Directed by Roman Polanski
(Imprint / Via Vision) 2024 Blu Ray Box Set.
If you want to know what Roman Polanski was up to in the 1990’s (either to decry his artistic decline or applaud his re-invigoration) then Directed by Roman Polanski has to be seen. Not to be believed but enjoyably experienced. It contains the strengths and weakness of Polanski’s brilliant talent. Bitter Moon (1992), Death and the Maiden (1994) and The Ninth Gate (1999). No film is actually bad and the better good films contain some of Polanski’s greatest moments.
Best film first. Bitter Moon is a dark psycho-sexual romance that both attracts and repels. Nigel and Fiona Dobson (a rather staid British couple) are holidaying on a Mediterranean cruise ship. They encounter a young French woman named Mimi who’s obviously disturbed by her husband Oscar Benton, an older man, disabled and a failed writer. Desiring a sympathetic listener Oscar asks Nigel to come to his cabin and listen to his story of his first meeting with Mimi. Oscar was sexually captivated by her and to keep their affair ignited they explored bondage, sadomasochism and voyeurism. Eventually they got bored with sex. Mimi, who loves Oscar, demanded more emotional commitment. Oscar dumped her. But she returned to Oscar and married him (now in a wheelchair from both his car accident and her hospital attack on him). Humiliating games follow that begin to seed a desire for violent revenge.
Ocean liners are normally the setting for old fashioned confected romances, but Bitter Moon busts that Hollywood cliché wide open. This sad comic dance of death, exploding with erotic impulses, is directed with razor sharp precision. An immature and incompatible couple attempt to wreck a repressed conventional couple. Nigel (Hugh Grant) is shocked by Oscar (a terrific Peter Coyote) and yet sexually attracted to his wife Mimi (a marvellous Emmanuelle Seigner). Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) remains suspicious of Nigel and goes for the jugular, when it comes to the sexy Mimi.
The French title of the film’s source novel Lune de Miele is something like “honeymoon” or “moons of bile” and is perfect for this sour and often cruel film. The miracle is that Polanski avoids sensationalism. His view of the world may verge on wild extremes and sometimes bad taste but his clear viewpoint is ironic and suitably detached, he never moralises but shows.
The sexy femme fatale dancing of Mimi (a woman Oscar says is “a sorceress in white sneakers”); the touching conflict of needs – love versus sex; Polanski’s constant interruption of Oscar’s story with Nigel’s shocked responses and how Polanski engineers romance towards farcical and tragic outcomes are achieved with masterly skill and sympathy. Bitter Moon creates its own riveting absurdist world as powerful as the crazy incidents of Polanski’s earlier Cul De Sac (1963). Bitter Moon is not as great as that masterpiece but after my three viewings it’s well on the way.
When Polanski shot The Ninth Gate in 1999 we probably assumed its satanic material would disturb us in the manner of his 1967 classic Rosemary’s Baby. Not so. The Ninth Gate is a lighter film, almost a teasing devilish game that both disappoints and delights. In Nikolas Schreck’s book The Satanic Screen it’s applauded for being unlike other satanic films because the Devil, as played by Emmanuelle Seigner, “isn’t the traditional Judaeo-Christian symbol of evil we’ve encountered in hundreds of other films.” That’s refreshingly correct. This voluptuous feminine force keeps pursuing Dean Corso (an engaging Johnny Depp) a bookshop owner employed by publisher Boris Balkan (Frank Langella doing an almost sinister repeat of his Dracula role) as he compares the authenticity of Balkan’s copy of the satanic treatise The Ninth Gate with the two other known copies.
The humour of The Ninth Gate reminded me of Polanski’s underrated The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). Yet the film is more of an excitingly shot thriller with great visuals containing suicides, chases, murders and hellish fires. Unfortunately the tone of The Ninth Gate is inconsistent. I was never sure how seriously we are to take it as a satanic horror film. Atmospheric to be sure but the film excites when it ought to chill. And I did find the ending to be a ridiculous cop out. But it’s all hugely entertaining with an original take on Satanists and occult bibliophile obsessions.
