There is little to say: Roman Polanski’s biography is probably the most tormented, unfortunate and tragic of all famous directors of the history of cinema. But Roman remained impervious to all these sad tides thanks to art and cinema. A passion that began as a child and never subsided again. Polanski seems to have understood the saving lesson of art, and that what happens around it are only events that take place on the periphery of being. One more villain who looks out the window of the world one morning.
Throughout his career Roman Polanski has garnered 5 Oscar nominations, winning the 2003 Oscar for Best Director for The Pianist. He also received two Golden Globes, two BAFTAs, a Palme d’Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival in France, as well as several Césars.
His Polish-Jewish parents moved from his birthplace in Paris to Krakow in 1937. Two years later, the intrusion of Poland by Nazi Germany began World War II: the family found themselves captured in the Krakow ghetto. After his mother and father were caught in Nazi roundups, Polanski spent his growing years in foster families under a false identity and endured the Holocaust.
Polanski’s first feature, Knife in the Water ( 1962), was shot in Poland and was chosen for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in the United States. In the UK he directed 3 films, starting with Repulsion (1965). In 1968 he moved to the United States and directed the famous horror movie Rosemary’s Baby (1968).
Polanski’s life changed in 1969 when his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four friends were murdered by members of the Manson family. In 1977 Polanski was arrested and charged with drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. As a result, Polanski is a fugitive from the US criminal justice system.
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The Childhood of Roman Polanski
Polanski was born in Paris, son of Bula “Bella” and Mojżesz Liebling, painter and sculptor manufacturer, who after WWII was known as Ryszard Polański. Polanski’s father was Jewish and originally from Poland; Polanski’s mother, born in Russia, had been raised with Catholic teachings and was of half Jewish ancestry. Polanski later claimed to be an atheist.
The Polański family returned to the Polish city of Krakow in early 1937 and resided there when World War II began with the invasion of Poland. Krakow was quickly overrun by German forces, just as Nuremberg’s racist and anti-Semitic laws made the Polańskis targets of mistreatment, forcing them into the Krakow ghetto, along with thousands of the city’s Jews.
Around the age of 6, he only attended elementary school for a couple of weeks, until all the Jewish children were suddenly expelled. All Jewish boys over the age of twelve were required to wear white bracelets with a blue Star of David imprinted for recognition. After being expelled, he would not be allowed to enter another class for the next 6 years.
Polanski observed both the ghettoization of Krakow’s Jews and the subsequent deportation of all Jews from the ghetto to the German extermination camp. He saw how his father was killed. He remembers from the age of six, among his first experiences of the Nazi horrors:
At first I didn’t understand what was going on. I have simply seen individuals scatter in all directions. I understood why the street had emptied so quickly. Some women were gathered along it by German soldiers. Instead of running away like the others, I felt compelled to see.
An elderly woman at the bottom of the column could not keep up. A German police officer continued to push her back in line, but she fell on all fours, … Suddenly a gun appeared in the policeman’s hand. There was a loud bang, and blood was also gushing from her back. I ran straight into the nearest structure, hidden in a recess under some wooden stairs, and didn’t go out for hours. I had a weird behavior: I was holding my hands so tightly that my palms were permanently callused. I also got up one morning to find that I had wet my bed.
His father was transferred, along with hundreds of various other Jews, to Mauthausen, a group of 49 German POWs in Austria. Her mother was taken to Auschwitz and she too was killed not long after. The forced exodus occurred immediately after the German liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, the real background of Polanski’s The Pianist (2002).
Polanski, who was then hiding from the Germans, saw his father walking away with a long line of individuals. Polanski tried to get close to his father to ask him what was going on. His father saw him, but worried that his son might be found by German soldiers, he murmured in Polish: “Run away!”
Polanski fled the Krakow ghetto in 1943 and survived with the help of some Polish Catholics, including a woman who promised Polanski’s father that she would host the boy. Polanski went to church, learned to recite Catholic prayers by heart, and behaved like a Roman Catholic, although he had never been baptized. The punishment for helping a Jew in German-occupied Poland was death.
