Roman Polanski: The Aloneness of Existence
In Roman Polanski’s work, the main characters are abandoned and the question is whether they can continue to exist. At times the answer is no, as in “The Tenant” (1976). At other times the answer is yes, but the character has suffered a complete emotional collapse, as in “Repulsion” (1965), or has borne the devil’s baby, as in “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968). At yet other times, the character survives with the wounds less obvious but no less deep, such as in “The Pianist” (2002) and “Chinatown” (1974).
So the question that persists in Polanski’s world is the existential paradox that if each of us is alone how can we survive or sustain ourselves? Other filmmakers have concerned themselves with these dark questions—Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Krystof Kieslowski—but each of these filmmakers has suggested occasionally in their work a remission from loneliness. The religious component in the work of each of these directors creates a space for solace, for union with another. Not so Polanski. Polanski is unique in his obsession with the nature of aloneness and unique in his capacity to take us, his audience, into this space of aloneness.
In this chapter, we will explore Polanski’s work and his director’s idea. Distilling that director’s idea is somewhat more difficult because Polanski’s work has ranged so widely. If we were to look at the two genres that have dominated his work, horror and film noir, we might opt for victimization as a feature of his director’s idea. Certainly “Repulsion” (1965), “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), and “The Tenant” qualify as horror, while “Chinatown” (1974), “Cul de Sac” (1966), and “Bitter Moon” (1992) qualify as film noir. If we add the war film “The Pianist” (2002), the melodrama “Tess” (1981), and the thrillers “Knife in the Water” (1962) and “Death and the Maiden” (1994), we begin to flesh out a world view that, on one level, depicts life as disappointing and relationships as betraying, in addition to the historical forces that conspire against the individual. Is this a paranoid view of life, or is it simply a modern as opposed to a romantic acceptance of life as a primal struggle where physical survival is possible but spiritual survival more unlikely? If we accept this view of relationships and community and national struggles, we begin to sense that the outcome for his characters will be that they are and always will be alone. How they cope with this state and the nature of their existence in the condition of being alone comprise Polanski’s director’s idea.
To depict and emotionalize such a bleak state, Polanski must take us deep into the core of his main characters. To do so he uses a set of strategies that allow the audience to literally be with his character. These strategies include an orthodox almost austere approach to narrative. As with Elia Kazan, he will take an almost documentary approach to the presentation of the world around the character. To depict the inner life of the character, however, he relies on point of view rather than on an expressionist style. He relies on that point of view to the exclusion of objective or alternative views, including his own. The result is an obsessive subjective perspective in a Polanski film. That point of view is that of the main character.
Another characteristic of the Polanski world is that specific details puncture the subjective world view of the character and remind the audience that circumstances have changed, time has passed—a rotting potato in “Repulsion” and a sudden execution in “The Pianist” to illustrate that the circumstances of the Jews in Warsaw have worsened.
Finally, Polanski, like Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch before him, is a genre filmmaker of the classic sort. Although his contemporaries, such as Volker Schlondorff and Krystof Kieslowski, have opted for genres of voice, the moral fable, and the satire, Polanski has been far more classical, preferring to use film noir, horror films, or war films and their traditions of mixing plot and character layers in accord with the particular genre convention. The result is less adaptation of a genre. When Polanski has attempted to modify the genre in tone or plot, as in “Fearless Vampire Killers” (1968) or “The Ninth Gate” (2000), his films have been far less effective. The reverse is also true. When Polanski has made classic horror films (“Repulsion” and “Rosemary’s Baby”), classic film noir (“Chinatown”), classic melodrama (“Tess”), and classic war films (“The Pianist”), he has created a number of timeless classics that also carry his director’s idea. In this chapter, we will focus on excerpts from the following films: “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Chinatown,” “Tess,” and “The Pianist.” In each of these films, I have tried to choose the main character’s moment of abandonment or absolute aloneness.
