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The genius of Roman Polanski
Can Roman Polanski rise above the media circus and deliver another masterpiece with his forthcoming film, 'The Ghost', starring Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor? Wally Hammond is defiantly optimistic
Anyone doubting that life is an absurd carnival should study the life – and films – of Roman Polanski. Good news is unfailingly followed by bad. The recent good news is that the world’s most youthful-looking septuagenarian – director of such great works as ‘Chinatown’, ‘Repulsion’ and ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ – has completed his new film. ‘The Ghost’, adapted with novelist Robert Harris from his own thriller and starring Ewan McGregor as a writer whose life is put in jeopardy when he ghosts the memoirs of Pierce Brosnan’s Tony Blair-like British ex-PM, is ready for its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival next week.The bad news is Roman won’t be there. A recent US court ruling means he’ll have to stay, staring at the stars, snow and hanging Sword of Damocles, in Milky Way, his luxury alpine chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, where since last November he’s been under electronic monitoring and on a $4.5 million bail, pending the possible execution of the arrest warrant issued in the US in 1977 for unlawful sex with a minor (the then 13-year-old Samantha Geimer).
The real news is that Polanski has produced his first political urban thriller for some two decades. He’s said that reading Robert Harris was like reading Chandler. That’s an overestimation of Harris’s prose skills, no doubt, but it does help raise tantalising hopes for ‘The Ghost’. We should feel lucky that Polanski, one of the most talented and distinctive directors to grace our screens this past half-century, is still producing major works. How fantastic would it be to have another ‘Chinatown’ on our hands? How many directors working today can raise such great expectations?
The Paris-born, Poland-raised director certainly hit the ground running. His debut feature, ‘Knife in the Water’, made back in 1962 when he was still in his twenties, was a tense, darkly interrogative, three-way sailing-boat-set psychodrama, impressive enough to prompt his first Academy Award nomination.That precocity was, of course, hard-earned. A decade of writing, studying, collaborating, acting and short-film production (from the presumed-lost ‘Bicycle’ in 1955 to ‘Mammals’ in 1962) preceded it, laying the basis for the thematic and stylistic continuity of the 18 features he directed over the following four decades.
Polanski has described his move to London in the mid-’60s – where he was to make, in collaboration with writer Gérard Brach and the Dorléac sisters, Françoise and Catherine (later Deneuve), ‘Repulsion’ (1965) and ‘Cul-de-Sac’ (1966) – as the ‘best and happiest in his life’. ‘Cul-de-Sac’, an absurdist, sexually bizarre nightmare of a film, set on isolated Lindisfarne, with odd couple Donald Pleasence and Dorléac marauded by gangsters-on-the-run Lionel Stander and Jack MacGowran, saw a Beckettian bleakness added to the witches’ brew. But ‘Repulsion’, in its perfect elaboration of the breakdown and disintegration of Deneuve’s vulnerable, reclusive and sexually repressed Kensington hairdresser helped redefine horror in psycho-thriller terms, with Polanski’s blend of psychological realism and expressionist aural and visual tropes – off-screen children’s voices, a repulsive foetus-like rabbit – confirming him as one of the most individual, intuitive and accomplished filmmakers in the world.
The effects on Polanski of the Hollywood sojourn and the later tragedy of his wife Sharon Tate’s murder by Charles Manson have been too extensively documented to comment on. But it was there that, despite the horrific distractions, he produced his two masterpieces: ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (1968) and ‘Chinatown’ (1974). The first, his triumphant version of Ira Levin’s satanic thriller with John Cassavetes as the possibly possessed husband of New York housewife Mia Farrow, owes its brilliance not just to superbly calibrated performances, precise mise-en-scène and unique control of tension, but to the director’s frightening dissolution of reality through paranoid fantasy – all the more persuasive for being derived from an arguably pulpy text.