As he strolled through the countryside trying to resist in a Poland occupied by German soldiers, he saw many horrors, such as being “forced into a cruel and vicious video game in which German soldiers shot him as if at a target”. Polanski’s continuing childhood anxieties and terror of physical violence added to the “tangible milieus he evokes in the film.
Of those deaths, 3 million were Polish Jews, representing 90% of the country’s Jewish population. According to Sandford, Polanski would have used the memory of her mother, her dress and makeup style, as a physical model for the character of Faye Dunaway in her film Chinatown (1974).
After the War
Her father remarried on 21 December 1946 to Wanda Zajączkowska (who Polanski had never loved) and died of cancer in 1984. Time mended family contacts; Polanski visited them in Krakow and relatives visited him in Hollywood and Paris.
They were really simple Catholic farmers. This Polish village was like the English village.a switch!
flippedomunist to really understand how bad it can be. After that you will appreciate industrialism. “He also kept in mind the opportunities at the end of the battle and its reintroduction into traditional society when he was 12, making friends with other kids, such as Roma Ligocka, Ryszard Horowitz and his family.
Polanski’s attraction to cinema started very early when he was about 4 or 5. He recalls this period in an interview:
Since childhood, I have always loved cinema and was thrilled when my parents took me there before the war. And there was one corner in particular where you could see the screen through the barbed wire. I remember watching in fascination, even though they only showed the German army and German tanks, with occasional anti-Jewish slogans.
After the war, he watched movies, at school or at a local cinema, using the allowance he had. Polanski writes: “Most of this pocket money went into the movies, but the places for the movies were cheap. As time went on, movies became more of an escape into entertainment, as he explains:
Movies were becoming an absolute obsession for me. I was fascinated by everything related to cinema, not just the films themselves, but the atmosphere around them. I enjoyed the bright rectangle of the screen, the sight of the light beam cutting through the darkness, the projection booth, the synchronization of noise and images, even the smell of the folding seats. More than anything, however, I was fascinated by the technical elements of the process.
He was mostly influenced by Sir Odd Man Out (1947) – “I still consider it one of the best films I’ve ever seen and a film that made me want to pursue this profession more than anything else. To some extent I should say that I somehow reinforce the concepts of that film in what I do. “
Polanski attended the National Film School in Łódź. Polanski’s directorial debut was in 1955 with a short film, Rower. Rower is a semi-autobiographical feature, deemed lost, starring Polanski.
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Knife in the Water
Polanski’s first feature film, Knife in the Water, was also one of the first significant Polish films after the World War II not to have a war theme. Knife in the Water was a major hit in the West and gave Polanski an international reputation. Jolanta Umecka, who played Krystyna, was discovered by Polanski in a swimming pool.
Polanski left the then Communist Poland and moved to France, where he had already made two important short films in 1961: The Fat and the Thin and Mammals. While in France, Polanski contributed a segment (“La rivière de diamants”) to the French-produced film, Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (The Beautiful Swindlers) in 1964. Polanski discovered that in the early 1960s , The French film industry was generally reluctant and xenophobic to support an emerging director of foreign origin.
Repulsion
Polanski made three feature films in England, based on original scripts written by himself and by Gérard Brach, his regular partner. Repulsion (1965) is a psychological horror film centered on a young Belgian woman named Carol (Catherine Deneuve).
The film’s themes, circumstances, and results clearly reflect the impact of the first surrealist cinema together with horror film 1950s Un chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel, The blood of a poet by Jean Cocteau, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique and also Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock.
Cul De Sac
Cul De Sac (1966) is a grim nihilistic tragicomedy filmed in the Northumberland area. The tone of the film owes much to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, along with the facets of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party.
The Fearless Vampire Killers
The plot is about a buffoon professor and his clumsy assistant, Alfred (played by Polanski), who are traveling through Transylvania in search of vampires. The Fearless Vampire Killers was Polanski’s first feature film to be photographed in color using Panavision lenses and included a striking visual style with fairytale snowy landscapes, similar to the work of Soviet fantasy directors.
