Roman Polanski, or pardon me but your poll is in my neck.

I'll just assume Chinatown takes this with about 90 percent of the vote and focus on what lands place and show.

It's been so long since I've seen Chinatown...I'd have to watch it again before I could vote for it. I've only seen six on that list, and of those, I'd vote for Knife in the Water.

I remember really enjoying Frantic. Seems like Harrison Ford's best movies (Frantic, Working Girl, Mosquito Coast) are the ones that get swept under the rug of popular memory.

For me it's either Repulsion or The Tenant, I love the surreal/psychological tension of those movies.

that's the same two i came down to. voted for the tenant.

Frantic has one of the best premises ever for a thriller (Ford's wife walks out of their hotel room in France and just vanishes, and he isn't really able to convince the authorities that something has happened to her), but unfortunately it gets more formulaic towards the end.

Rosemary's Baby. I saw it in June again and, again, I thought it was the funniest, scariest horror film ever. Alarmingly well-cast too.

^ Rosemary's Baby is the shit.

Still, my vote goes to Chinatown.

I'm torn between the apartment trilogy. It might end up I compromise vote on Bitter Moon.

I saw that in the theatre; I was so relieved when most of the audience treated it as a comedy.

How could it not be a comedy?

Not too familiar with Polanski's work, but Rosemary's Baby is probably my second or third fav movie.

how many of you have seen Pirates?

That's one I've skipped up until now.

the scores of his movies are so great in and of themselves. i mean ...the opening notes to RB that i think were covered by Fantomas - wow. also chinatown's is of course so well-known now that we cant imagine a noir world without it

Tenant.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

too many of these I still haven't seen, I'm going to vote for Repulsion

I think I voted for Repulsion. Not seen anything pre-Knife and everything post-Tenant has uh problems.

i like the johnny depp one.

Ninth Gate (I should really scroll up to figure out what I'm talking about before posting). Death and Maiden was very good as well. Obviously neither of these are up to Repulsion/Rosemary's Baby standards; in fact, I'd say that very-obvious-Polanski-rip-off film "Birth" is better than those.

Some of the post-Tenant stuff is okay (neither of the two you mention I liked much though) but it seriously pales compared to the stuff which preceded it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Kind of surprised Chinatown is so loved.

rosemary's baby is one of my favorites of all-time

Kind of surprised Chinatown is so loved.

― Alex in SF, Friday, October 17, 2008 1:02 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

er what?

It's great, but I don't think its his best film by any stretch.

I voted for Knife in the Water, back in the day. Such a beautiful movie.

dvd advice: skip repulsion. the current dvd is pan & scan and looks like shit.

There isn't a Criterion version of Repulsion? That sucks.

Kind of surprised Chinatown is so loved.

It does diagnose what's most wrong with America; when it's set, when it was made, now.

Albacore Insurance Group

"It does diagnose what's most wrong with America; when it's set, when it was made, now."

I don't think it does that any better than oh let's say Who Framed Roger Rabbit though. Rosemary's Baby is just a better movie IMO. Repulsion too, but I can understand why people couldn't get into that as much.

I think RB is a solid #2, like everything that got votes cept Pirates and
Two Men and a Wardrobe (unseen). Preferred Tess to FVK but it's been awhile.

FVK is fluffy. It's kind of hard to imagine it being made by the same guy who did the Tenant.

well, his interest in changing up was a common trait that more current directors w/ talent should investigate. (Wes Anderson, how bout a spy thriller)

oh his Macbeth is one of the 5-6 best Shakespeare films, probably.

Never actually seen that. I should. Do you count Kurosawa as Shakespeare btw?

nah, not quite. Goes in the "variations" column with Forbidden Planet.

I want to hear your top 5-6 then.

I'm forgetful! Top of the head: Welles' Othello, Olivier's Richard III, Polanski, Almereyda's Hamlet, Chimes at Midnight, then maybe Dieterle's A Midsummer's Night Dream, the Soviet Hamlet from the '60s, and Branagh's Henry V.

Never seen Almereyda's Hamlet. Recall liking Branagh's quite a bit, plus it reminds you that the actual play is long long long (there is a Northrop Frye line about the play being so long cuz no one ever shuts the fuck in it.) Taymor's Titus is good for a very minor play. Can't argue with the first two at all though, Welles and Olivier are stone classics.

Richard III might be the funniest of the tragedies too.

ooh yeah Polanski's MacBeth is fantastic. vividly remember watching it in high school English

Welle's Othello also somewhere near the top, Morbz has a good list there

all the film versions of macbeth i've seen are good -- kurosawa's is my fav kurosawa, welles's is great and bizarre (like "caligari" filmed on a star trek set), and polanski's is just a brilliant realization of the play, probably the best polanski i've seen after repulsion and RB.

morb's list would be close to mine (though i haven't seen the soviet hamlet yet -- according to imdb it's called "gamlet"!!), with chimes easily taking top honors.