‘Chinatown’, on the other hand, added a new fable-like quality to his work, its directorial accomplishments deepened by developing the LA foundation-myth in Robert Towne’s screenplay into a vision of contaminated social and economic expansion based on corruption, incest and murder. It’s a dark vision. And you can’t blame Polanski for wanting to balance his more tenebrous excursions with lighter fare. Thus, his playful but uneven Hammer-esque spoof ‘The Dance of the Vampires’ (1967) and the nonsensical parodic sex romp ‘What??????’ (1972) – some wags called it ‘Why?’ – that fell between the bloody realism of ‘Macbeth’ (1971) and ‘Chinatown’.
A trilogy of Gérard Brach collaborations – extravagant folly ‘Pirates’ (1986), lightweight thriller ‘Frantic’ (1988) and the underestimated ship-bound psychodrama ‘Bitter Moon’ (1992) – and a pair of Ronald Harwood-scripted period adaptations (2002’s Oscar winner ‘The Pianist’ and 2005’s ‘Oliver Twist’) showed that Polanski’s films may have lost some of their bite. But his fecundity, enthusiasm and youthful energy remain miraculously undiminished. We’ll have to wait and see if the bedevilled director will be able to continue making movies with freedom, or at all. Meanwhile, we have ‘The Ghost’ – and hopes are sky high as it may be the late masterpiece he and we want and deserve.
Author: Wally Hammond
User comments on this story
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- Bud said...
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The first appearance of Polanski in Switzerland after his release on July 12th 2010, is at a Jazz Festival in Switzerland where his wife Emmanuelle Seigner is singing music from Rosemary’s Baby!
Coincidence? NO!
It took the Swiss Ministry of Justice to say NO to the devil of injustice that lives on in the Santa Monica, California courtroom, assisted by Federal Court Judges, Magistrates, including those who ratified the Torture Memos,
which means that sexual assault victims who have been re-victimized by police assault and battery, and Santa Monica Judges covering up, are then victimized again by Federal Judges with Pony show decisions, using bait and switch justice, over a 12 years period to prolong the torture.
33 years later thanks to the Swiss Justice Ministry, Polanski was rescued from California’s torturous clutches, where American justice has sorely failed.
In refusing to extradite Polanski, and by not pandering to California’s PRECIOUS DOUBLE STANDARD, the Swiss Ministry of Justice also assisted sexual assault victims in California
Since a Santa Monica Judge permitted bait and switch justice and police thuggery in his Courtroom that injured a sexual assault victim,
And in Roman Polanski’s case the Santa Monica Judge used bait and switch justice and broke the plea bargain agreement.
Can you see the devil’s pattern emerging yet?
Yes it is that unreliable American Justice sitting in the next room, who wants to suck the life out of you, by resorting to bait and switch justice,
The devil, using the facade of Justice will first bait you with a favorable or solid decision, to build up your hopes and then after sucking on your blood for years, will surprise you from behind and push you off a cliff with the switch. Posted on Jul 23 2010 03:50 - Report as inappropriate
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- ty said...
- He is a disgusting creep who thinks himself above everyone else.I would never pay to see his stuff. Posted on Apr 27 2010 01:43
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- Barke P. Uptree said...
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To The Federal Office Of Switzerland Justice
Issue: Roman Polanski should be released as soon as possible
Message Sent 4/9/ 2010
I stress the Swiss Justice should look very closely at the fact that there are multiple claims of Judicial Corruption at the Santa Monica Courthouse California, which are coming from other sources other than Roman Polanski.
Thus the Swiss Federal Office of Justice should take these other instances of Judicial & police Corruption into consideration and release Roman Polanski as soon as possible, since the California Justice system is not trustworthy. It is coverup and bait and switch justice with assault and battery to boot..
There are witnesses to a double standard being applied in California's Courts, and that sexual molestation cases are being exploited by the California authorities, and turns on who is involved. The bias seems to go against those born in Europe. And the police and Judges will cover up sexual assault by employees at California's Colleges and assault and batter the victims of sexual molestation Posted on Apr 10 2010 11:07 - Report as inappropriate
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- Bud said...