Polanski met Sharon Tate during the making of the film; the actress played the role of the daughter of the local landlord. They married in London on January 20, 1968. Immediately after their marriage, Polanski, with Tate at his side in a documentary, described the needs of the young film audience who, according to him, constantly wanted to see something new and varied.
Rosemary’s Baby
Paramount boss Robert Evans took Polanski to America ostensibly to direct the movie Downhill Racer, however he told Polanski he really wanted him to read Ira Levin’s horror novel Rosemary’s Baby to see if a movie could be made from it. Polanski revised it nonstop overnight and chose to write it together with him. He wrote the script for the 272-page film in just over 3 weeks.
The film, Rosemary’s Baby (1968), was a box office success and also became her first Hollywood production, thus developing her success as important commercial director. The film, a horror thriller set in elegant Manhattan, deals with Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow), a young housewife impregnated by the devil. Polanski’s screenplay adaptation earned him a second Oscar election.
On 9 August 1969, while Polanski was operating in London, his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and four other people were killed at the Polanskis’ Los Angeles residence by fans of sect leader Charles Manson.
Macbeth
Hugh Hefner and Playboy Productions financed the 1971 film, which was released in New York and screened at the Playboy Theater. Hefner was credited as an executive producer and the film was listed as “Playboy Production”. In his autobiography, Polanski wrote that he wanted to be true to the violent nature of the work and that he was aware that his first project after Tate’s murder would be subject to scrutiny and probable criticism regardless of subject matter; if he had made a play he would have been perceived as numb.
What?
Written by Polanski and former contributor Gérard Brach, What? (1973) is a mordant comedy loosely based on Alice in Wonderland and also Henry James. The film is a story of the sexual humiliations that happen to a young American hippie woman who hitchhikes across Europe.
Chinatown
Polanski was an outstanding director. There was no doubt that in directing he had an extraordinary ability. Polanski returned to Hollywood in 1973 to direct Chinatown (1974) for Paramount Pictures. The film is widely regarded as one of America’s finest films about criminal activity, motivated by the real California Water Wars, a series of Southern California water conflicts in the early 20th century.
He was chosen for 11 Academy Awards, including those for stars Jack Nicholson and also Faye Dunaway. Robert Towne won Best Original Screenplay. It likewise had actor-director John Huston in a supporting role. In 1991, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for retention in the National Film Registry of the United States as “culturally, traditionally, or aesthetically substantial” and is regularly described as being among the best films in world cinema.
The Tenant
Polanski is back in Paris for his next film, The Tenant (1976), based on a 1964 novel by Roland Topor, a French writer of Polish-Jewish descent . In addition to directing the film, Polanski also played the lead role, a shy Polish immigrant living in Paris. In 1978 Polanski became a fugitive from American justice and was no longer able to work in countries where he risked arrest or extradition.
Tess
He dedicated his next film, Tess (1979), to the memory of his late wife, Sharon Tate. It was Tate who suggested he read Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which he thought would be a good movie; later he expected her to act in it. Almost a decade after Tate’s death, he met Nastassja Kinski, a model and aspiring young actress who had previously starred in numerous European films.
Because the role required a local dialect, Polanski sent her to London for five months to study and to spend time in the Dorset countryside to get a taste of the region. In the film, Kinski starred opposite Peter Firth and Leigh Lawson. It took Polanski a long time, 2 years, to prepare that film. … He was strict with himself, but in a good way.
Tess was released in northern France and Hardy’s England and also became one of the most expensive films made in France to date. In the end, it proved to be a monetary success and was well received by both film critics and the general public. Polanski won the French César Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, as well as getting his fourth Oscar nomination (and also his second nomination for Best Director).
The film received three Oscars: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Costumes, and was also nominated for Best Cinematography. Nastassja Kinski also remembers his influence on her during the filming: “He was really a gentleman, not at all as I had heard. He introduced me to beautiful books, plays and films.
Roman Polanski in Milan
In 1981, Polanski acted and directed (in the role of Mozart) in a theatrical production of Peter Shaffer ‘s play Amadeus, initially in Warsaw, then in Paris. The show was again directed by Polanski, in Milan, in 1999.