Death and the Maiden is an adaptation of Ariel Dorfman’s stage play of the same name. Although the credits inform us that the film is set in an unknown South American country we know this is Chile just after the old regime has been overthrown. A prominent lawyer Gerardo (Stuart Wilson) is given a lift home, during a storm, by a stranger called Dr. Miranda (Ben Kingsley). Gerardo’s wife Paulina (Sigourney Weaver) is certain that Miranda is the man who tortured and raped her during the former political order. She forces her husband to help her get a confession out of the doctor.
Death and the Maiden is as gripping as the other two films and Polanski is expert at turning a three hander play into a tense film. It’s beautifully lit, expressively edited and directed. However this is essentially an actors’ film. And we concentrate more on their strong characters than the visuals in a piece of chamber cinema as taut and dramatic as the film’s background chamber music – Schubert’s string quartet Death and the Maiden.
All three actors are excellent. Stuart Wilson moderates strongly between the torturer and his former victim. But I kept wondering if Sigourney Weaver wasn’t miscast. There were times, when she was holding a gun to the face of Ben Kingsley, which felt more like cop action Hollywood than a turning up of the emotional register in a political revenge drama. For me her committed performance lacked a sense of conveying a truly lived through experience of the horrors she’d experienced. For that we have to turn to Ben Kingsley whose superb acting reveals how his quiet gentlemanly demeanour masked a sadistic brute. Dr. Miranda’s beautifully written confession scene is devastating in how it gradually forces up from his memory the abusive and horrific role he played in the police investigations of prisoners.
Roman Polanski Directs has to be acquired by all Polanski enthusiasts. These films with their themes of game playing, humiliation, revenge, comic madness and the futility of human endeavour, to make sense of the world, are vividly projected.
The uncompromising intensity of Polanski’s vision has you forgiving the films’ faults and wrong steps. I just relished in the energy of a great filmmaker. All have been well transferred to Blu Ray and are accompanied by the astute documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, many informative extras and a slim glossy book.
Alan Price©2024
Directed by Roman Polanski
(Imprint / Via Vision) 2024 Blu Ray Box Set.
If you want to know what Roman Polanski was up to in the 1990’s (either to decry his artistic decline or applaud his re-invigoration) then Directed by Roman Polanski has to be seen. Not to be believed but enjoyably experienced. It contains the strengths and weakness of Polanski’s brilliant talent. Bitter Moon (1992), Death and the Maiden (1994) and The Ninth Gate (1999). No film is actually bad and the better good films contain some of Polanski’s greatest moments.
Best film first. Bitter Moon is a dark psycho-sexual romance that both attracts and repels. Nigel and Fiona Dobson (a rather staid British couple) are holidaying on a Mediterranean cruise ship. They encounter a young French woman named Mimi who’s obviously disturbed by her husband Oscar Benton, an older man, disabled and a failed writer. Desiring a sympathetic listener Oscar asks Nigel to come to his cabin and listen to his story of his first meeting with Mimi. Oscar was sexually captivated by her and to keep their affair ignited they explored bondage, sadomasochism and voyeurism. Eventually they got bored with sex. Mimi, who loves Oscar, demanded more emotional commitment. Oscar dumped her. But she returned to Oscar and married him (now in a wheelchair from both his car accident and her hospital attack on him). Humiliating games follow that begin to seed a desire for violent revenge.
Ocean liners are normally the setting for old fashioned confected romances, but Bitter Moon busts that Hollywood cliché wide open. This sad comic dance of death, exploding with erotic impulses, is directed with razor sharp precision. An immature and incompatible couple attempt to wreck a repressed conventional couple. Nigel (Hugh Grant) is shocked by Oscar (a terrific Peter Coyote) and yet sexually attracted to his wife Mimi (a marvellous Emmanuelle Seigner). Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) remains suspicious of Nigel and goes for the jugular, when it comes to the sexy Mimi.
The French title of the film’s source novel Lune de Miele is something like “honeymoon” or “moons of bile” and is perfect for this sour and often cruel film. The miracle is that Polanski avoids sensationalism. His view of the world may verge on wild extremes and sometimes bad taste but his clear viewpoint is ironic and suitably detached, he never moralises but shows.