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WB said."Do you really think Polanski's arrest came out of the Los Angeles district attorney's office?"
No the first call may have come from higher up because the movie "The Ghost Writer" speaks of Official connections to war crimes, and this possibly could have hit an Official sore spot.
And talking of war crimes would you rather be oppressed by being a prisoner in Abu Ghraib,
or by being a young girl in Roman Polanski’s hot tub, which may have been a consensual affair, and thus not true oppression,
or would you rather be oppressed by being assaulted and battered in a Santa Monica Courtroom California by a number of undocumented white County of Los Angeles Sheriff Deputies and the African American Police Officer defendant in front of the County of Los Angeles Judge, who is now a California Justice, in the very same Santa Monica Courthouse as Roman Polanski.
for reporting Santa Monica College Officials and their police cover up of sexual assault complaint against a California employed photography instructor that occurred from behind in his color printing darkroom class.
Bottom line is this - the amount of oppression that Roman Polanski could bring is rather minor in comparison to the Abuse of Power and Oppression Officials en masse do create under color of law,
or Officials create through ratifying the "Torture Memos" which then enables Officials to eviscerate people's civil rights, regardless of whether that torture occurs behind closed doors at the Santa Monica Courthouse in California, or abroad. Posted on Mar 29 2010 03:16 - Report as inappropriate
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- ian said...
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crum (appropriate name) says: "The mother was a bigger creep for furnishing her underage daughter to Polanski unattended.
The teenage girl was also a creep for not running away, unfortunately either attracted to Polanski, and/or too interested in securing her acting opportunity.
What a trap!"
The 'underage girl' was THIRTEEN. She wasn't really an 'underage girl'. She was a child. Polanski drugged her and sodomized her against her will. That is rape, however you want to frame it. The mother may indeed have been culpable, but the fact remains that Polanski was an adult and adults - responsible ones worthy of the moniker 'adult' - know when tp say 'no'; it was Polanski's responsibiity as an adult to say no. The victim did not, at thirteen, understand what 'consent' and 'choice' mean in a sexual encounter. To then accuse the victim of being a 'creep' and having some sort of star-struck ambition really is the logic of the rapist.
And to suggest she brought rape upon herself because she didn't 'run away' brutally misunderstands the power an adult - particularly a male adult - can wield over a child. And even more to the point, the victim/survivor was not likely to run because Polanski had drugged her with Quaaludes washed down with champagne. Polanski is a genius, 'The Ghost Writer' an amazing movie. But he raped a child and has never apologised, has never been a man about it, never faced any sort of justice. Posted on Mar 20 2010 07:54 - Report as inappropriate
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- crum said...
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I would say that the Ghost Writer is another of Polanski’s Masterpieces. It is funny and entertaining, and many scenes are excellent.
It is true that Polanski gets the best from his actors, and the scenes are visually rich, on edge exciting, and extremely well orchestrated. There is also much humor and truth to the film which makes it important film making.
In regards to Polanski’s current legal problems and in a world where creeps abound - Marina Zenovich's definitive documentary "Polanski: Wanted and Desired" says it all by showing creeping corruption by creepy Los Angeles judges and prosecutors against Polanski in 1977 & 78,
Polanski was also a creep for not checking the girl's age.
The mother was a bigger creep for furnishing her underage daughter to Polanski unattended.
The teenage girl was also a creep for not running away, unfortunately either attracted to Polanski, and/or too interested in securing her acting opportunity.
What a trap!
Polanski's arrest must be a pretext now after 32 years, since the arrest has come far too late.
Coming too late, the arrest now must be in retaliation for Zenovich's movie which exposes creeping official corruption against Polanski at the Santa Monica Courthouse all those years ago.
