Roman Polanski is known for two things: great movies and sexual abuse  Those two themes have followed him throughout a long career.

Born in France, but raised in Poland, Polanski survived the Holocaust as a child. He made his directorial debut with the Polish film Knife in the Water (1962), a favorite of mine. Many films would follow, some of which were masterpieces: The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Chinatown (1974), Bitter Moon (1992), The Pianist (2002), An Officer and a Spy (2019). And that’s just to name a few. 

While working on The Fearless Vampire Killers, he met the actress Sharon Tate. They married in 1968. In August of 1969, Tate, in her eight month of pregnancy, was brutally murdered by Charles Manson and his cult. Polanski was filming in Europe at the time. Some have attributed what would come later to this horrific event.

“Polanski started his dangerous descent into depravity after the infamous and brutal murder of his wife Sharon Tate and their unborn son. In August of 1969, cult members of the Manson family attacked the eight-month pregnant actress and stabbed her as well as her friends around 100 times. Polanski was never the same, indulging in extensive drug abuse to cope with the trauma.” (Swapnil Dhruv Bose, Far Out Magazine, Feb. 1, 2021)

Another life changing event, one that would become inextricably tied to Polanski’s identify, occurred in 1977. “Roman Polanski conducts a photo shoot with a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house. As she later testifies, Polanski gives the girl champagne and part of a sedative during the shoot, then forced her to have sex. She says she repeatedly told Polanski no during intercourse, but says she did not fight him because she was afraid of him.” (AP, July 19, 2022)

Polanski was arrested and charged with unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, a lewd and lascivious act upon on child under the age of 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor. He entered a plea bargain in which he would plead guilty to the first charge. However, he believed the judge in the case was not going to honor the terms of the plea bargain and was going to send him to jail. He flew the coup and has lived the rest of his life mostly in France, avoiding countries that might extradite him back to the U.S.

The girl, Samantha Greimer, would later sue Polanski, charging him with sexual assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress and seduction. They settled out of court in 1993, five years after the suit was filed. Polanski reportedly agreed to pay $500,000.

These days, Greimer is ready to forget the whole thing. “The woman at the center of the 40-year-old sexual abuse case against Roman Polanski asked a Los Angeles County judge on Friday to end the legal proceedings in the case. ‘I would implore you to do this for me, out of mercy for myself,’ Samantha Geimer, now 54, told Judge Scott M. Gordon of Los Angeles County Superior Court, according to Agence France-Presse. Ms. Geimer has spoken out in recent years on behalf of Mr. Polanski.” (Sophie Haigney, New York Times, June 9, 2017)

In an interview last year, Greiner said: “Let me be very clear: what happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me. I didn’t even know it was illegal, that someone could be arrested for it. I was fine, I’m still fine. The fact that we’ve made this thing up weighs on me terribly. To have to constantly repeat that it wasn’t a big deal, it’s a terrible burden.” (Samatha Bergeson and Ryan Lattanzio, Indie Wire, April 14, 2023

I found the number and names of people in the industry who were willing to support Polanski pretty surprising. The story in Far Out Magazine cited above also noted “in 2009, an astonishingly large number of leading figures in the film industry signed a petition calling for his release including David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Wong Kar-wai and Woody Allen. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that even Harvey Weinstein came to his defence. All of this was a reaction to Polanski’s 2008 arrest at Zurich airport which was futile because he was released in 2010 anyway.” I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to find Allen and Weinstein on that list.

Not everyone is willing to forgive and forget. In 2018 he was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, along with Bill Cosby, citing that organization’s ‘Standards of Conduct.’ In 2021 he sued the academy seeking reinstatement but his appeal was denied by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge.

An award he was presented in 2020 led to an immediate backlash. “Roman Polanski, the film director who fled the United States in 1978 while awaiting sentencing for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, was a big winner Friday night at the Césars, France’s equivalent of the Academy Awards, leading several actors to walk out of the ceremony in outrage.

“He was named best director for ‘J’accuse’ (The English title: ’An Officer and a Spy’). ‘Very few’ people applauded Mr. Polanski’s best director award, said Le Monde, the French newspaper.

“Adèle Haenel, one of France’s most prominent young actresses who said she had suffered from sexual abuse in the country’s film industry, was one of those who left the room at the César ceremony, waving an arm in disgust and appearing to say, ‘Shame’.” (Alex Marshall, New York Times, Feb. 28, 2020)

And this was the scene when Polanski’s most recent film The Palace appeared at the Venice Film Festival last year: “‘Island of rapists,’ ‘No Golden Lion for predators,’ ‘Sexist cinema/ feminist response’ read the banners, posted on the Lido near the Venice Film Festival on Sunday, an anonymous protest against the inclusion by the 80th Biennale of films from controversial directors Roman Polanski and Woody Allen.”(Ilaria Ravario and Scott Roxborough, Hollywood Reporter, Sept. 3, 2023)

Meanwhile, more skeletons were emerging from Pulansky’s closet. In October of 2017 Sophie Haigney wrote this story in the New York Times (Oct. 3, 2017): “Renate Langer, a 61-year-old former German actress, has reported to the Swiss police that the film director Roman Polanski raped her at a house in Gstaad in February 1972, when she was 15.

“Ms. Langer is the fourth woman to publicly accuse Mr. Polanski of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager.

“The police in St. Gallen, Switzerland, confirmed that they met with Ms. Langer on Sept. 26. Ms. Langer provided The New York Times with a copy of an email — sent by a Swiss police officer — saying that another office would make the determination as to whether she could pursue a criminal complaint.”

