Salon.com > Roman Polanski http://www.salon.com Wed, 30 May 2012 06:12:34 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 “Carnage”: Jodie Foster crackles in Roman Polanski’s NYC comedy http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/carnage_jodie_foster_crackles_in_roman_polanskis_nyc_comedy/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/carnage_jodie_foster_crackles_in_roman_polanskis_nyc_comedy/#comments Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:50:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10478371 A brisk and bracing four-handed comedy about two Brooklyn, N.Y., bourgeois couples whose polite get-together to sort out a playground fight between their children descends into near-savagery, "Carnage" made a perfect opening-night entry for this year's New York Film Festival. Stars Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly got a standing ovation, and French playwright Yasmina Reza, who co-wrote the screenplay based on her worldwide stage hit "God of Carnage," took the mic for a few remarks. But where was the director? Too busy and/or too important to show up for his own movie in Alice Tully Hall?

I kid, I kid. For better or worse, Roman Polanski has once again become a more or less normal figure in the world of international cinema, as the NYFF's selection of "Carnage" made clear. His 2009 arrest in Switzerland ultimately came to nothing, after the Swiss authorities declined to extradite him to the United States to face sentencing for his 1978 rape conviction. Everyone at that Manhattan screening understood that he wouldn't be there, and indeed it seems highly unlikely that Polanski, who is now 78, will ever set foot on American soil again.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/carnage_jodie_foster_crackles_in_roman_polanskis_nyc_comedy/feed/ 34 Who wants to buy Sharon Tate’s jewelry? http://www.salon.com/2011/11/24/who_wants_to_buy_sharon_tates_jewelry/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/24/who_wants_to_buy_sharon_tates_jewelry/#comments Thu, 24 Nov 2011 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10252886 It's an oval opal ring, surrounded by garnets. Four stones appear to be missing. Its estimated value is somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000. And next week, is going up for auction with Gotta Have Rock and Roll with the opening bid of $10,000.

What is it that makes this particular piece of jewelry so potentially valuable? Is it the elegance of the piece? Is it the fact that it was purchased by an internationally renowned, Oscar-winning director? Or is it because the ring was allegedly worn by his pretty, pregnant wife the night she was savagely murdered by the Manson family?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/24/who_wants_to_buy_sharon_tates_jewelry/feed/ 12 9. “The Ghost Writer” http://www.salon.com/2010/12/30/scenes_2010_ghost_writer/ http://www.salon.com/2010/12/30/scenes_2010_ghost_writer/#comments Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:04:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/12/30/scenes_2010_ghost_writer Roman Polanski is an economical director, and "The Ghost Writer" is one of his most economical films. This story of an unnamed man (Ewan McGregor) hired to ghostwrite the memoirs of a former British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan) never makes a move without reason and never holds a shot -- or pauses after a line -- a millisecond longer than it needs to. You can see it in the scene we're examining here: The film's widely celebrated ending, which wraps up two hours' worth of plot in just four shots.

"The Ghost Writer" is an example of a vanishing type of film direction rooted in the values of classical (pre-TV) Hollywood. Although Polanski didn't make his first feature until 1962 ("A Knife in the Water"), he has done most of his work in that tradition. The subject matter of his movies is often disturbing -- jealousy, insanity, conspiracy, the triumphs of chaos and evil -- but his style is usually conservative, with a touch of elegance. He doesn't cover action with two or three or 10 cameras to produce enough usable footage to create the illusion of comprehensiveness. Polanski more often tries to plan and shoot action from one, maybe two angles, and he doesn't cut to a new angle unless he can get a better result than by staying where he is. Polanski's screenwriting sensibility is just as exact -- a point vividly demonstrated on "The Ghost Writer," which Polanski co-adapted with Robert Harris, from Harris' novel. The filmmaker doles out words the way he doles out shots: sparingly, never giving the viewers more than is necessary to keep them on the hook and waiting for the next revelation. This is a nearly perfect entertainment, never more so than in its final few minutes. 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/12/30/scenes_2010_ghost_writer/feed/ 6 Reminder: Roman Polanski fled sentencing http://www.salon.com/2010/07/12/polanski_2/ http://www.salon.com/2010/07/12/polanski_2/#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:50:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//2010/07/12/polanski I just stuttered and "um"-ed my way through a BBC radio interview about Roman Polanski's new-found freedom. That's because I didn't know how to adequately answer the host's question: What do you make of this news? It might also have something to do with freezing up in front of a global audience of -- god, I don't even want to think about it. Mostly, though, I didn't know what to say, aside from: "But, but ... he fled final sentencing."