In “Rosemary’s Baby,” a young couple looks at an apartment near Central Park. They love the apartment and take it. The young woman, Rosemary (Mia Farrow), is keen to have a baby, and her husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), is intent on advancing his career as an actor. Rosemary and Guy meet their eccentric neighbors Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer). The elderly couple is taking care of a young woman who shortly after meeting Rosemary commits suicide. As the Castevets become a more significant part of their lives, Rosemary and Guy pursue their individual, seemingly mutually exclusive agendas, much to the frustration of Rosemary. However, eventually the increasingly distant Guy agrees to have a baby. Minnie provides Rosemary with an old charm necklace that contains an aromatic tannis root. She is ready to be impregnated (but not by Guy). At a special dinner given by the young couple, Minnie and Roman provide the dessert. The chocolate mousse is drugged, and after Rosemary falls unconscious she is prepared by Guy for the rape that will follow. With his minion present, the Devil rapes Rosemary. Although Guy claims he was the one who did it, he has made a bargain with the Devil. Both the pregnancy and his career advance quickly. The Castevets makes sure one of their doctors cares for Rosemary, and any barriers (e.g., Rosemary’s friend Hutch) are eliminated. In the end, alone, Rosemary has the childdevil. She is aware that she has been a victim but motherly instinct prevails—she will care for her child. The sequence we will focus on here is the abandonment of Rosemary by Guy, which highlights her aloneness, Guy’s success as an actor (his competitor for a role suddenly goes blind), and the preparations for becoming pregnant. The sequence concludes with the rape and its aftermath, Guy claiming to have had intercourse with his unconscious wife and explaining the scratches on her back by his drunkenness and his being carried away as a result.
“Chinatown” (1974)
The second excerpt is from “Chinatown,” which is set in 1930s Los Angeles. A private detective, Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), is hired to look into the infidelity of a husband, Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), a city official responsible for the Water Department. His wife, Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), did not hire Gittes; instead, it was an actress claiming to be Mrs. Mulwray. Gittes is being set up as is Mulwray. Gittes does find Mulwray keeping company with a very young woman. In short order, he is being sued by the real Mrs. Mulwray, and Mr. Mulwray, after witnessing various Water Department irregularities, is murdered.
Gittes, threatened in every direction, is hired by the real Mrs. Mulwray to find out what happened to her husband. What Gittes discovers is that someone is diverting water from Los Angeles to the Valley and also buying up land in the Valley. The trail leads to Evelyn Mulwray’s father, Noah Cross (John Huston). Cross in turn hires Gittes to find Mulwray’s young mistress.
At this point, Gittes get emotionally involved with Mrs. Mulwray and quickly discovers that her dead husband’s young mistress is Evelyn Mulwray’s sister and soon thereafter finds out that she is also her daughter. Siding with Mrs. Mulwray, he tries to help her escape with her daughter/sister. In Chinatown, all the parties come together and Evelyn Mulwray is killed by the police. Although Noah Cross killed Hollis Mulwray, he is wealthy and gets away with the murder and with his young daughter. Gittes is tragically unable to prevent harm to his new love, Evelyn Mulwray. He is led away by colleagues as the film ends.
The sequence we will focus on is the growing intimacy of Jake Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray. Just as he is taken with her, she receives a call. She asks him to trust her and says that she will return soon. He shatters one of her tail lights and follows her. He sees her drug Hollis Mulwray’s young mistress. He confronts her in her car, and she confesses that the young girl is her sister. He believes her, but he is set up by the police to bring Evelyn Mulwray in for questioning in the death of Ida Sessions, the actress who initially impersonated Mrs. Mulwray to hire Gittes. She is also suspected of killing her husband. When Gittes confronts her she reluctantly tells him that the young woman is both her sister and her daughter. She then confesses that she willingly had sexual relations with her father; it wasn’t rape. She is crushed by the admission. Although Gittes promises to help her, he in fact has initiated a chain of events that will lead to her death.