And that same month The Guardian ran a story of another transgression (Oct. 23, 2017 by Gwilyn Mumford): “A Californian artist has accused Roman Polanski of sexually assaulting her when she was 10 years old, the fifth such allegation of abuse made against the director.

“Marianne Barnard has told the Sun that she was molested by Polanski in 1975, two years before the director fled the US after pleading guilty to statutory rape. The artist claims that the incident took place at a beach in California following a photoshoot where the director asked her to pose naked.”

Los Angeles prosecutors decided not to bring criminal charges in this case because the allegations were deemed to be too old.

In  2019, a French actress told a now familiar tale. “The French actress Valentine Monnier has accused director Roman Polanski of raping her in 1975 when she was 18 years old. Monnier spoke about the incident to Le Parisien, and (as translated in Variety) said that she didn’t know the director personally before agreeing to go skiing at his chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland. ‘Life had not trained me to be suspicious,’ Monnier said. She claims he called her upstairs one evening, attacking and hitting her, and ripping off her clothes before raping her. The French newspaper spoke with several people who said Monnier had told them about the alleged incident shortly afterward.” (New York Magazine, Jackson McHenry, Nov. 9, 2019)

And how did Roman Polanski react to the MeToo movement? Well, you can’t make this stuff up. He blamed Harvey Weinstein for his problems! “…in an extraordinary twist he (Pulanski) blamed Harvey Weinstein for his woes, in an interview with Paris Match magazine published on Wednesday.

“He claimed that the disgraced Hollywood mogul tried to brand him a ‘child rapist’ to stop him (unsuccessfully, it turned out) winning an Oscar in 2003 for The Pianist. Polanski – a fugitive from US justice since 1978 when he absconded after admitting the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl, Samantha Geimer – also dismissed the latest rape allegations against him as ‘absurd’.

“He said he ‘absolutely denied’ beating and raping French photographer Valentine Monnier at his Swiss chalet in 1975.” (Agence France-Presse, Dec. 11, 2019) 

His reputation as a brilliant filmmaker also has taken a hit with the release last year of The Palace.

https://youtu.be/SVq59g53Gis?si=chms6XB6roHWl0JF

I personally have not seen it, nor do I intend to, after seeing some of the reviews. Here are two samples.

David  Mouriquand, Euronews, March 28, 2024

“The Palace is not the work of a great filmmaker. 

“Granted, few filmmakers have a spotless filmography; however, it is no exaggeration to state that Polanski’s latest can’t even be qualified as ‘cinema.’ It’s a visual root canal

“As a fan of Polanski’s films – Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist are flawless films, and I have a particular soft spot for The Ninth Gate and The Ghost Writer – I can comfortably say that it’s the worst film the Franco-Polish director has ever put his name to.

“Take my word for it. I have suffered through this ‘absurd and provocative black comedy’ so you don’t have to.”

In a savage zero-star review for The Times, critic Kevin Maher branded the film Polanski’s “latest and worst opus, an eye-scorching atrocity that is instantly one of the most egregious film-making failures of the year, possibly even the decade.” (The Independent, Sept. 5, 2023)

Its rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which at one point was 0, is now 10%.

It’s 2024.  Pulansky is 90 years old. As for the accusations and the court actions? There’s no end in sight.

The Los Angeles Times (by Christi Carras, Stacy Perman and James Queally March 12, 2024) reported in March about yet another case involving the rape of a minor.

“A trial date has been set in a civil case alleging that Roman Polanski raped a child in the 1970s, years before he was arrested for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl in a separate case.

“The trial is scheduled to take place on Aug. 4, 2025, following a lawsuit that accused Polanski of giving a child alcohol and raping her at his Benedict Canyon home. The complaint was filed last June in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

“The filmmaker wasn’t named in the case until July; the plaintiff remains anonymous as Jane Doe. The suit was originally filed without the plaintiff’s or defendant’s names made public.”

The Los Angeles Daily News reported a temporary settlement of this case last month. No terms were disclosed.

The AP has this story by Andrew Dalton (March 12, 2024):

“A woman has sued director Roman Polanski, alleging he raped her in his home when she was a minor in 1973.

“The woman aired the allegations  which the 90-year-old Polanski has denied, in a news conference with her attorney Gloria Allred, on Tuesday.

“The woman who filed the civil lawsuit said she went to dinner with Polanski, who knew she was under 18, in 1973 months after she had met him at a party. She said Polanski gave her tequila shots at his home beforehand and at the restaurant.

“She said she became groggy, and Polanski drove her home. She next remembers lying next to him in his bed.

“‘He told her that he wanted to have sex with her,’ the lawsuit says. ‘Plaintiff, though groggy, told Defendant ‘No.’ She told him ‘Please don’t do this.’ He ignored her pleas. Defendant Polanski removed Plaintiff’s clothes and he proceeded to rape her causing her tremendous physical and emotional pain and suffering.’”

The same month this news came out of France:

“Veteran Franco-Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski will go on trial in France on Tuesday over allegations he defamed a British actress who accused him 14 years ago of sexual abuse in the 1980s.

“Charlotte Lewis in 2010 accused Polanski of sexually assaulting her ‘in the worst possible way’ as a 16-year-old in 1983 in Paris after she traveled there for a casting. She appeared in his 1986 film ‘Pirates’.” (Agence France-Presse, May 14, 2024)

Polanski was cleared in that case, a Parisian court ruling he did not defame Lewis.

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