Reading Desperate housewives: beyond the white picket fence

240 Pages·2019·58.409 MB·English

by  Akass, Kim;McCabe, Janet Elizabeth

Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski
The Cinema of a Cultural Traveller
Ewa Mazierska
Published in 2007 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
In the United States and Canada distributed by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press, 175
Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © Ewa Mazierska, 2007
The right of Ewa Mazierska to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this
book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN (Hb): 978 1 84511 296 7
ISBN (Pb): 978 1 84511 297 4
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of
Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Typeset in Stone Serif by Dexter Haven Associates Ltd, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd,
Padstow Cornwall
C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: An elusive filmmaker 1
1 The autobiographical effect in the cinema of Polanski 7
2 The absurd and how to deal with it: Narratives 24
and characters in Polanski’s films
3 Landscapes and inner sceneries: Recurring visual 50
motifs of Polanski’s films
4 All that jazz and noise: Music in Polanski’s films 91
5 Trust yourself: Polanski’s ideology 115
6 Adapt to survive and express oneself: Polanski’s 138
encounters with literature
7 Matrix or empty vessel: Polanski’s uses of genre 163
Conclusion: The cinema of a cultural traveller 187
Appendix: Filmography (with technical details and synopses) 193
Notes 213
Bibliography 217
Index 225

L I S T O F I L L U S T R A T I O N S
1. Roman Polanski (centre) in Pokolenie (A Generation, 1955) 8
2. Adam Fiut and Roman Polanski in The Bicycle(1955) 11
3. Nikola Todorov in Teethful Smile(1957) 19
4. Roman Polanski and Shelley Winters in The Tenant(1976) 21
5. Henryk Kluba and MichałŻołnierkiewicz in Mammals(1962) 30
6. Zygmunt Malanowicz, Jolanta Umecka and Leon Niemczyk 34
in Knife in the Water(1962)
7. Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion(1965) 38
8. Roman Polanski and Isabelle Adjani in The Tenant(1976) 43
9. Henryk Kluba and Jakub Goldberg in Two Men 46
and a Wardrobe(1958)
10. Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner in Frantic(1988) 48
11. Johnny Depp in The Ninth Gate(1999) 53
12. Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion(1965) 61
13. Lionel Stander and Françoise Dorléac in Cul-de-Sac(1966) 70
14. Roman Polanski and André Katelbach in The Fat 73
and the Lean(1961)
15. Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner in Frantic(1988) 77
16. Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown(1974) 80
17. The road to the Warsaw ghetto in The Pianist(2002) 81
18. Nicole Karen in A River of Diamonds(1964) 82
19. Jolanta Umecka and Leon Niemczyk in Knife in 86
the Water(1962)
20. John Fraser and Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion(1965) 102
21. Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes in Rosemary’s Baby(1968) 104
22. Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver in Death and 109
the Maiden(1994)
23. Adrien Brody in The Pianist(2002) 111
24. Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby(1968) 145
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25. Nastassia Kinski in Tess(1979) 146
26. Jon Finch and Francesca Annis in Macbeth(1971) 148
27. Barney Clark in Oliver Twist (2005) 160
28. Roman Polanski in Dance of the Vampires(1967) 171
29. Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby(1968) 172
30. Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown(1974) 175
31. Lionel Stander and Jack MacGowran in Cul-de-Sac(1966) 184
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A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S
I wish to express my gratitude to Laura Rascaroli, Krzysztof Loska, Sarah
Cardwell, George McKay, Robert Murphy, Dorota Ostrowska, Grażyna
Stachówna, Susan Sydney-Smith and Glyn White for reading the whole
or parts of the manuscript and for their insightful comments, and to
Philippa Brewster at I.B. Tauris for her valuable editorial advice.
I am also indebted to Małgorzata Mazierska, Grażyna Stachówna,
Krzysztof Loska, Adam Wyżyński and to the staff of Adlington Library
who helped me to find the films, journals, books and stills used in the
book, to Iwona Sowińska and George McKay for giving me access to their
unpublished work, to Roman Włodek for providing me with information
about the use of jazz in prewar Polish films, and to Margaret Kerr for
helping me with translation.
My special thanks goes to Roman Polanski who granted me permission
to use the stills I chose for my book. All stills were provided by the
National Film Archive in Warsaw.
The study leave, funded by the University of Central Lancashire,
allowed me to embark on this project and to finish it on time.
A preliminary version of Chapter 1 was published with the title ‘The
Autobiographical Effect in the Cinema of Roman Polanski’ in Film
Criticism, 3, 2005.
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