Pray for Polanski

Pray to who? If someone is seriously interested in praying for Roman Polanski's soul because he so convincingly brought the Devil to life in his film "Rosemary's Baby," and many sound like they are, then they will have to determine to whom they will pray. For some that is easily determined, their faith/ superstition is fixed, unquestioned. For many, it's a problem.

The acceptance of "Rosemary's Baby" by the public is proof enough that the unquestioned premises, the rooted beliefs by which many function, are shakable even destructible. The Devil in the cinema normally comes robed in black satin and is surrounded by a period imagery that does not ask the audience to believe what they see, but to participate .in a myth, accept the Devil as a symbol. To present him in a very real surrounding as a fact of our existence and leave it at that is an absolutely new phenomenon in the cinema. Ten years ago the audience would have laughed, the critics scoffed and Polanski would have had to make his film on the back lot at Republic with actors unable to accept his premise that a Devil really exists. Today's audience doesn't laugh, but shudders with terror.

Pregnant women refuse to see the film as if by some form of sympathetic magic the babies in their bellies will begin to hunger for raw liver and drink their blood. The audience accepts the premise; the Devil lives.
Ours is not a stable world. The hippies, the love generation, the National Liberation Front, youth in general and perhaps, most of all, that vast area of young adults who idolize the young . . . all are seeking something, and something more than just a change in the political or cultural power structures. It appears that for many, it is time for a new messiah, or devil, and there are those among us who are laying claim to both titles.

Roman Polanski senses the change; "Information is now out of control of the parents. I saw my first elephant when my parents took me to the circus. Today, a child will have seen an elephant and every other type of animal on television by the time he is three. The kid's minds are open. They sense a direct conflict between our customs, superstitions and the way it is."

Polanski would like to portray, speak about our certainties, our superstitions and our nature. "Before, I would criticize a society, like in "A Knife in the Water," I got hung up on a sort of, as I said, the problem of one society, one country, like Poland. But, wherever you go, the seed of evil is within the way the human being thinks, the way he takes things for granted. Certainty, I would say, is the seed of evil.

Everyone is certain of something, of his reasons, his ways. Religion is the best example of it. A man born in a Catholic country and in a Catholic family will defend his faith and his country, which were given to him by his parents, and if he is strong enough, or has enough courage, he will kill for them, or he will die for them. While the same baby, born in India, would fight, die or kill for just the opposite principals of a different religion. Now, why does be do this? Is he basically bad? No. This is his nature. He takes things for granted, things appear to him as they are and he fights for them because he believes in them.

"That's what I would like to do and what I would like to say in my films. It's not that I'm interested in metaphysical aspects. No. They are just charming to me, and they are entertaining to me, like they are to kids. But, if I don't say anything important in my films, it's because I find it too difficult to say. "That's what I would like to do and what I would like to say in my films. It's not that I'm interested in metaphysical aspects. No. They are just charming to me, and they are entertaining to me, like they are to kids. But, if I don't say anything important in my films, it's because I find it too difficult to say. If I know what I want to say, I say it."

At this point in his career, Polanski expresses a kind of moral chaos where nothing, no spirit, idea or institution, is based on absolute truth. "Everyone thinks he knows the truth, but it may not be your truth. Everyone has their own." And, his lack of serious interest in metaphysics is not shared by the public. They are not imitating his ideas, but are imitating his images, especially his concept of a Devil:

The following is from Marvel Comics' "The Silver Surfer" No. 3. [Now. . . yield you must! None may defy the will of Mephisto! There is no right . . . there is no wrong only my command. You must offer me allegiance! You must! You must! Why? Why do you still resist?? Why can I not crush your will?? Begone!! I can countenance no more! The very goodness of your spirit. . . bids fair to drive me mad! Within my brain . . . his accursed purity did pain me like a canker!]
That is a direct quote from the Devil, as written by Marvel's editor Stan Lee. The fellow giving the devil all the trouble in the comic book is the Silver Surfer, a man of silver with radiating halos who rides a surfboard through the nether world and behaves and speaks like a Christ figure.
[Forgive me for what I am about to do! And grant me the strength so that I may forgive them . . .[

Polanski's influence is obvious and the Devil will be rising to the surface of the mass media not only in the comics, but in television and records. What we can expect from Polanski, however, will most likely not be more of the same. His imagination is too fertile and there is talk of dolphins and requests for footage on Flipper heard in his office, a copy of "African Genesis" on his desk and a map of Atlantis on the wall. He is, at any rate, still charmed by metaphysics.