Swiss officials say their ruling was purely technical and hinged on the United States' refusal to supply a confidential transcript of a hearing with the prosecutor in charge of the case. This should come as no surprise to Swiss authorities: A court ruling barred the release of the requested material. As a result, though, the Swiss say they were unable to "exclude with the necessary certainty" that Polanski had already served his sentence. He was ordered to serve a 90-day psychiatric evaluation and was released after only 42 days, thanks to a favorable review. But even more important: he fled sentencing.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/07/12/polanski_2/feed/ 101 Polanski free, Swiss reject US extradition request http://www.salon.com/2010/07/12/roman_polanski_1/ http://www.salon.com/2010/07/12/roman_polanski_1/#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:27:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/07/12/roman_polanski_1 The Swiss government declared renowned film director Roman Polanski a free man on Monday after rejecting a U.S. request to extradite him on a charge of having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.

The Swiss mostly blamed U.S. authorities for failing to provide confidential testimony about Polanski's sentencing procedure in 1977-1978.

The Justice Ministry also said that national interests were taken into consideration in the decision.

"The 76-year-old French-Polish film director Roman Polanski will not be extradited to the USA," the ministry said in a statement. "The freedom-restricting measures against him have been revoked."

It was unclear if Polanski had already left his Swiss chalet in the resort of Gstaad, where he has been held under house arrest since December.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/07/12/roman_polanski_1/feed/ 49 Polanski and Cannes: C’est l’amour! http://www.salon.com/2010/05/13/cannes_polanski/ http://www.salon.com/2010/05/13/cannes_polanski/#comments Thu, 13 May 2010 15:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/05/13/cannes_polanski CANNES, France -- The French love affair with Roman Polanski simply won't stop. With the 76-year-old Oscar-winning director and convicted sex offender facing impending extradition from Switzerland to Los Angeles -- there to face a highly uncertain sentencing -- a group of leading French filmmakers and intellectuals have launched a new counteroffensive, timed to coincide with global media coverage of the Cannes Film Festival. A petition signed by legendary directors Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda, among numerous others, urges Swiss authorities to reject extradition and essentially tells them not to believe anything the Americans say about Polanski and his case.

According to a press release issued Wednesday by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, a leading French cultural institution, Polanski is showing "signs of grave depression," which might not be surprising. This ailment, the academy's release went on, had an obvious remedy: the filmmaker's "rapid liberation" from house arrest at his villa in Gstaad, Switzerland. "Since the sentence initially expected [for Polanski's 1977 offense] has in every possible sense been served for more than 30 years, we cannot see why the demand for his extradition continues."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/05/13/cannes_polanski/feed/ 37 Polanski breaks silence over U.S. extradition case http://www.salon.com/2010/05/03/eu_polanski_speaks_out/ http://www.salon.com/2010/05/03/eu_polanski_speaks_out/#comments Mon, 03 May 2010 11:59:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/2010/05/03/eu_polanski_speaks_out Filmmaker Roman Polanski, breaking a months-long silence, said Sunday that the U.S. is demanding his extradition from Switzerland on a 33-year-old sex case largely to serve him "on a platter to the media."

Polanski, who is under house arrest in his Alpine Swiss chalet, laid out his case against extradition on an online magazine run by one of his staunchest supporters, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy.

"I have had my share of dramas and joys, as we all have, and I am not going to try to ask you to pity my lot in life," he wrote. "I ask only to be treated fairly like anyone else."

Polanski suggests the case against him is unjust and riddled with problems. Each argument begins with the phrase: "I can remain silent no longer."

One of Polanski's complaints is that Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, "who is handling this case and has requested (the) extradition, is himself campaigning for election and needs media publicity!" Cooley is running for California attorney general.

The district attorney's spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said the office "will withhold comment until the Swiss make a decision on his fugitive status."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/05/03/eu_polanski_speaks_out/feed/ 3 Polanski’s wife says husband’s jailing changed her http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/eu_people_polanski_s_wife/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/eu_people_polanski_s_wife/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:07:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/2010/03/08/eu_people_polanski_s_wife Roman Polanski's wife said her husband's imprisonment in a 32-year-old sexual abuse case has diminished her carefree spirit and terrified and disoriented the couple's two children.