Welles' Macbeth >>>> Polanski's Macbeth >>>> Welles' Othello

Yeah -- Chimes at Midnight and the William Richert-Keanu Reeves bits in My Own Private Idaho are my favorite screen Shakespeares.

No Keanu Reeves bits are my favorite anything.

the William Richert-Keanu Reeves bits in My Own Private Idaho are my favorite screen Shakespeare.

you've said this before and I am nonetheless still alarmed at your toleration for this terribly misguided claptrap. I don't think Keanu even understands a single line he says in that movie.

haha x-post

Thought that was only in Canada

"All movies are made by slimeballs"

Sitcoms, too.

Carnage was ok. Foster overracting a bit much, and since all you have in this kind of movie is the acting, when one of the four actors is distracting it becomes a bigger problem than it might otherwise be. Winslet's character seemed underdeveloped compared to the other three. Waltz and O'Reilly are great, deliver some much-needed laughs.

Liked Foster, bcuz I haven't even bothered to see much she's in the last 15 years, and that is a scarcely exaggerated Park Slope Parent, really.

Venus in Fur is both superficially "stagier" and more cinematic.

there was just so much vein-popping straining going on w her

my wife's review: "I'm glad we don't live in New York" lol

My list and comments.

Oh my, The Tenant is an easy second behind the obvious winner.

I have unwatched copies of The Pianist and Tess (not to mention Oliver Twist) that I should get around to someday.

I have good-ish memories of Bitter Moon and Death and the Maiden. Anyone seen them lately?

I thought Frantic was terrific but only saw it once, on release. I'd like to see it again.

...an opinion I've already put in this thread. I need to remember, "just quit posting."

From the Criterion Daily:

Back in August, a woman identified only as Robin became the third woman to accuse Roman Polanski of sexual assault after Samantha Geimer and Charlotte Lewis. On October 3, two days before the New York Times blew the Harvey Weinstein scandal wide open, a fourth woman, Renate Langer, accused Polanski of raping her in 1972 when she was fifteen. Last week, Marianne Barnard became the fifth woman to come forward and, as Martha Ross reports for the Mercury News, her call to have Polanski expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been met with considerable support.

Whatever the outcome, films such as Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974) will endure, even if the context in which they’re viewed now or in the future evolves. The Cinémathèque française will present its Roman Polanski retrospective from October 30 through December 3, and Polanski, now eighty-four, will evidently carry on working. He’s “returned to Poland for the first time since the country's top court rejected a U.S. extradition request last year to shoot a documentary about his life in wartime Krakow,” according to Nick Holdsworth in the Hollywood Reporter. Polanski, Horowitz (working title) will be “about his childhood and youth in the southern Polish city with his longtime friend, the photographer Ryszard Horowitz.” The AP notes that they’ve specifically visited “the site of the former ghetto where he was held as a child by the German Nazis. His mother was taken from there to her death at Auschwitz, and later his father made him flee the ghetto.”

Relevant links here:

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5058-the-daily-in-the-works-polanski-cuaron-and-more

Just seen Tess and I think it's my favorite, really beautiful, glad I didn't pass on it. Tenant is probably my second.

for a debut feature-length film, Knife in the Water is outstanding

This has been out since February, but I just stumbled over it last week.

http://www.amazon.ca/Big-Goodbye-Chinatown-Years-Hollywood-ebook/dp/B07QSPPLQQ

Waiting for the price to come down, will certainly read it then.

Just finished it a couple weeks ago, and while I think the author sometimes presumptively gets inside his protagonists' heads in a way that kind of turned me off, and while its denouement is a little sharper than I'd hoped for, it's not merely the love letter to New Hollywood the subtitle suggests.

tragic he’s not dead yet

He will be. His films will go on, so you'll have to come to terms with that.

(xpost) I don't think I have any illusions about that period. I'm sure the Peter Biskind book barely touched on the horrible stuff that went on off-camera (if that's what you mean). And as I've said many times, the more self-indulgent films of the era are almost unwatchable by any standard except repeated exposure to them at a young age (i.e., why I can still watch, say, Save the Tiger).

I will watch a Roman Polanski movie no sooner than the day he dies, I decided quite some time ago.

i read that book, it was fairly interesting but the writing was frustratingly florid

(xpost) Intrigued by the marker; I would have thought that people are either okay with watching his films or not okay with that, regardless of the timing.

(xp) yeah, I think that's kinda where I was trying to go with the bit about needlessly inserting himself into the mindset of the players

"tess" is a decent historical costume drama but dang it LOOKS gorgeous

How does nobody vote for FVK? Bloomin Bad Brains even wrote a toetapping toon with the title

Fearless Vampire Killers is amusing and well-made, doesn't deserve the terrible reviews I've read; I saw both it and Tess on the big screen. My vote would have been for Cul de Sac.

Pulled The Ghost Writer off the DVD shelf, first watch since 2012. Holds up despite Ewan McGregor.