Pirates
It was nearly seven years before Polanski’s next film, Pirates, an expensive costume drama starring Walter Matthau as Captain Red, which the director intended as a tribute to the beloved swashbucklers Errol Flynn of his youth. Captain Red’s henchman. Jean Baptiste, was played by Cris Campion. The film deals with a rebellion on a ship called Neptune, in the seventeenth century. The screenplay for the film was written by Polanski, Gérard Bra ch and John Brownjohn. The film was shot in Tunisia, using a full-size pirate ship built for production. It was a commercial failure, it only recouped a small portion of its production budget and was nominated for an Oscar.
Frantic
The film follows a tourist in Paris whose wife is kidnapped. He tries, hopelessly, to go through the bureaucratic channels to resolve his disappearance, but in the end he takes matters into his own hands.
Bitter Moon
In 1992 Polanski directed the drama Bitter Moon. A young English couple, Nigel and Fiona, traveling on a cruise, meet another couple: Oscar, an elderly and paralyzed man, and Mimì, a charming French woman, who will upset the certainties about the love of the protagonists.
Death and the Maiden
In 1994 Polanski directed a film about the acclaimed comedy Death and the Maiden. In an unspecified country in South America, Paulina Escobar, wife of Gerardo, a lawyer on the commission for the investigation of crimes that took place in the country following the coup, recognizes in Dr. Roberto Miranda the person who in the past tortured and repeatedly raped her.
The Ninth Gate
The Ninth Gate is a thriller based on the short story El Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte and starring Johnny Depp. The plot of the film is based on the idea that an ancient text entitled “The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows”, written by Aristide Torchia together with Lucifer, is vital to uplift Satan.
The Pianist
In 2001, Polanski made The Pianist, an adaptation of the eponymous WWII autobiography by Polish Jewish artist Władysław Szpilman. Szpilman’s experiences as a persecuted Jew in Poland during World War II were evocative of those of Polanski and his family. While Szpilman and Polanski fled the concentration camps, their family members did not, dying. When Warsaw, Poland, was chosen for 2002 as the location of The Pianist, “the nation exploded with satisfaction”.
Due to the fact that Polanski was reportedly incarcerated in the United States, he did not attend the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. Star Harrison Ford collected the award for Polanski and then presented him with the Oscar at the Deauville Film Festival five months later in a public ceremony. Polanski was subsequently awarded the Crystal Globe Award for his impressive and imaginative contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2004.
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist is an adaptation of the original story by Charles Dickens, written by Ronald Harwood of The Pianist. Polanski stated in interviews that he made the film as something he can teach young people and that the young scavenger’s life mirrored his own life, defending himself in WWII Poland.
The Ghost Writer
The Ghost Writer, a thriller centered around a ghost writer working on the memoirs of a character loosely based on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, triumphed at the European Film Awards in 2010, winning 6 awards, including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Lead. When it premiered at the 60th Berlinale in February 2010, Polanski won a Silver Bear for Best Director, and in February 2011 it won 4 César Awards, the French version of the Academy Awards.
The film is based on a novel by the British writer Robert Harris. They were also approaching production when the film was canceled due to an actors strike in September 2007. The cast includes Ewan McGregor as the author and Pierce Brosnan as former British Prime Minister Adam Lang. was shot in Germany.
In the US, film critic Roger Ebert has included it in his top 10 picks for 2010 and says that “this film is the work of a man who knows how to direct a thriller. Co-star Ewan McGregor agrees. , after saying about Polanski that “he is a legend … I have never thought so highly of a director and the way he works.
Carnage
Polanski shot Carnage in February / March 2011. The film is a film version of Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage, a comedy about two couples who meet after their children they argue at school and how their initially civilized conversation turns into chaos. The film had its world premiere on 9 September 2011 at the Venice Film Festival and was released in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics on 16 December 2011.
Venus in Fur
Roman Polanski, Emmanuelle Seigner and Mathieu Amalric presented Venus in Fur at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. Polanski’s French-language adaptation of the acclaimed play Venus in Fur, stars his wife Emmanuelle Seigner and Mathieu Amalric. Polanski worked with the play’s author, David Ives, on the script for the film. The film was shot from December 2012 to February 2013 in French and is also Polanski’s first non-English feature film in forty years. The film premiered in competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival on 25 May 2013.