Polanski's arrest in 2009 may also be in retaliation for Polanski's movie "The Ghost Writer" since the movie illustrates what happens to individuals who want to expose Official corruption, when they are up against creepy ruthless officials who need to bury their connections to war crimes.
Remember Polanski and his family has run into a few of those ruthless killer officials on both sides of the pond, his personal experience of this is real, not just something that happens in a movie!
The world is full of creeps, and many get away with it.
For instance Jay S. Bybee was confirmed as a Judge for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by the Senate on March 13, 2003, long before any of the "torture memos" became public. The Torture Memos outlined the boundaries for enhanced interrogation of suspected terrorist detainees in Bush’s war on terror.
In addition a gang of creeps is far more life -threatening to the individual than one creep alone, especially if the gang of creeps are official.
So isn't this what happened to Polanski in 1978?
that after being a creep and after paying his dues,
a gang of Official creeps from the Santa Monica Courthouse just wouldn't let go, & instead of encountering justice, even Polanski's own lawyer Douglas Dalton couldn't help him.
In conclusion Polanski out grew or gave up on being a creep a long time ago.
He has a healthy survival instinct and that is why no-one has seen him in America since the end of January 1978.
People should see his movie. It is excellent, a Polanski/Hitchcock fusion, lots of excitement, fine acting by all, and lots of fun and humor too. Posted on Mar 14 2010 04:32 - Report as inappropriate
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- Freda said...
- J has missed the point. Polanski has served his time. And .a corrupt legal system and hungry media and City that is nearly bankrupt is responsible for keeping this case alive 32 years after the fact. Insanity. Posted on Mar 07 2010 12:55
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- J said...
- Yes....a corrupt legal system is responsible for Polanski raping a 13 year old. And yes - quite right that poor old Polanski was left unsupervised with the 13 year old - so who can blame him? No one disputes that he did it. It's amazing how forgiving everyone is being. I'm sure that if any of you have kids, you wouldn't want a guy who preys on 13 year olds living next door. But he's a celeb - so it's fine. Strange times we live in. Very, very strange times. Posted on Mar 07 2010 11:29
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- L.O.Brian said...
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May Contain Judicial Spoilers
The Ghost Writer is another Polanski film where corruption meets innocence over water
But in reality the Judge corrupted the plea agreement by breaking it.
The non breaching & thus the innocent and injured party to the plea bargain agreement was Roman Polanski,
who had already been sentenced to a non-appealable jail sentence at Chino by the Santa Monica Judge Rittenband which Polanski had already served & performed as part of the plea bargain agreement. in 1977
Bottom Line: Judicial Corruption meets innocence over Santa Monica water
Heal the Bay Posted on Mar 07 2010 03:34 - Report as inappropriate
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- jasmine said...
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May contain spoilers to “The Ghost Writer”
Some may think that with Polanski’s latest movie "The Ghost Writer" that Polanski has escaped into his own nightmarish cinema, which bears no resemblance to reality, or to his current situation.
But this is not true since there is an aspect of the movie which duplicates Roman Polanski’s own demise in America in 1978, which is not all of his own doing.
In the movie there are two ghost writers who never meet, the first one dies before the next one arrives, but both ghost writers are linked in having to deal with the same people in the same location, with the same corruption, the same cover-up, the same set of circumstances which seeks to kill them for exposing corruption.
In the movie the first ghost writer perishes under strange circumstances and becomes a ghost, paralleling Roman Polanski's own transformation into a Ghost in America in 1978 in that he had to flee America due to Judicial & Prosecutorial Misconduct perpetrated against him.
Then just like "The Ghost Writer" a second ghost writer does exist in reality, who also faced Judicial corruption at the same Santa Monica Courthouse, California, but some twenty years later, for exposing Police corruption .
For the second ghost writer official corruption came in the form of Judicial Misconduct and Police brutality, undocumented White County Sheriffs in the Courtroom to assault and batter, for exposing Santa Monica College Police cover up of her sexual assault complaint perpetrated by a photography teacher which sexual assault occurred in his darkroom class from behind.
