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Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired

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by Duncan McDowall
In Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Director Marina Zenovich takes an unprecedented in-depth look into the notorious 1977 trial involving Roman Polanski, and reports the facts that led the world's most celebrated director at the time to ultimately flee the U.S. permanently.

Roman Polanski’s life was already the stuff of movies. He lost his mother at Auschwitz and he himself escaped the Krakow Ghetto and barely survived the war. He went on to become a brilliant film director in Hollywood, and his storybook love affair with actress Sharon Tate ended with her 1969 murder at the hands of Charles Manson cultists while eight months pregnant. Polanski continued to build his career in the 1970s, until he made a fateful mistake during a 1977 photo shoot with a 13-year-old girl.

Polanski and Samantha Gailey, the victim, disagreed on the details, but he eventually pled guilty to charges of unlawful sex with a minor. The ensuing trial was everything that could be expected from a celebrity scandal case. If the press were already scrutinizing Polanski in the wake of the Manson murders, then this latest event regrettably tripled their zeal. But the press wasn't Polanski's biggest problem at the time, and this is where the film really kicks in.

Roman Polanski is an indictment of the legal system itself, and especially the presiding judge Laurence Rittenband. Zenovich details how the judge’s ludicrous self-obsessed style had him more concerned with his own image in the press than upholding the law. After assigning himself to the case, Judge Rittenband’s perverse desire to stay in everyone’s good stead – Hollywood glitterati and regular citizenship – meant that he warped and manipulated justice at his whim so as to navigate a safe passage for himself in a case that had become a media firestorm. Finally his abuse of office and power became apparent and he was removed from the case. Until now no one knew about the backstage manoeuvring orchestrated by the presiding judge in the case, and in this documentary now-retired prosecutor Roger Gunson and defence attorney Douglas Dalton break their silence to guide us through its labyrinth.
The content of Zenovich’s documentary is especially noteworthy on two accounts. First it’s an interesting relation of an early example of the Hollywood scandal media bonanza - an original phenomenon back in the day, but something that we have now become more accustomed to since O.J. And second it chooses to focus more on the vertiginous legal proceedings themselves, rather than on how the filmmaker’s work might relate to the crime and to his personality, and equally how his work might have been affected afterwards. Perhaps that subject is best explored in another film, and by a Director that would chose to show more sensitivity to Polanski’s art.

The real success of the film is its astute presentation of two different crimes by two different criminals. Zenovich distills the story down to the opposition of Polanski and Judge Rittenband. Most audiences go into this subject already knowing about Polanski’s crime, and Zenovich trusts them to be appropriately repulsed by Polanski's actions, alerting them instead to the shameful abuse of power committed in the proceedings. Which is the greater crime: rape or abuse of justice? To navigate that question in this context and not come out in favour of either one is a feat of great cinematic intelligence.

Zenovich artfully punctuates her film with scenes from Polanski’s own films. This element suggests the most interesting angle: that the director’s life had become strangely akin to the themes explored in his movies, and that Polanski’s motives may have indeed been inspired by his art. In that respect perhaps this film is not ambitious enough, and more parallels could have been drawn to show that somewhere along, the line between reality and fiction blurred, and the Kafkaesque mayhem that Polanski was spiraling into was his art catching up and engulfing him. It's a great story that Polanski might even have enjoyed directing - had it been fiction.

The film definitely recognises the artifice that underlies much of show business. The trial was surrounded by so much attention that it had taken on a life of its own, and both Polanski and Rittenband were aware of their participation in the drama. Finally, when it all got a little too ridiculous and unpredictable, Polanski took control back and stepped out. That was surely his instinct as a survivor. Roman Polanski, now 74, has lived in France since, and remains a fugitive to this day. Whatever side of the enigma you fall on, Marina Zenovich’s documentary is a thought-provoking piece of work that deserves to be seen.
Marina Zenovich, USA, 2008, 100mins

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired was screened on BBC Four as part of Storyville in October. The DVD will be released in the US in January 2009.

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