Film Studies: No excuses, just reasons

These things happened so long ago that many people today are unclear on the details. But in 1977, the film director Roman Polanski was arrested in Los Angeles and subsequently indicted by a grand jury on six counts: giving drugs to a minor; committing a lewd or lascivious act; unlawful sexual intercourse; perversion; sodomy, and rape. The young woman involved – the girl – was not quite 14. In the first instance, Polanski faced the charges, and served 42 days in Chino prison for "psychiatric evaluation". It was only when he had begun to feel that the judge in the case was hostile to him that Polanski broke bail and took a flight to London. For most of the time since then, he has lived in Paris. The charges stand, with broken bail as an extra, and Polanski has every reason to think that he would be arrested and confined if he appeared in Los Angeles.

But suppose he came to that publicity-conscious city as a nominee in the best director category for his film The Pianist? And suppose he won? Of course, people have won in absentia before. But no one yet has received an Oscar while in police custody.

This is not a case for special pleading on artistic grounds. The girl in the Polanski case has grown up and moved on. But I would not attempt to say that she was "undamaged" by the incident; nor do I mean to suggest that rape is less than a serious offence. If only by breaking bail, Polanski has ensured the absolute necessity of a day in court if he ever goes back to California. But it's worth considering the notion that among those most damaged by the sexual misadventure was the man who ran away from it.

Polanski is a life-long escapee, and that's where The Pianist becomes almost testimony in the case. Make up your own mind how good it is, it is better than the other films he has made in France. It is also simpler and more candid about an experience that shaped Polanski. He was born in Paris in 1933, the child of Polish-Jewish parents who moved to Krakow when the boy was three. Later they moved to Warsaw itself. The boy was separated from his parents. The mother died in a concentration camp, but the father survived.

There were years when the boy lived in hiding, always close to hunger, the witness to atrocities.

None of that excuses the rapist. But perhaps it helps to explain the diminutive, wolfish, strutting Roman Polanski, and the steady fascination in his films with intimidation and violence. Think of Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Tenant. Never forget that tiny white-suited thug from Chinatown, one of the most frightening heavies in film noir, the man who slits Jake Gittes's nose. That's Polanski himself in the part, revelling in the performance of cruelty.

Of course, there were other burdens on his life. He married the beautiful blonde actress, Sharon Tate, and was then out of the country when she – heavily pregnant with their child – turned out to be one of the victims of the Manson gang in 1969. Again, that extra ordeal comes nowhere near clearing the charges. Nothing could.

But what is intriguing, I think, and suggestive, is how far Polanski's haunted life turned him into a small devil who took pleasure in inflicting pain, pressure and threat on others – audiences included. I'm not sure that Polanski has done enough to stand as a great director. But few can match him for sinister atmosphere or believing the worst of people. And it is worth stressing how on his best film, Chinatown, it was Polanski's decision that prevailed against the kinder, gentler conclusion written by Robert Towne and who insisted on a Los Angeles living under the power of the monstrously wicked Noah Cross (the John Huston character).

There's great risk in this approach of sentimentalising a man who is very tough, innately cynical and utterly free from self-pity. But I don't think there's any denying that Polanski's films in exile – Tess, Pirates, Frantic, Bitter Moon, Death and the Maiden, The Ninth Gate – are inferior.

The Pianist is so happily unimpeded, so naturally tragic, that I am left wondering whether a man nearly 70 may have had a belated recognition of himself.

Polanski has a new life in France now, with a wife and children. He has defied American law, while showing how much he needed American ways of working. The new film is not a pardon, but it is a candid assessment of terrors that allow little except survival. Kenneth Tynan wrote once that Polanski "never apologises, no matter how he offends". In which case, this film could be as close as its director will ever come to confession.

d.thomson@independent.co.uk