And so the two ghost writers's are linked by Judicial corruption occurring in the same location, the Santa Monica Courthouse.
By exposing police corruption in the Santa Monica Courtroom the second ghost writer, a female was attacked in the courtroom by an undocumented White County of Los Angeles sheriffs Deputies and an African American Santa Monica College Police Officer in front of a County judge who has now been promoted to the California Court of Appeals by the former California Governor on police brutality day.
As there are two Ghost writers victimized at the same location, the Santa Monica Courthouse, who have never met, but yet whose paths are inextricably crossed because of the Judicial Misconduct and corruption they both encountered there,
This makes Roman Polanski’s claim of Judicial Misconduct and discrimination all the more powerful , since there is a double standard in how sexual assault cases are exploited in the Santa Monica Courthouse, California.
The movie, "The Ghost Writer" warns writers to not look for the truth, or facts that Officials do not want you to expose, because if you dare expose those political facts, or if you dare to report sexual assault by a California College professor, you may end up as a ghost of yourself, and dead upon arrival. Posted on Feb 28 2010 02:44 - Report as inappropriate
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- Mehat Mecote said...
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There is a possibility that the rebirth of the California prosecution against Polanski and his Swiss arrest was to stop the movie “The Ghostwriter” from being released. Maybe somebody didn't want it to be released.
It was 32 years ago California that prosecutors started this discriminatory prosecution against Polanski, but not against the American boy who was also having sex with the same underage girl, who had already had sex by the time she was 8 years old.
The discriminating prosecutors also did not address the mother’s neglect of her daughter. Maybe the mother wanted to blackmail Polanski for some cash.
The age for sex is earlier in France and Poland, and the Judge was committing illegal acts against Polanski like sentencing him twice and trying to take his right to stay in USA away. Then there was a bait and switch plea agreement – which made the court unstable and dangerous. Polanski had already served time in a Prison in California.
Also the sentence was not for rape, but was for consensual sex with an underage girl. There is a difference. There was no trial.
Roman Polanski was also set up by a mother who for some reason did not chaperone her underage daughter with an older foreign film director known for his love of women, when she knew her daughter would model for him
The girl has forgiven Polanski, but the State doesn’t care.
There is a double standard in California since government employees condone and cover up sexual assault of women. They band together and frame the women who have already been sexually victimized.
So why should Polanski come to the State of California at all, when there is no fair play, and often foul play, where he will be subjected to a double standard, just as the women whose sexual assault complaints are covered up by California authorities are subjected to the Government's double standard.
Also if the U.S. Department of Justice can forgive John Yoo, Jay Bybee, for the Torture Memos that allowed others to kill and torture people, although Yoo & Bybee's real purpose may have been to take the rap for the Torture Memos to divert the attention away from those who had insisted upon them, then there is no good reason why the U.S. Justice department could not pardon Polanski a foreign person who had consensual sex with a minor 32 years ago- when the victim forgave him long ago.
If Polanski is detained much longer some people may begin to wonder if what happened 32 years ago is the real problem, or whether it is something else. Posted on Feb 23 2010 12:29 - Report as inappropriate
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- Jasmine said...
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TThe movie, The Ghostwriter is a captivating Polanski-Hitchcock fusion.
The scenes and actors are excellently directed by Roman Polanski, a man who knows people, has lived a life in all its intense and wonderful highs, yet also has known its deepest lows, but somehow still has managed to find his way up again & humor throughout it all, with his own internal Triumph of the Will running to keep him vital.
The Ghostwriter (as it is called in U.S.A) is extremely amusing and fun, set against a political backdrop of torture and war crimes, with some parallels to the director's own life, as well as to political events in reality.
