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| Roman
Polanski |
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| Director
/ Screenwriter / Producer / Actor |
| 1933 - |
| Born August 18,
Paris, France |
| Key
Production Countries: UK, France, USA, Poland
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Key Genres:
Drama, Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Psychological Drama, Black Comedy, Period Film |
| Key
Collaborators: Gerard
Brach (Screenwriter), Alastair
McIntyre (Editor), Herve de Luze (Editor), Krzysztof Komeda (Composer),
Pierre Guffroy (Production Designer), Emmanuelle Seigner (Leading Player), Gene Gutowski
(Producer), John Brownjohn (Screenwriter), Gilbert Taylor
(Cinematographer), Sam
O'Steen (Editor) |
| Highly
Recommended:
Rosemary's Baby (1968), Chinatown
(1974) |
| Recommended: Knife
in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-sac (1966), Tess (1979), Death and the
Maiden (1994), The Pianist (2002), Oliver Twist (2005) |
| Links:
[
IMDB ] [ All-Movie
Guide ] [
Film Reference ]
[ Roman Polanski
Vision ] [
Wikipedia ] [ BBC
Audio Interview (1972) ] [ Kinoeye
Feature ] [ Independent
Article (2005) ]
[
Sony Pictures Profile ]
[
Polish Culture Profile ]
[
BFI Feature ]
[
Brainy Quote ] |
| Books: [
Roman ] [
Roman
Polanski: A Biography ] [ Roman
Polanski ] [ Roman
Polanski: Interviews ]
[
Roman Polanski (Contemporary Film Directors) ]
[
Roman Polanski (Directors) ]
[
The Cinema of Roman Polanski: Dark Spaces of the World ]
[
Roman Polanski: The Cinema of a Cultural Traveller ] |
| DVD's:
[ Amazon
] |
| 1,000
Greatest Films:
Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-sac (1966), Rosemary's
Baby (1968), Chinatown
(1974), The Tenant (1976) |
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21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films:
The Pianist (2002) |
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"In
addition to the mental scars of his tortured childhood, Polanski
acknowledges the influences on his work of Beckett, Ionesco,
Pinter, Kafka, and Buñuel.
Atmosphere is the most important element of his films and the
core around which he builds his plots and develops his
characters. Like Hitchcock, he considers actors as simple pawns
in the game of filmmaking and reportedly subjects them to much
abuse on the set, especially the actresses." - (The
MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994) |
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"People
living on the ragged edge - or forced to live on it: this Polish
(French-born) director's films are concerned with pressures,
alienation and a succumbing to the evil nightmares lurking
within us. One senses a bitterness in Polanski that the beauty
of the images he often creates on screen can't gloss over." -
David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999) |
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"Polanski's
work might be seen as an attempt to map out the precise
relationship between the contemporary world's instability and
tendency to violence and the individual's increasing inability
to overcome the isolation and locate some realm of meaning
or value beyond himself...From his own isolated position - as a
man effectively without a country - Polanski tries to confront
the probems of isolation, violence, and evil, and to speak of
them for an audience prone to their sway." - J.P.
Telotte (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991) |
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"Compelling tales which are chilling and bizarre are his
trademark." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"People like
Truffaut,
Lelouch and
Godard are like little kids
playing at being revolutionaries. I've passed through this
stage. I lived in a country where these things happened
seriously." - Roman Polanski |
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"You
have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it
realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't
upset people, then that's obscenity."
- Roman Polanski |
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