Fantasy, however, is only a tool for Polanski, ". . . because it is so much fun." It is a tool, however, that many of us are glad he used. "Rosemary's Baby," at this point of writing, is unquestionably the best film of the year. And, if the members of the Motion Picture Academy have sufficiently lost their bias against horror films, they have always considered them 'B' pictures unworthy of serious consideration, then he should surely win an Academy Award. The Directors Guild, in any event, should hand him their award for best direction. Filmically, "Rosemary's Baby" is far better than last year's director's award winner, "The Graduate" and, where "The Graduate's" film style was derivative of George Stevens and Leo McCary, Rosemary's Baby" is pure Polanski.

Polanski has no trouble at all making a clear statement on film. Geography, character, time and action are all lucidly rendered. He invariably works on a small landscape with a minimum of characters and a unity of time, action and place. And, it is precisely this clarity, lucidity and reasonableness of his presentation of images that builds a trust within his audience. "I know precisely what I want the audience to see and hear." As the audience watches a Polanski film, it relaxes with confidence that it will be shown exactly what is going on (a rare phenomenon in today's filmmaking) and it is only when Polanski has it in his grasp, that he introduces, with the same legible logic, elements of the supernatural which lifts the audience from its seat.

This is not just a cinematic device used in "Rosemary's Baby," but because of the nature of the film, it is more obvious. It's in all his films, and it is in the way he speaks or answers questions. He adheres to his idea until it is perfectly clear. It is his strength; nothing that is unreal or false intrudes into a single scene in "Rosemary's Baby." And, it is his weakness; both "Knife in the Water" and "Repulsion" drive so hard in one direction that they lack conflict, drama, credibility. They lack alternative forces, directions.

He lives precisely as he works, but in his life he has a counter force, his wife, Sharon Tate. She says, "He can't see anything unless it's put right in front of his face." In his presence, Sharon is a little more precise than she would like to be, but she remains soft and gets softer as Polanski moves about energetically putting his house in order; checking the garbage pick-up schedule, rearranging the bank accounts, giving messages to his secretary on a mini recorder, neatly folding a Chemex filter for precisely the right (strong) mix of coffee and expounding a philosophy of defecit spending for those who makes lots of money in Hollywood.

His opinions are precise also.
ON JEAN-LUC GODARD who led the protest at the Cannes Film Festival where Polanski was a judge. "What Godard said, I find ridiculous. We had a real revolution in my country. He lies as a matter of fact. Because, what finally that demonstration turned on w a s 'hells-a-poppin'. You know, with people hanging on the curtains and fighting each other on the stages, falling into the flowers, punching each other in the face."

ON NUDITY: "Most people are nude from time to time in their lives, If you do a nude scene, do it as it is in life, otherwise the actress is doing it for the camera."
"I enjoy female nudity. I enjoy even male nudity. I enjoy art and I enjoy the history of art and somehow nudity has prevailed throughout the centuries in every form of human art. If there is something very beautiful for me about man, the human race, it's the body. Even very limited brains, sometimes, have beautiful bodies."

ON VIOLENCE: "It's in all the great literature. Sex and violence are part of our life. Books and films are about life. The better the author, the closer to life."
Somewhere, however, in the precise, ordered world of Polanski, there is an element that is chaotic, changing, searching. A madness or a mystique that forces him to explore those areas of our nature where no men walk with safety. There appears to be no explicit belief or concept in a 'right' or 'wrong,' but there is a background, a childhood in a Jewish ghetto under Nazi rule. And, there is an obsession with the magic of the cinema. Even in the ghetto, at night, he would elude the guards, risk
punishment so he could watch through the holes in the fences as the Nazi's showed their propaganda films. And, there was an escape from the ghetto. He has made judgments, had both the incredibly horrible and beautiful alternatives of our life within his touch. In time, he may put them on film.

You can pray to whatever gods you choose that he does. It is time for the artists to create dreams worthy of our imitation, because when the politics, governments, exhibition patterns, contracts and economics of our time are nothing more than electric data in the memory bank of a defunct machine, man will still depend on the dreamers and their dreams. And there are too damned few of them.