Apparently it's in next month's criterion channel slate

watching the special features on the dvd, I'm guessing the movie was some form of financial fraud.

they got an expensive house to shoot a scene in because it had a nice view of the beach out its window. but the lighting didn't work so they put a sheet over the window and chroma keyed the beach in.

yeah, I watched this last night on criterion and I wondered what was going on with the sea in the background

All in all a pretty good political thriller with some moody locations... feel kinda guilty watching Polanski but at least it's better than Match Point

This = The Ghost Writer?

Haven't seen since it was new, but I did just rewatch the episode of Columbo ("Try and Catch Me") that Polanski's film swipes its ending from.

Me for one beautiful second: Polanski directed a Columbo?

xp You mean the, er, strategic removal with a match? I don't think it's that similar. The best thing about the ending in Polanski's film is really that long final shot.

Again, it's been a while, but doesn't the film conclude with a revelation-via-manuscript? I just remember being amused by the similarity at the time (good film, though).

Polanski directed a Columbo?

'Just one last thing, ma'am... how much was the security deposit on this place?'

xp yeah, but in a pretty different way, moreso considering how the revelation must've been created/put into the respective manuscripts. (One required a lot more meticulous work.) It's a minor point though, I think Polanski's thrillers hold up well because they carry more weight beyond entertaining twists.

(xpost) "Just one last thing, ma'am...Can you walk me through all that father-sister, father-sister stuff again? Because frankly, I'm lost here."

'Aww, Miss Rosemary, that's an awfully cute baby... my missus would go ga-ga over him! She might even knit a onesie. By the way, before I leave.. there's just one thing I'm still wondering about...'

Legit LOL (x2)

Messed mine up--should be sister-daughter, not father-sister. Very Columbo-like.

That’s why you gotta write these things down.

The Waterloo rep theatre is showing Rosemary's Baby a couple of times this week. I was going to head out there tonight, but think I'll hold off till Wednesday and watch baseball instead.

https://princesscinemas.com/movie/rosemary-s-baby

Going to quote their Programming Note in full:

We are aware that screenings of Roman Polanski’s films raise difficult questions given his troubling personal history, and we recognize that many find his actions inexcusable. At the same time, films such as Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown remain influential works that have shaped cinema and continue to resonate with audiences and filmmakers today.

It is also important to acknowledge that great films are never the work of a single individual. They are the result of collaboration among writers, actors, editors, designers, cinematographers, and many others whose artistry and labour deserve to be recognized in their own right.

Our intention in presenting these films is not to condone or endorse the artist, but to acknowledge the significance of the work itself within film history and to honour the contributions of all those who helped bring it to life.

Nicely done. I've never seen a note like that from a rep theatre before--maybe it's becoming standard practice, I don't know--but I'd say that's close to word-perfect in capturing my own feelings. I've always believed, and have written, that a work of art has a life of its own that exists apart from whoever created it. ("Our intention in presenting these films is not to condone or endorse the artist, but to acknowledge the significance of the work itself...") I respect anyone's decision to boycott certain artists because of moral and/or economic reasons, but for me, if the work has a strong enough pull on me, and I continue to get from it whatever it is that I get, I will continue to engage with it. And Rosemary's Baby is safely on the strong-enough-pull side of that divide. But Rosemary's Baby is also far enough removed on a timeline that I imagine there will be some younger viewers there who won't know Polasnski's story, or may only have a vague sense that he's a pariah for some reason; the note makes that clear, or at least clear enough that you can look up the rest for yourself. I also like that it puts forth Rosemary's Baby as Mia Farrow's film too, and Ruth Gordon's, and Ira Levin's, and William Fraker's, and Krzysztof Komeda's, and on and on.

(Not claiming any of this to be startlingly original or anything; I think a lot of people end up in the same place, more or less.)

"troubling personal history"

if you're going to do that kind of note to justify your screening maybe don't downplay that he drugged and raped a child?

I was going to ask if you were suggesting that they go into great detail, but no need--you are. They could also say nothing and just screen the film; would that be preferable?

Yes.

Okay. I like what they're doing--I don't think they're being motivated by any need to justify the screening--but we'll just have to disagree.

I have no problem with that programming note, and would agree that they've done a fine job of addressing things that are difficult or maybe even impossible to address to anyone's full satisfaction. I posted about this elsewhere, but I screened Mon oncle Antoine for my Canadian Fiction class a couple weeks ago, with no comment on what's come out on the director in recent years, and was mostly grateful that none of the students appeared to have wiki'd Claude Jutra (though if they had, I would have addressed it).

At least we all agree that there should still be screenings of Rosemary's Baby.

I screened Mon oncle Antoine for my Canadian Fiction class

Linked to another novel? Wasn't sure, but I looked it up and the screenplay was original.

Nah, just as an example of Canadian Fiction--in place of Literature so I could include films as well (also showed The Sweater yesterday, and will be doing The Brood later in the month). Specific course topic is The Child in Canadian Fiction, so it fit.

Of course: fiction is not interchangeable with novel, duh.