The third excerpt is from “Tess,” which is the story of a poor girl from an old but noble family in England during the Industrial Revolution. When Tess’ father, an alcoholic with a large family, discovers that his name, d’Urberville, is a noble name, he sends his eldest child Tess (Nastassja Kinski) off to find the rich relatives. Perhaps they will buy his title or at least help their family. Reluctantly, Tess seeks out the d’Urbervilles and finds that they are, indeed, rich but are not really d’Urbervilles. The family bought the title and lives on the estate. The son Alec (Leigh Lawson) is a ne’erdo-well and he sees in his “cousin” Tess an easy conquest. After the modest Tess takes a job on the chicken farm of the estate, Alec pursues her and finally, a bit drunk, she gives in. She quickly leaves Alec for home, where she has his child. The sickly child soon dies, however. Tess sees the child’s death as punishment for her loveless affair. When the local church will not allow the bastard baby to be buried on church grounds, Tess sees this as further punishment. She leaves home and goes to work on a dairy farm. There, Angel (Peter Firth), a vicar’s son, falls in love with her and she with him. He wants to marry her. She is reluctant because of her past. She tries to tell him her shameful history but cannot, and her mother advises against it. She writes Angel a letter but he never reads it, as it was hidden under his rug. She loses her courage and destroys the note. They marry.
On their wedding night, Angel tells her of a short city affair with an older woman. He asks for her forgiveness. She grants it. She then confesses her history honestly and asks his forgiveness, but he does not grant it. He is angry and feels betrayed. He abandons her. Tess returns to her home, and then seeks work. The work is hard and demeaning. Alec, to whom Tess’ mother has written, finds her and offers to care for her and her family. Her father is unwell, and the family will lose their home when he dies. Tess rejects Alec, but he keeps returning. When the family is evicted following her father’s death, they are forced to live in a tent, at which point Tess relents and becomes Alec’s mistress.
Angel returns, unwell. When he recovers he seeks out Tess and asks her forgiveness, but it is too late. When he leaves, Tess is inconsolable and, when Alec berates her, she kills him and runs after Angel. He will save her, he claims, but in the end he cannot. The police find them and she is taken away to prison. Justice is done, and Tess is hanged.
The excerpt we will use is when Tess tries to tell Angel of her past before she agrees to marry him. Although she fails to tell him before the marriage, she is mindful of the need to enter into the marriage honestly, as admonished by the priest at the wedding ceremony. That night, after Angel’s confession to her, she in turn confesses and loses him. He runs off to Brazil, abandoning Tess to her fate. This effort at honesty and the consequent abandonment will be the focus of our discussion about “Tess.”
“The Pianist” (2002)
The last excerpt is from “The Pianist,” which begins with the German invasion of Poland and ends when the war ends. “The Pianist” is Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a world-famous pianist, a Jew who survives the war because Jews, Poles, and Germans, at different points through the war, have acted to save his life. The film is about Szpilman’s survival, but it is also about all the losses he sustains. The sequence we will focus on is his effort in 1942 to secure work papers for his father. The effort only delays the inevitable—the deportation of the Szpilman family to a death camp. Eventually, Szpilman, his parents, and his three siblings are gathered at the train station with hundreds of others. Just when they are to be herded onto the transport train, a Jewish policeman pulls Szpilman from the crowd and encourages him to escape because he is a person worth saving. This is when he is torn away from his family, who is pressed onto the train. A German soldier rips the violin from his father’s hands. This is the last time Szpilman will see his family. He helps another Jew cart bodies from the site and is overwhelmed with the grief of loss. Around him are the dead. He seeks out the small apartment where his family lived in the Jewish ghetto. Now it is empty but for the artifacts, and Szpilman is alone.
Text Interpretation
In terms of our experience of the director’s idea, it is important that the state of aloneness be powerfully conveyed as we experience the main characters, their goals, and the power of the antagonists and plot to isolate the main characters, in short to victimize the main characters. To understand how the director’s idea operates in Polanski’s case, we need to explore for a moment the audience’s relationship with his main characters and how a director can create empathy or identification with the main characters.
To encourage the audience to identify with the main characters, the micro strategies must be character focused and the macro strategies structural. The micro strategies have to do with the nature of the characters. Whether they are charismatic or flawed, there is an energy that emanates from the characters that engages the audience. Another strategy writers use is a private moment that reveals the true character. This strategy is appealing because the audience feels privileged when characters reveal themselves to them. The macro strategies essentially use plot and antagonists to victimize the main character. None of us likes to be victimized, and we hope that the character can avoid victimization. The strategy of victimizing the main character is the strategy Polanski uses. His characters do not manage to avoid victimization; instead, they are victimized by both the antagonist and the plot. Let’s see how this works.