Coincidentally the same day Film maker Roman Polanski, (under house arrest in Switzerland and fighting extradition to the United States) won the best director award at the Berlin film festival for the political thriller The Ghost Writer,
the Bush administration lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee were exonerated by the U.S. Department of Justice of any misconduct for writing the Torture Memos ,
making it a win win situation for everyone, apart from those who were tortured in reality, and those who may be tortured in the future. Posted on Feb 22 2010 09:13 - Report as inappropriate
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- Juniper said...
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On the front page of the Los Angeles Times on Feb 1st 1978 (which can be found at the Los Angeles Times) it states that:
The Santa Monica Judge Rittenband ordered that he would sentence Polanski in absentia after 10 days if Polanski did not return to his courtroom in 10 days.
More than 10 days have passed and
And thus Judge Rittenband’s 2/1/78 order is the law of the case, since Polanski had already fled the Santa Monica Court by 2/1/1978 when Judge Rittenband made his order to sentence Polanski in absentia.
Nothing the new Judge, Judge Peter Espinoza can do or say now can cover up prosecutorial and judicial misconduct against Roman Polanski, that came to pass in the Santa Monica Courthouse 32 years ago.
Even if the Judge wants to preserve the dignity of the Los Angeles and Santa Monica Superior court now, the damage has already been done to Roman Polanski in his case.
Polanski was discriminated against, treated differently by the Santa Monica Court and Prosecutors for not being an American citizen, through wanting to coerce him into deportation, and because a 17 year old American boy was not prosecuted, and Polanski was set up and victimized by bait and switch injustice in the Santa Monica CA Courthouse, which acted as a façade for justice.
By Judge Espinoza not agreeing to sentence Polanski in absentia now which the original Judge Rittenband was agreeable to,
Judge Espinoza's action against closure, distracts from and condones the original Judicial & Prosecutorial misconduct against Polanski and the current retaliation against Polanski for director Marina Zenovich exposing the judicial misconduct in the Santa Monica Courthouse in the movie Polanski Wanted and Desired.
A sensible solution would be to end the torture for all concerned, and sentence Polanski in absentia as per the original judge Rittenband's Feb 1st 1978 order, Posted on Feb 15 2010 08:45 - Report as inappropriate
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- Jade said...
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It's very clear where Time Out's allegiances are look at the titile of this article; can Roman "rise above" the media circus?
Interesting way of putting it - the lofty Roman against the media. The fact of the matter is, the media storm is a reaction to Roman drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. And no - this isn't something Roman can ever "rise above."
Does great art excuse great evil? If Hitler had been a genuis, an artist of unique talent and power (rather than so mediocre he couldn't get into art school) would that mean we would forgive the death of 6 million jews?
Not impressed with Time Out. To paint the media as the bad guys, and Roman someone who should rise above it is NOT the story to tell.
The fact that the girl was raped at 8 makes it much, much worse not betterl; she['d already been through hell once, she was already damaged, and he took advantage. What if it's only the tip of the iceberg? Were there any other young girls? Does a padeophile only strike once in his lifetime? Get him behind bars - or release all paedophiles. You either think such behaviour is right or wrong. To excuse him on the grounds of celebrity is unforgivable. Posted on Feb 13 2010 09:05 - Report as inappropriate
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- Bud said...
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There is a Double Standard in Polanski’s case.
There is a double standard practiced by the Los Angeles D.A.’s office and in Californian Courts where Californian men can sexually assault women and underage women and the Judge and Police will aid and abet and cover up and even frame them, yet the same action is prohibited for a French Polish National.
Polanski arrest now is less about consensual sex with an underage girl and more about the documentary movie “Polanski Wanted and Desired,” a movie that Roman Polanski did not make.
Polanski’s arrest is in retaliation for Marina Zenovich's movie because it exposes the Judicial & Prosecutorial Misconduct which Roman Polanski was subjected to in the Santa Monica Courthouse in 1977 & 78, which misconduct was through no fault of his own.