The sexy femme fatale dancing of Mimi (a woman Oscar says is “a sorceress in white sneakers”); the touching conflict of needs – love versus sex; Polanski’s constant interruption of Oscar’s story with Nigel’s shocked responses and how Polanski engineers romance towards farcical and tragic outcomes are achieved with masterly skill and sympathy. Bitter Moon creates its own riveting absurdist world as powerful as the crazy incidents of Polanski’s earlier Cul De Sac (1963). Bitter Moon is not as great as that masterpiece but after my three viewings it’s well on the way.
When Polanski shot The Ninth Gate in 1999 we probably assumed its satanic material would disturb us in the manner of his 1967 classic Rosemary’s Baby. Not so. The Ninth Gate is a lighter film, almost a teasing devilish game that both disappoints and delights. In Nikolas Schreck’s book The Satanic Screen it’s applauded for being unlike other satanic films because the Devil, as played by Emmanuelle Seigner, “isn’t the traditional Judaeo-Christian symbol of evil we’ve encountered in hundreds of other films.” That’s refreshingly correct. This voluptuous feminine force keeps pursuing Dean Corso (an engaging Johnny Depp) a bookshop owner employed by publisher Boris Balkan (Frank Langella doing an almost sinister repeat of his Dracula role) as he compares the authenticity of Balkan’s copy of the satanic treatise The Ninth Gate with the two other known copies.
The humour of The Ninth Gate reminded me of Polanski’s underrated The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). Yet the film is more of an excitingly shot thriller with great visuals containing suicides, chases, murders and hellish fires. Unfortunately the tone of The Ninth Gate is inconsistent. I was never sure how seriously we are to take it as a satanic horror film. Atmospheric to be sure but the film excites when it ought to chill. And I did find the ending to be a ridiculous cop out. But it’s all hugely entertaining with an original take on Satanists and occult bibliophile obsessions.
Death and the Maiden is an adaptation of Ariel Dorfman’s stage play of the same name. Although the credits inform us that the film is set in an unknown South American country we know this is Chile just after the old regime has been overthrown. A prominent lawyer Gerardo (Stuart Wilson) is given a lift home, during a storm, by a stranger called Dr. Miranda (Ben Kingsley). Gerardo’s wife Paulina (Sigourney Weaver) is certain that Miranda is the man who tortured and raped her during the former political order. She forces her husband to help her get a confession out of the doctor.
Death and the Maiden is as gripping as the other two films and Polanski is expert at turning a three hander play into a tense film. It’s beautifully lit, expressively edited and directed. However this is essentially an actors’ film. And we concentrate more on their strong characters than the visuals in a piece of chamber cinema as taut and dramatic as the film’s background chamber music – Schubert’s string quartet Death and the Maiden.
All three actors are excellent. Stuart Wilson moderates strongly between the torturer and his former victim. But I kept wondering if Sigourney Weaver wasn’t miscast. There were times, when she was holding a gun to the face of Ben Kingsley, which felt more like cop action Hollywood than a turning up of the emotional register in a political revenge drama. For me her committed performance lacked a sense of conveying a truly lived through experience of the horrors she’d experienced. For that we have to turn to Ben Kingsley whose superb acting reveals how his quiet gentlemanly demeanour masked a sadistic brute. Dr. Miranda’s beautifully written confession scene is devastating in how it gradually forces up from his memory the abusive and horrific role he played in the police investigations of prisoners.
Roman Polanski Directs has to be acquired by all Polanski enthusiasts. These films with their themes of game playing, humiliation, revenge, comic madness and the futility of human endeavour, to make sense of the world, are vividly projected.
The uncompromising intensity of Polanski’s vision has you forgiving the films’ faults and wrong steps. I just relished in the energy of a great filmmaker. All have been well transferred to Blu Ray and are accompanied by the astute documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, many informative extras and a slim glossy book.
Alan Price©2024
By Alan Price • film, year 2024 • Tags: Alan Price, film