In “Rosemary’s Baby,” the plot is to have a normal woman bear the Devil’s baby. Rosemary’s goal is to have a baby, but the Castevets and her own husband Guy stand against her. They succeed in victimizing Rosemary, and in the end she bears the Devil’s baby.
In “Chinatown,” Jake Gittes’ goal is to do his job effectively. The plot, to divert water from the city to the Valley and to profit from the appreciation of property values in the Valley, requires the death of anyone who is a barrier. The most prominent killing is that of Hollis Mulwray, and because Gittes has been investigating Mulwray for marital indiscretion, Gittes is pre-empted in his actions against Mulwray. He is out of the loop, used by bigger players with bigger goals than previous marital infidelity. He feels betrayed and doesn’t understand why. As Gittes investigates the murder of Mulwray he bumps up against the why of it, the plot. He also begins a relationship with Mrs. Mulwray. The plot and this relationship bring Gittes up against the antagonist Noah Cross, Mrs. Mulwray’s father. He loses Mrs. Mulwray, and Cross gets away with his scheme and his child by his daughter. Gittes is a victim of the plot and of the antagonist.
Tess d’Urberville is a victim of all three principal men in the story and ultimately is hanged for striking back at one of them. Her father, a drunk with pretensions, sends Tess off in pursuit of the well-to-do relatives. Tess discovers that Alec and his family bought the d’Urberville estate and name. Alec seduces Tess and she bears his illegitimate child. Angel, the love of her life, deserts her when, on their wedding night, she asks forgiveness for her relationship with Alec. Although Tess attempts to retain her dignity, in the end she is forced to turn to Alec to save her destitute mother and siblings from abject poverty. Throughout the story Tess, decent but poor, tries to retain her self-respect but the men in her life victimize her until she snaps, kills Alec, and is hanged for the murder.
In “The Pianist,” the plot is the war against the Jews. Although the antagonist has many faces, we can say that the Nazis represent the antagonist and for the most part they are indiscriminately destructive of the Jews. Szpilman loses everyone as the plot progresses. In the end, all he has is his life and his music. He returns to play but he has lost so much. He has survived but his victimization has stripped him of all those he cared about—his family. In spite of the clarity of the main character’s goal, the vigor of the plot, and the scale of the antagonist’s goal, the interpretation remains that of a victim rather than a hero. We need only look at Spielberg’s interpretation of Oscar Schindler in “Schindler’s List” (1993) to highlight differences in the presentation of the main characters in the two films. Szpilman is neither a hero nor a romantic character, as Schindler is depicted; he is simply a human stripped down to the status of animal but trying to retain a shred of humanity—in short, a survivor.
A second feature of Polanski’s text interpretation is the powerful sense of environment in his work—New York in “Rosemary’s Baby,” Los Angeles in “Chinatown,” rural England during the Industrial Revolution in “Tess,” and Warsaw, the cultural and urban center of Poland, in “The Pianist.” Polanski’s environments differ from those of John Ford in that Ford’s environments do not test the characters and consequently elevate them. His work also differs from that of George Stevens in that Stevens’ environments present a spiritual template for his characters. The environments in Polanski’s films are neutral; they suggest that help should be available but none is. In this sense, the beauty of Polanski’s environments is ironic because they offer little or no solace to his characters; they offer no protection from victimization. Cosmopolitan New York only serves to mask the primitiveness of the struggle between the forces of good and evil in “Rosemary’s Baby.” Similarly, the beauty of Southern California masks the primitive venality and greed operating in “Chinatown.” In “Tess,” the pastoral beauty of the countryside masks the ugliness of class and the exploitative nature of economic progress. In “The Pianist,” the beauty and culture of civilized Warsaw can do nothing to protect its Jewish citizens. Again, the beauty of the environment masks the barbarity of its inhabitants.