Polanski has received from America, a double whammy –
First the Judicial & Prosecutorial Misconduct in 1977 & 78 against him in his case, and then 32 years later a retaliation against him for Marina Zenovich's movie "Polanski: Wanted and Desired" that showed the Judicial and Prosecutorial Misconduct against Polanski
The Swiss and Los Angeles Prosecutors could have arrested Roman Polanski at any time but there was no real interest until director Marina Zenovich's movie, Polanski - Wanted And Desired was released.
The movie included authentic original footage of the Judge from the Santa Monica Courthouse, California in 1977 & 1978, and an interview with a Prosecutor who was not officially assigned to the case, and all of this made the Los Angeles authorities look bad.
The movie showed Judicial & Prosecutorial misconduct against Polanski with backroom dealings in Judges chambers, staged hearings, and the Judge reneging on a plea deal.
In addition the Judge was going to illegally take away Polanski’s right to fight deportation – which discriminatory measure coupled with the other discriminatory measure to not prosecute a 17 year old American who was also having sex with the same underage girl, did give a biased slant to the Prosecutorial & Judicial proceedings against Roman Polanski
Perhaps Los Angeles should have arrested Marina Zenovich for making the movie, instead of Polanski, since she exposed the Judicial and Prosecutorial misconduct, not Polanski
but somebody had to take the rap, and Polanski was vulnerable since his case was never resolved, so Polanski was arrested on the way to a Swiss film festival which was about to honor him, to maximize the shock and awe of his arrest 32 years after the fact.
The Los Angeles authorities also waited until 2 days after Roman Polanski’s American wife and child’s murderer had died in a California prison before arresting him.
Only 2 days…
The fall out from arresting Roman Polanski on the way to the 2009 Swiss Film Festival in Zurich has a chilling effect on ALL filmmakers around the world, because the arrest is a Swiss betrayal not only to Polanski, but also is an affront to ALL the world's filmmakers.
So much for Free Speech. Free Speech is being frozen out of movies in this way…
Los Angeles should not have used Switzerland’s Film Festival for a purpose for which it was not intended – to bait Roman Polanski - and then switch it into his arrest, nor should the Swiss Officials have allowed their film festival to be misused and tainted in this manner.
Now Polanski’s arrest is ambiguous, regardless of Los Angeles stated reason for the arrest, since Polanski has been highly visible, and easy to apprehend all along.
It is questionable that Polanski was arrested for consensual sex with an underage girl after all these years. Its more likely that Polanski’s arrest is in retaliation for Marina Zenovich’s movie since the Judicial and Prosecutorial misconduct against him was exposed to the world making the Los Angeles authorities look bad.
Polanski is the scapegoat for Marina Zenovich's movie Polanski: Wanted and Desired which showed the Judicial and Prosecutorial Misconduct which precipitated Polanski being arrested 32 years later.
In U.S. v. Jannotti 673 F.2d 578, 614 (3d Cir. 1982) the Judge stated "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is exercised under cover of law, and with the colors of justice ..."
If Los Angeles authorities cared so much for that little girl in 1977 the authorities would not have permitted Polanski to go abroad to make a movie before the mandatory non-appealable psychiatric evaluation, which non-appealable prison sentence he completed and passed . He didn’t flee from that he only fled when the Santa Monica Judge reneged on a plea bargain, & became unstable.
If Los Angeles cared so much about the little girl the authorities certainly would not be prolonging her agony now and ignoring her when she has demanded closure. This is a signal that it is all about Los Angeles and not about this little girl now, and it never was.
If Los Angeles cared so much about raped girls and women they would not currently be behind in testing the rape kits to ensure Justice for these victims,
If Los Angeles cared so much about raped or sexually assaulted girls and women then Los Angeles would not allow their Police, Sheriff Deputies, Judges and Justices to cover up their complaints and assault and batter them in the courtroom for reporting sexual assault and police cover up of sexual assault. Posted on Feb 09 2010 12:05 - Report as inappropriate
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