Based on a True Story
Based on a True Story by Polanski is an adaptation of the French novel by Polanski. bestselling author Delphine de Vignan. The film is about a writer (Emmanuelle Seigner) who has difficulty completing a new novel. It began production in November 2016 from a manuscript adapted by Polanski and Olivier Assayas. It premiered in competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival on 27 May 2017 and premiered in France on 1 November 2017.
An Officer and a Spy
Polanski’s next film, An Officer and a Spy, chronicles the infamous Dreyfus event of the 19th century, The film stars Jean Dujardin as French policeman Georges Picquart and follows his battle from 1896 to 1906 to reveal the reality regarding the falsified evidence that led to Alfred Dreyfus, one of the few Jews participating in the general squad of the French army, unjustly convicted of having transmitted military secrets to the German Empire and sent to Devil’s Island. The film is written by Robert Harris, who is working with Polanski for the third time. He is co-played by Louis Garrel as Dreyfus, Mathieu Amalric, Olivier Gourmet and by Polanski’s wife, Emmanuelle Seigner. It was produced by Alain Goldman’s Legende Films and distributed by Gaumont. Filming began on November 26, 2018 and concluded on April 28, 2019.
It had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 30, 2019. It also got a standing ovation when it won the Grand Jury Prize. The release is scheduled in France on November 13, 2019 by Gaumont. The film sparked public opinion due to the story linking to Polanski’s sexual assault case and further allegations of harassment and assault.
In February 2020, Polanski won the Best Director award at the 2020 Cesar Awards in France. Neither Polanski nor the actors, nor the team of The Officer and the Spy (J’accuse) attended the awards ceremony organized at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. Facing allegations of sexual assault against him, he said, “The fantasies of sick minds are now being treated as proven truths.” This is Cesar’s fifth win for best director in Polanski, the record for a director; he previously won for Tess, The Pianist, The Ghost Writer and Venus in Fur.
Before the awards ceremony, Polanski released a statement, saying, “For several days, people have been asking me this question: Will I attend the Cesar ceremony or not? Referring to the recent media scandal that led to the mass resignation of the Cesar. Cesar’s council, Polanski added: “The press and social media presented our 12 nominations as if they were gifts offered to us by the academy’s board of directors, as an authoritarian gesture that had forced their resignation.
Despite Polanski’s absence from the awards ceremony, his election and victory sparked protests over the rape allegations he still faces. Activists displayed slogans such as “Shame on an industry that protects rapists”. The police met with activists, even shooting tear gas at them. The accusations have also been made by stars, such as Adèle Haenel, Noémie Merlant, as well as Celine Sciamma who has abandoned the honors. Many other stars and feminists have spoken out against Polanski online, such as NousToutes, a French feminist, who called the victory “scandalous”, as well as Jessica Chastain tweeted “I Fucking Stan” in connection with the protests.
At the same time, some stars have come to her defense, such as actress Fanny Ardant, who said: “When I like someone, I love them passionately. And I like Roman Polanski very much … a lot … So I am very happy for him. After that, I understand that not all people agree on how long the real-time flexibility is! ” as well as star Brigitte Bardot who said: “Fortunately Polanski exists and is saving cinema from its mediocrity! I value him for his talent and for his personal life! I’m sorry I never shot with him!”.
Star Lambert Wilson called the Polanski media war “horrible public lynching”, as did Isabelle Huppert, who specified that “lynching is a kind of pornography”. Samantha Geimer, criticized the militants as “very opportunistic”, as well as stating that “If you wish to transform the world today, do so … by demanding that people be held accountable today, not choosing someone who is famous and believing that if you demonize them for things that happened decades ago, somehow it has some kind of value in changing and protecting society. “
In an interview Polanski confessed: “I see the exact same willingness to overlook the facts and condemn myself for things that I haven’t actually done. Most of the people who bother me don’t know me and don’t know anything about the situation.”
