaps the most fascinating fact (and this was something I did not know) came in the reveal that, when a new judge was assigned to the case in 1997, he agreed to throw out the charges if Polanski were to return to the States - on one condition: that the hearing be televised. Because of that, Polanski decided against coming back," notes Erik Davis at Cinematical. "And who can blame him?"
ALL IN ALL....Go see this movie when it is released!!!
"Even for those familiar with the general details of the case," writes Mike D'Angelo at ScreenGrab, "Wanted and Desired will likely prove revelatory."
Another interesting fact I didn't know...Roman Polanski was raised in Poland and his home was imprisoned in a jewish ghetto. His mother was sent to a concentration camp to never be seen by Roman again and his father left him with a family so he could escape getting caught.
1 comment:
I just finished reading The Cinema of Roman Polanski which was written before his wife was murdered...it details the origins and plots of his first four films and the one he was asked to direct based on the strength of those works, Rosemary's Baby
Polanski, despite his unfortunate lapse with the afore-mentioned crime, is a maverick director and a very intelligent man. A polyglot and culturally-malleable artist, his refusal to return to the States has apparently not harmed his international reputation as a director. It will be interesting to see what his next project is.
Post a Comment