Another feature of Polanski’s text interpretation is his exclusion of the extraneous or, put another way, his documentary-like approach toward the progressive victimization of his main character. Detailing this progression requires the inclusion of specific details as markers. In “The Pianist,” for example, Szpilman’s finding a way to keep his father from being deported means securing a work permit. Szpilman secures the document, and his father can work, but this does not save the family—all will be deported. When the building is emptied and a woman asks where they will be going, she is shot by the German commanding officer. When the family is gathered outside the train landing, the father buys a caramel with all the funds left among them. He then splits the caramel with a knife and distributes the pieces to the family members. When the father is pushed onto the train, a German solder grabs his violin from him. The father tries to hold onto his most prized possession, his last link with civilized culture and his work life. The soldier prevails and aggressively denies the father that last link. Upon returning to their home in the ghetto, Szpilman sees only bodies, mostly the young. All of these specific details create an authenticity to the barbarism of the war against the Jews and the struggle of the Szpilman family to retain a shred of human feeling and memory.
The details, the environment, the positioning of the main character, and the vigor of the plot work together to create the sense of aloneness of the main character. The performances of the actors deepen that sense of aloneness.
Directing the Actor
Polanski has always had a courageous approach to casting. He is very interested in type and in talent. Mia Farrow as Rosemary is the ultimate angelic victim in appearance; therefore, her tenacity in fighting her fate is surprising and speaks to her inner strength as an actress. Nastassja Kinski as Tess also comes across as a beautiful victim, although hers is a far more interior resistance. As a religious person, she is struggling with the dissonance between her own morality and the morality of others. In each case, the moral authority is vested in men who betray her. In the case of Adrien Brody as Wladyslaw Szpilman, Polanski has again cast for a surface vulnerability and expressiveness that imply the ultimate victim. Once again, though, the will to survive is a reflection of the inner conviction and drive of the actor. The talent to convey that inner drive for survival is the key to Brody’s successful Oscar-winning performance.
Beyond casting, Polanski seems actively interested in sidestepping the “star” personality of some of his actors. He did not exploit the star image of Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes; instead, he seemed to work against it. He worked Nicholson hard to create a sympathetic portrait of a man who has been emotionally wounded in the past and is trying to avoid a repeat. The result is a sensitive portrayal of a man trying to be honest in a dishonest world. Polanski did the same with John Cassavetes in “Rosemary’s Baby.” Working with Cassavetes’ bad boy image, he made the character Guy a narcissist, an opportunist, a man willing to throw over his wife for his career. The portrayal in this case took advantage of Cassavetes’ Hollywood image as being difficult and counter-Hollywood. By having a cynic play a narcissist, Polanski and Cassavetes created a role that is bigger in feeling than it would otherwise be.
Finally, Polanski gives each actor a specific note to play, a key to the performance. Rosemary is the mother or the wannabe mother throughout. The test for her is whether she will still be motherly when her baby is born. Jake Gittes is the professional with a heart of gold. In a sense, Polanski directed Nicholson as if he were a generous hooker, and of course Nicholson’s character ends up paying the price for his heart of gold.
In the case of Tess, she is an innocent, a child in life forced into the cruel adult world. She tries to retain her innocence through all of her ordeals, but in the end the cruelty of the adult world drives her to murder and to her death. Szpilman is forever the musician. Music is the beauty in his life; it is what he holds onto until the end, and in the end his music saves him. In each case, these specific notes help the actors deepen their performances and strengthen the sense of their inner lives.
Directing the Camera
Polanski’s director’s idea, the aloneness of existence, goes to the heart of his camera placement and shot selection. Camera placement tells us whether or not we, the audience, should identify with the character. Subjective placement encourages identification. Proximity to the action suggests even more about the audience’s relationship with a character. In Polanski’s choice of a camera placement that is not only subjective but in effect placed so close to the action that it actually crowds the character, he is pushing us into identification as well as into developing a feeling about that character. The crowding creates an almost claustrophobic intensity around the characters. This placement has been an important dimension of Polanski’s work since “Knife in the Water” and “Repulsion.” In the films we have discussed here, Polanski used this placement to enhance our identification with Rosemary, Jake Gittes, Tess, and Szpilman. He also used the sense of proximity, or crowding, to create a sense of the aloneness of the character.
Aloneness requires context, and Polanski used the moving camera as well as the wide angle to contextualize how alone a character is. An example of the moving camera shot is the return of Szpilman to the streets of the ghetto, after he has lost his parents. The camera captures Szpilman crying, all around him the emptiness of the streets of the ghetto. All that is left is the artifacts of the removed Jews or the dead bodies of those left behind. Szpilman occupies only part of the frame and is seen as truly abandoned and alone.