In October 2020, Polanski returned to Poland and paid tribute to a Polish couple who helped him hide and escape the Nazis. Stefania and Jan Buchala have been defined by Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial, as “Righteous among the nations”. Polanski remembered Stefania Buchala as an “exceptionally noble” and daring person.
In April 2021, it was announced that Polanski will direct The Palace, a drama about guests in a luxury Swiss hotel on New Year’s Eve 1999. Polanski co-wrote the script with Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, who also co-wrote the screenplay and wrote Polanski’s first feature film, Knife in the Water, in 1962.
The Life of Roman Polanski
In 1959 Polanski married actress Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass. The actress starred in her short film When Angels Fall. Polanski met actress Sharon Tate while filming The Fearless Vampire Killers, and during production, the two began dating. On January 20, 1968, Polanski and Tate also got married in London.
In February 1969 Polanski and Tate rented a house in Los Angeles. In August, while Polanski was in Europe working on a film, Tate stayed at home, eight and a half months pregnant. In fact, Polanski stated that his absence on the night of the murders is the greatest regret of his life. He wrote in his memoirs: “Sharon’s death is the only point of reference in my life”, as well as commenting that her murder transformed her character from an “unlimited and serene sea of positive hypotheses and perspectives” to an “ingrained pessimism … eternal frustration with life”. Polanski was overwhelmed by a negative perception of journalism, which he felt interested in sensationalizing the news to attract readers. He was amazed at the lack of compassion in the various news items.
Amid the sensationalism generated by the media were rumors that Tate and his visitors were taking drugs, despite the coroner announcing that no traces of drugs were found after Tate’s autopsy. For years later, Sandford notes, “reporters openly speculated about the Polanskis’ home lives” and their personalities in order to create more media gossip about the private lives of Hollywood celebrities.
In 1989, Polanski married actress Emmanuelle Seigner. They have two children, daughter Morgane and son Elvis. Polanski and his children speak Polish at home. In May 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to remove Polanski from its membership. The same year, his wife Emmanuelle Seigner refused the invitation to enter the Academy.
The Allegations Against Roman Polanski
In 1977 Polanski was arrested and accused of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. In 1978, after learning that the judge intended to reject his plea bargain and impose a prison sentence instead of probation, he fled to Paris. Several other women later accused Polanski of raping them when they were teenagers.
On March 11, 1977, three years after making Chinatown, Polanski was arrested at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for the sexual assault of 13-year-old Samantha Gailey. Polanski was indicted on six counts, including rape. Gailey’s lawyer arranged a plea deal in which five of the six charges would be dismissed and Polanski agreed.
After being released from prison after 42 days, Polanski accepted the plea bargain along with probation. “I’ll see this man never gets out of jail,” he told Polanski’s friend, screenwriter Howard E. Koch. Gailey’s attorney. He would have sentenced Polanski to fifty years. What the judge did was scandalous. They had agreed on a plea deal and the judge had approved it.
Polanski was told by his lawyer that “the judge could no longer be trusted” and that the judge’s statements were “worthless”. Polanski has decided not to appear at his sentence. As he fled the United States before his final sentence, the charges are still pending.
In 1988, Gailey sued Polanski. In August 1996, Polanski still owed her $ 604,416; court documents confirm that the deal was completed by 1997 through a confidential financial arrangement.
On September 26, 2009, Polanski was imprisoned while in Switzerland at the request of the US authorities. The event brought the instance back into focus and also sparked conflict, particularly in the United States and Europe. Polanski has been defended by a number of prominent personalities, including Hollywood celebrities and also European musicians and politicians, who have called for his release. Popular American opinion would have been against him, and polls in France and Poland revealed that solid majorities were in favor of his extradition to the United States.
Polanski was jailed near Zurich for two months, then placed under house arrest at his home in Gstaad pending the results of his extradition appeals. On 12 July 2010, the Swiss rejected the US request, declared Polanski a “free man” and released him from custody. An Interpol red notice was issued in 1978 after he fled the United States, restricting his movements in France, Switzerland and Poland.
During a televised interview on March 10, 2011, Geimer condemned the media, reporters, the court and even the judge for causing “far more harm to me and my family than anything Roman Polanski has ever done”, and she also claimed that the judge was using her and Polanski for media exposure.