But Emmanuelle Seigner, 43, also said in an interview with the Polish magazine Viva! that she's convinced "the matter will be solved."

The interview appears in the newest edition of the colorful celebrity magazine and includes a photo layout of the actress and singer in high heels and a glittery dress, and other attire.

The director was initially accused of raping a 13-year-old girl after plying her with champagne and a Quaalude pill during a 1977 modeling shoot. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse, then fled to France on the eve of sentencing in 1978.

Polanski, 76, is under house arrest in his Swiss chalet in Gstaad as he fights extradition to the United States.

"I am no longer such a carefree person, I am no longer the same Emmanuelle," Seigner said.

Seigner said that she and the children do not live with Polanski in Gstaad but visit as often as they can.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/eu_people_polanski_s_wife/feed/ 13 Box office report: Is “Shutter Island” Scorsese’s biggest? http://www.salon.com/2010/03/01/box_office_6/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/01/box_office_6/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:02:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/03/01/box_office This will be shorter than usual. First of all, there isn't all that much news to report and second of all, I spent the day at Disneyland, which was far more crowded than usual. Curse you, "Captain Eo"! You marred my Sunday in three dimensions! Point being, I'm pooped. So "Shutter Island" pulled a repeat at No. 1 this weekend, dropping just 45 percent for a $22.2 million second weekend and a new total of $75 million.

Despite the mixed reviews and word of mouth, the Scorsese thriller is still the only real event movie out there for people who don't need a return trip to Pandora. While I didn't care for "Shutter Island" one bit, I am heartened that a moody, complicated, two-hour-plus, non-sequel, R-rated thriller from Martin Scorsese is a genuine smash hit. In this day and age, it's always refreshing to see an adult-driven genre picture to reach heights only usually accorded to franchises and animated films. The picture is Scorsese's fifth-biggest domestic grosser, and will reach no. 3 on that list by next weekend. Whether or not it can surpass the $132 million earned by "The Departed" is an open question, but it won't have any demo competition until "The Green Zone." That Bourne-goes-to-Baghdad thriller opens March 12. (I have no idea if that's an accurate summary, by the way, but it's sure how the Paul Greengrass/Matt Damon film is being sold by Universal).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/01/box_office_6/feed/ 3 Pierce Brosnan on Polanski, Tony Blair and “The Ghost Writer” http://www.salon.com/2010/02/27/brosnan_2/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/27/brosnan_2/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2010/02/26/brosnan Pierce Brosnan welcomed me into his hotel suite at the Waldorf-Astoria with lordly courtesy, standing to usher me into the sitting room and looking, in his elegant but understated zippered green cardigan, like an indebted aristocrat who has opened his country manse to tourists. The one-time 007, his debonair good looks still in full effect at age 56, complimented me on my overcoat (a London Fog thrift-store acquisition) and used my Irish sweater as a pretext for some small talk about his homeland, which was also my father's. Gazing out at the mixture of snow and freezing rain descending upon Manhattan, Brosnan murmured, "Ah, it's a fine soft day," in gentle mockery of the Irish tendency to euphemize dreadful weather.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/27/brosnan_2/feed/ 46 Box office report: “Shutter Island” blows the doors off http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/box_office_5/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/box_office_5/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:23:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/02/22/box_office The infamously delayed "Shutter Island" debuted to smashing business over its initial weekend, as the Martin Scorsese thriller debuted to $40.2 million. That's a personal best for both director Scorsese and star Leonardo DiCaprio. Scorsese's previous best opening was the $26.8 million debut of "The Departed" in October 2006 (also starring Leonardo DiCaprio), while this was DiCaprio's second $30 million-plus debut, following the $30 million opening of Steven Spielberg's "Catch Me If You Can" back in December 2002. Since both the star and director have rarely opened anything over $10 million based on their respective names alone, credit should go to the marketing and the general concept of the story. As I've often said, adult thrillers are in rare supply these days and the few that make through the pipeline have a pretty decent track record (you think "Vantage Point" or "Law-Abiding Citizen" opened to around $22 million apiece due to critical acclaim?). Mix a genuinely intriguing concept (1950s lawman trapped in a scary mental hospital), factor the pedigree involved, and then add a compelling and pervasive trailer that has been running in every theater nonstop since August, and you had the recipe for a breakout weekend.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/box_office_5/feed/ 21 Polanski best director at Berlin film festival http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/eu_berlin_film_festival/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/eu_berlin_film_festival/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:36:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/2010/02/22/eu_berlin_film_festival The Turkish film "Bal," or "Honey," won the top Golden Bear award Saturday at the 60th annual Berlin film festival, whose jury also crowned Roman Polanski best director.