An example of Polanski’s use of the full frame of a shot for the same purpose is from “Tess.” On her wedding night, in the foreground of the shot Tess is confessing her sinful past to new husband Angel. Polanksi held the shot for a long time. In the background, standing against the fireplace, is an out-of-focus Angel. He listens passively to her story. The gap between them is huge, and it telegraphs the outcome of the confession; the marriage is over before it has started. Tess is alone.
Point of view is always important, and point of view tends to be subjective. To punctuate a point of view, Polanski will use a strategic long shot. In the scene that leads up to the deportation in “The Pianist,” Polanski has focused on the Szpilman family as well as young and old people. A young woman has suffocated her baby to avoid deportation. An old man counsels that they are not going to a labor camp—why would the Germans rely on women, children, and old men for labor? They intend to kill all of them. The Szpilmans try unsuccessfully to remain a family. During the rush to the train, Szpilman escapes. All of these scenes are detailed with close-ups. Once the train has pulled out, however, Polanski cut to an extreme long shot of the yard. We see only the artifacts, belongings abandoned by their owners—only things, no people. The long shot punctuates what has happened here, and it is as powerful as any close-up used elsewhere in the film.
Polanski achieved a similar result when he used long shots of the apartment in “Rosemary’s Baby.” The emptiness of the apartment and its coldness remind us of the absence of Guy, her husband. It also reminds us of the terrible events that have occurred in this building, events that contextualize what will soon happen to Rosemary. Beside the long shot, Polanski also relied on the powerful cutaway—in “Rosemary’s Baby,” the chocolate mousse that will transport Rosemary away from the rape experience to follow; in “The Pianist,” the execution of a mother as she asks about the destination of the Jews; in “Chinatown,” the broken tail light that will lead Gittes toward a sense of betrayal by Mrs. Mulwray; in “Tess,” the jewelry of Angel’s grandmother that he gives Tess just before her confession. The cutaway always introduces a new idea, but in Polanski’s work that new idea always leads to the lonely space the character will soon occupy. If it conveys a sense of the optimistic, as in the jewelry shot in “Tess,” the optimism does not last and in that sense the shot is bitterly ironic in the light of what shortly follows.
Polanski rarely relies on editing to convey the sensibility of dread and aloneness that permeates his work. More often he relies on camera placement and shot selection, including his powerful use of specific cutaways. He also tries to elevate his story to a mythic level. Consider the visual character of the rape in “Rosemary’s Baby.” Consider also the role of Chinatown as not only the location for the last scene but also a metaphor for the confluence of passion and danger that ultimately leads to tragedy. In “The Pianist,” Szpilman climbs out of a hospital under attack into a Bosch-like bombed-out Warsaw, the location of much of the last act of “The Pianist.” In “Tess,” the last scene is set at Stonehenge, dedicated to the spiritual gods of Celtic England. There, the police find Angel and Tess, and from Stonehenge she is taken to meet her fate. The use of these rather mythological scenes and locations after almost documentary-like treatments earlier in “The Pianist” and “Rosemary’s Baby” raises the film experience to a deeper representational level. Because aloneness is physical for the most part, these scenes represent Polanski’s elevation of the physical to the spiritual. They deepen the sense of his director’s idea.
Although Polanski has ventured into parody in “The Vampire Killers” and “Cul de Sac,” his strongest work has remained his genre films that in a rather orthodox fashion have transported his characters into a sense of their world, victimizing them and leaving them in a state of abandonment. Polanski is far from the romantic vision of modern life presented by his colleague Krystof Kieslowski in “Red” (1998). He is also far from the inevitable cynicism of his colleague Jerzy Skolimowski in “Deep End” (1968). He is also far from the political stance taken by his colleague Andrej Wajda in “Man of Marble” (1980). Perhaps he is closest to that other Polish-American artist, Isaac Bashevis Singer, in the sense that we are all alone, and the person a character will become is a secret to be revealed to that character when he or she has been abandoned and is alone.