On 30 October 2015, Polish judge Dariusz Mazur rejected the US request to extradite Polanski (with dual Franco-Polish citizenship) for a full trial, arguing that it would be “obviously illegal”. The Krakow prosecutor’s office refused to challenge the court’s ruling, agreeing that Polanski had served his punishment and did not need to face a US court again.
On May 3, 2018, Polanski was eliminated from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with the decision referencing the case. Polanski criticized Harvey Weinstein for the newfound focus on his sexual assault situation in the 2000s and claimed that Weinstein tried to label him a “child rapist” to prevent him from winning an Oscar in 2003.
In his book, Geimer states: “As wrong as he did what he did, I know without a doubt that he didn’t consider me a victim of his. Not everyone will recognize him, yet I never thought he wanted to hurt me; he wanted me to appreciate him. He was stubborn as well as excited. It seems obvious to me that he was not trying to take pleasure in my pain. “
In the interview, Geimer clarifies some of the ideas that have arisen in the media:” … because others insist that I have to put up with it, and that if I don’t introduce the right amount of pain and shame, must there be something wrong with me? I actually don’t have to be hurt to confirm what Roman did.
Towards the end of the interview she concludes:
Forgiveness helps victim. It frees you from hatred and regret. As I have already pointed out, people explode when they find that they cannot use me to fulfill their purpose. Roman returned to the United States, served his sentence, as well as being treated unfairly by a corrupt court. 40 years have passed. Enough.
Documentary
In 2008, Marina Zenovich’s docudrama film, Roman Polanski: Wanted as well as Desired, was released in Europe and the United States where it won various awards. It includes meetings with the people involved in the case, including the victim, Geimer, as well as the prosecutor, Roger Gunson.
In September 2011, the documentary film Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir had its premiere in Zurich, Switzerland. In this celebration, he collected the Lifetime Achievement Award he would have actually received 2 years earlier.
Defamations
In 2004, Polanski took legal action against the Vanity Fair publication in London for defamation. A 2002 post in the magazine stated that Polanski had promised he would “make you another Sharon Tate” in an attempt to seduce a Scandinavian girl while she was on a trip to Tate’s funeral.
Herzliya Magistrates’ Court rejected Polanski’s request to be exempted from appearing in court after filing the libel suit. While Polanski offered numerous reasons for his inability to show up, the presiding judge, Gilad Hess, rejected them one by one and ordered Polanski to pay Uziel. In November 2018, it was stated that Polanski had decided to drop the lawsuit.
In late December 2019, in Polanski’s meetings with Paris Match and Gazeta Wyborcza, the director accused Matan Uziel of wanting to destroy his public image and playing a major role in designing a global campaign to tarnish his name and bring down his profession in disgrace.
Charlotte Lewis
In 2010, British star Charlotte Lewis claimed that Polanski was actually “interested” in her while auditioning for a film in Paris in 1983, when she was 16 and he was 50. In 1999, Lewis had actually provided a very varied account of events in a meeting with the UK News of the World, which was brought to light by Libération, a French newspaper. In that meeting, Lewis claimed he had a six-month date with Polanski when he was 17: “I knew Roman had actually done something bad in the US, yet I intended to be his girlfriend,” Lewis said, according to Liberation. “Maybe I wanted him more than he wanted me.”
Lewis never mentioned any sexual assaults and claimed their partnership ended when Polanski introduced it to Warren Beatty. She was cast in the 1986 film Pirates of Polanski, appeared at the Cannes Film Festival on his arm years after the alleged event, as well as in a meeting the year of the film’s launch, Lewis specified: “I wish I had had a ‘ romantic experience with Polanski, and also physical. You can’t help but fall in love with him. But he really didn’t want me. “
Further Allegations Against Polanski
In October 2017, German actress Renate Langer informed Swiss authorities that Polanski raped her in Gstaad when she was 15, in 1972. The same month, Californian artist Marianne Barnard accused Polanski of having sexually assaulted her in 1975, when she was 10 years old. In November 2019, French actress Valentine Monnier alleged that Polanski raped her in a chalet in Gstaad in 1975.