Polanski, whose film "The Ghost Writer," debuted at the festival, was unable to attend the ceremony, as he remains under house arrest in his Swiss chalet in Gstaad.

Producer Alain Sarde, who accepted the prize on Polanski's behalf, said the director told him he would not have attended the festival even if he had been free, "because the last time I traveled to accept an award I landed in jail."

Polanski was arrested when he arrived in Zurich on Sept. 26 to receive a lifetime achievement award from a film festival. The Swiss must decide whether to extradite him to the U.S. to face possible further sentencing in a 32-year-old sex case.

A joint Silver Bear for best actor was awarded to the stars of the Russian film, "How I Ended the Summer." Grigory Dobrygin and Sergy Puskpalis played opposite one another as an older and younger researcher who clash at a polar station on an island in the Arctic Circle.

Shinobu Terajima won the best actress for starring as a wife forced to tolerate the tyranny of her husband who returns disabled from the second Chinese-Japanese war in the Japanese film "Caterpillar."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/eu_berlin_film_festival/feed/ 0 “The Ghost Writer”: Polanski strikes back http://www.salon.com/2010/02/19/ghost_writer/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/19/ghost_writer/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2010/02/18/ghost_writer If there really were no such thing as bad publicity, I suppose we'd see curious crowds lining up around the block for the premiere of "The Ghost Writer." Instead, Roman Polanski's canny and claustrophobic new thriller, which stars Pierce Brosnan as a semi-disgraced former British prime minister and Ewan McGregor as the naive writer hired to ghost his autobiography -- offers a strange combination of marketing disaster and crisis-management test case. The film's American distributor is releasing it cautiously, on a small scale, and Brosnan and McGregor were unleashed on the press this week, in an apparent effort to refocus attention on Polanski's work and career rather than his past misdeeds and current legal predicament.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/19/ghost_writer/feed/ 63 Wake up, Mrs. Polanski! http://www.salon.com/2010/01/21/polanski_wife_defends/ http://www.salon.com/2010/01/21/polanski_wife_defends/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//feature/2010/01/21/polanski_wife_defends I've often wondered how Roman Polanski's wife lives with the reality of her husband's crime, and now I have the answer. In a rare interview with France's Elle magazine, Emmanuelle Seigner defends her husband's admitted crime of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl as the product of a "crazy" time. 

Forty-three-year-old Seigner, who was 10 at the time of Polanski's crime, explains: "I am not a super-liberal person who thinks that nothing is that serious. I also think that at the time people didn't live and react in the same way." She adds, "It was a crazy time. The attitude to drugs was not the same, nor was the attitude to sexual liberty and permissiveness." But what about the liberty to refuse sexual advances, as his accuser claims she did? What about obtaining permission from someone before anally penetrating them? 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/01/21/polanski_wife_defends/feed/ 39 Happy holidays from Roman Polanski http://www.salon.com/2009/12/28/polanski_letter/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/28/polanski_letter/#comments Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:25:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//feature/2009/12/28/polanski_letter Neither rain, nor sleet, nor house arrest will keep Roman Polanski from delivering good tidings and cheer. In a letter written from his current detention center (a spectacular three-story Swiss chalet) and his first public statement since being locked up, the 76-year-old director sent warm holiday wishes to his supporters.

That's right -- Polanski's first public words after being imprisoned didn't express remorse or beg for forgiveness. Instead, he gave a shout-out to all of the strangers out there who have had his back this whole time -- despite his having raped a 13-year-old girl. Polanski writes that he has "been overwhelmed by the number of messages of support and sympathy" he has received:

These messages have come from my neighbors, from people all over Switzerland, and from beyond Switzerland -- from across the world. I would like every one of them to know how heartening it is, when one is locked up in a cell, to hear this murmur of human voices and of solidarity in the morning mail. In the darkest moments, each of their notes has been a source of comfort and hope, and they continue to be so in my current situation.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/28/polanski_letter/feed/ 29 Court offers Polanski an exit strategy http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/polanski_exit_strategy/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/polanski_exit_strategy/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:23:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//feature/2009/12/22/polanski_exit_strategy The good news: California's 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected Roman Polanski's most recent request for dismissal of all that unpleasant business about his raping a kid and fleeing sentencing. The bad news: The court also spelled out just what Polanski needs to do to really make this all go away. If his team of lawyers would just quit pushing for dismissal and ask instead that the 76-year-old director be sentenced in absentia, the justices "are confident that the trial court could fashion a legal sentence that results in no further incarceration for Polanski." (Polanski, you'll recall, is currently confined to his three-story chalet in Gstaad, which sits on a 19,000 square foot property "nestled along a private road with a view of the surrounding countryside and snow-capped mountains," according to ABC News. He's spending this dark time hanging out with his family, entertaining guests and editing his latest movie, poor thing.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/polanski_exit_strategy/feed/ 7 Polanski moves from jail to ski chalet http://www.salon.com/2009/11/30/polanski_bail/ http://www.salon.com/2009/11/30/polanski_bail/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:31:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//feature/2009/11/30/polanski_bail Today, Roman Polanski is expected to be released from Swiss prison on $4.5 million bail. Because the longtime fugitive director is seen as a flight risk -- gee, you think? -- he'll be under house arrest, at his enormous chalet in the tony resort town of Gstaad, while he waits to find out if he'll be extradited to the U.S. to face sentencing for "having illegal sex" with a 13-year-old girl. Who repeatedly told him to stop. After pleading guilty to which, he jumped bail and spent more than 30 years living in Europe as a free man. You remember.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/11/30/polanski_bail/feed/ 113 Polanski’s victim asks to be left alone http://www.salon.com/2009/11/02/polanski_victim_statement/ http://www.salon.com/2009/11/02/polanski_victim_statement/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:03:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//feature/2009/11/02/polanski_victim_statement The woman at the heart of the Roman Polanski rape case has spoken, and once again, she’s explicitly asked for the charges against the director to be dropped.

In the statement filed by her attorney Lawrence Silver on Friday, the woman said that she has received “close to 500 phone calls from media as far as Germany, Israel and Japan."  She’s received invitations to appear on Oprah and Larry King, and photographers have camped outside her home and offered gifts to her kids in exchange for information.

The filing further went on to say that since Polanski’s arrest last month in Switzerland, the woman has had “health-related issues” and had to contend with the “understandable displeasure of her employer and the real possibility that [she] could lose her job.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/11/02/polanski_victim_statement/feed/ 106 “He only raped one little girl” http://www.salon.com/2009/10/14/polanski_trillin/ http://www.salon.com/2009/10/14/polanski_trillin/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//feature/2009/10/14/polanski_trillin I am sick of writing about Roman Polanski -- and I wouldn't be hurt to learn that you were sick of reading about him. But the story just isn't going away. Since Broadsheet last covered Polanski, the New York Times published a bizarre piece in which Michael Cieply attempts to convince us that the outrage directed at the filmmaker represents, more than anything, a shift in sexual mores over the past three decades. Cieply uses Woody Allen's "Manhattan" to make the case that, back in the swingin' '70s, we were totally OK with sex between teenagers and adults. (Never mind the obvious issues with using Allen as any kind of social barometer on sexual ethics.) In those days, he argues, we would see Polanski

not so much as a sexual assailant but as someone in the mold of Isaac Davis, Mr. Allen’s character from the movie "Manhattan": that is, as a normally responsible person who had shown terrible judgment by having sex with a very young, but sophisticated, girl.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/10/14/polanski_trillin/feed/ 50 Rape, power and Polanski’s “Chinatown” http://www.salon.com/2009/10/13/chinatown/ http://www.salon.com/2009/10/13/chinatown/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:07:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/beyond_the_multiplex//feature/2009/10/13/chinatown

In case you're wondering why the arrest of a 76-year-old man for a sex crime committed 32 years ago has provoked a world-historical display of stupidity and sanctimony on all sides, the answers, such as they are, can be found in "Chinatown." By pure coincidence (I think), the genre-defining 1970s neo-noir is the latest DVD release in Paramount's Centennial Collection, hitting the street barely a week after its director was detained in Zurich, pending extradition to the United States.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/10/13/chinatown/feed/ 87