He is a director of technical virtuosity whose themes have centered on obsession, moral corruption, and violence. If ever there was a director whose preoccupations complemented the alienation of the 1960s and 1970s, it was Roman Polanski. Both in America and abroad, he made several dark and moody hit films, garnering two Oscar nominations, the first for what many consider his best film, Chinatown (1974), and the other for Tess (1980).
Born to Polish-Jewish parents in Paris, Roman Polanski grew up in Krakow from the age of three. His was not a pleasant youth. Both his mother and father were sent to a concentration camp when he was eight years old. He never saw his mother again. He lived the life of a street urchin and survived in the midst of terrible suffering and cruelty. He found what little solace he could in the movies, which he attended with near religious fervor.
He began making award-winning short films, including Two Men and a Wardrobe (1959), often writing his own screenplays and acting in his movies as well. After film school he made several other shorts, but finally made his first feature film, the internationally acclaimed Knife in the Water (1962). Not long after, he went to England to make Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-Sac (1966).
He received Hollywood support for the British production of the black comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). All three of these films became substantial art-house circuit hits in America, prompting PARAMOUNT PICTURES to give him the financing to make the sinister horror movie Rosemary's Baby (1968). The film was a hit, admired by the critics for its creepy ambiance and visual flair.
He returned to America to make Chinatown; his two subsequent movies, Ché (1973) and The Tenant (1976), were made abroad. It was after making The Tenant, while staying in JACK NICHOLSON's California home on a visit, that he was arrested for allegedly drugging and raping a thirteen-yearold girl. He pleaded innocent at first, then later agreed to reduced charges.
Freed on bail, however, he hurriedly left the country and refused to return to stand trial. He continued making movies in Europe, including the widely admired Tess, with which he turned his teenaged protégée, Nastassia Kinski, into an international star. After a long absence from the screen, Roman Polanski went on to make the poorly received Pirates (1986), but rebounded with the hit thriller Frantic (1988).
Frantic was followed by Bitter Moon (1992), an erotic thriller that introduced Hugh Grant to the screen, and The Ninth Gate (2000), a supernatural, psychological thriller starring JOHNNY DEPP. Roman Polanski's later period has arguably produced two masterpieces, one an adaptation of Ariel Dorfman's political play Death and the Maiden (1994), starring SIGOURNEY WEAVER and Ben Kingsley, and, even more impressive, The Pianist (2002), in which Adrien Brody played a Polish Jew caught in the Holocaust.
The film won Roman Polanski the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to win an Academy Award, though the director was not given dispensation to attend the ceremony to accept the Oscar. In telling this story, Roman Polanski was in part drawing upon his own childhood experiences in Poland, where he eluded capture by the Nazis. It was, therefore, a personal project that brought him international acclaim.
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1. Gilbert Andreson alias Broncho Billy and early Hollywood
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