Post by Bonobo on Feb 5, 2011 14:40:52 GMT 1
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski
Roman Polański, born 18 August 1933, is a Polish-French film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, America and France he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."[1] His films cross national and political boundaries, and expose many of the "dark psychological desires" that are common among all people.
Born in Paris to Polish parents, he moved with his family back to Poland in 1937, shortly before the outbreak of World War II.[2] He survived the Holocaust without his parents, who were forcibly taken to concentration camps for being Jewish. He was educated in Poland and became a director of both art house and commercial films.[3] Polanski's first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made in Poland, was nominated for a United States Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has since received five more Oscar nominations, along with two Baftas, four Césars, a Golden Globe Award and the Palme d'Or of the Cannes Film Festival in France. In the United Kingdom he directed three films, beginning with Repulsion (1965). In 1968 he moved to the United States, and cemented his status by directing the Oscar winning horror film Rosemary's Baby (1968).
Polanski was born as Rajmund Roman Thierry Polański in Paris, France, the son of Bula[14] (née Katz-Przedborska) and Ryszard Polański[14] (né Liebling), a painter and plastics manufacturer.[15] His mother had a daughter, Annette, by her previous husband. Annette managed to survive Auschwitz, where her mother died, and left Poland forever for France.[16] His father was Jewish and his Russian-born mother, Bula, had been raised Roman Catholic.[17][18] Ryszard Liebling had changed his surname to Polański in early 1932.[citation needed]
World War II
The Polański family moved back to the Polish city of Kraków in 1936,[14] and were living there when the World War II began with the invasion of Poland. Neither of Polanski's parents was religious. Kraków was soon occupied by the German forces. Nazi racial and religious purity laws made the Polańskis targets of persecution and forced them into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of the city's Jews.[19] He witnessed both the ghettoization of Krakow's Jews into a compact area of the city, and the subsequent deportation of all the ghetto's Jews to concentration camps, including watching as his father was taken away. He remembers from age 6, one of his first experiences of the terrors to follow:
I had just been visiting my grandmother . . . when I received a foretaste of things to come. At first I didn't know what was happening. I simply saw people scattering in all directions. Then I realized why the street had emptied so quickly. Some women were being herded along it by German soldiers. Instead of running away like the rest, I felt compelled to watch.
One older woman at the rear of the column couldn't keep up. A German officer kept prodding her back into line, but she fell down on all fours, . . . Suddenly a pistol appeared in the officer's hand. There was a loud bang, and blood came welling out of her back. I ran straight into the nearest building, squeezed into a smelly recess beneath some wooden stairs, and didn't come out for hours.
I developed a strange habit: clenching my fists so hard that my palms became permanently calloused. I also woke up one morning to find that I had wet my bed.[20]
His father survived the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, but his mother perished at Auschwitz. Polański escaped the Kraków Ghetto in 1943 and survived the war using the name Romek Wilk with the help of some Polish Roman Catholic families with whom he came into contact.[14] As a Jewish child in hiding without parents, he lived with numerous different Catholic families, attended church, learned to recite most Catholic prayers by heart, and behaved outwardly as a Roman Catholic, although he was never baptized. However, his efforts to assimilate into Catholic households as a member of the family often failed. In one instance, the parish priest visited the family and began to interrogate him, as Polanski recalls:[21]
"Who exactly are you?" he asked. "Where were you baptized?" . . . "What was the name of your parish priest?" . . . He pursued his inquisition to the bitter end. "You're a little liar," he said finally. "You've never been baptized at all." He took me by the ear and led me over to the mirror. "Look at yourself. Look at those eyes, that mouth, those ears. You aren't one of us."[21]
Writer Mitchell Glazer describes Polanski's difficult childhood:
Truth and myth about Polanski merge in a grisly, Jerzy Kosinskiesque tale: at six, slipping through the Cracow sewers with gangs of Jewish children to steal food for their families; having his mother hauled away before his eyes to perish in Auschwitz; at seven, being hidden by various non-Jews (for a fee) and finally being sent to a Polish farm to live with a peasant family. The stories become even darker: near fatal beatings (he has a metal plate in his head), starvation, night escapes across the freezing Polish countryside. And all this before he was twelve.[22]
As he roamed the countryside trying to survive in a Poland now occupied by German troops, he witnessed many horrors, such as being "forced to take part in a cruel and sadistic game in which German soldiers took shots at him for target practice."[1] Author Ian Freer concludes that his constant childhood fears of dread and violence have contributed to the "tangible atmospheres he conjures up on film."[1]
By the time the war ended in 1945, a fifth of the Polish population had been killed,[23] with the vast majority of the victims being civilians. Of those deaths, 3 million were of Polish Jews, 90% of the country's Jewish population.[24]
After the war
After the war he was reunited with his father, and moved back to Kraków. Eventually, his father remarried, but Polanski disliked his stepmother. He died of cancer in 1984. Polanski recalls the villages and families he lived with as relatively primitive by European standards:
They were really simple Catholic peasants. This Polish village was like the English village in Tess. Very primitive. No electricity. The kids with whom I lived didn't know about electricity. . . they wouldn't believe me when I told them it was enough to turn on a switch![22]
In hindsight, he states that "you must live in a Communist country to really understand how bad it can be. Then you will appreciate capitalism."[22] He does, however, remember events at the war's end and his reintroduction to mainstream society when he was 12, forming friendships with other children, such as Richard Horowitz and his family:
Richard was one of the very few children to have survived deportation from the Krakow ghetto and the only one to have survived the transit camp that followed. His father had hidden him in a latrine cesspool, neck-deep, while the other children were being rounded up for liquidation. . . Regina Horowitz was a typical Jewish mother, warm, resilient, and vital—a tower of strength. She always lit candles on Friday nights, and for the first time in my life I found myself in a household where Jewish rites were observed.[25]
Introduction to movies
Occasionally, he was able to watch films, either at school or at a local cinema, using whatever pocket money he had. Polanski writes, "Most of this went on the movies, but movie seats were dirt cheap, so a little went a long way. I lapped up every kind of film."[26] As time went on, movies became more than an escape into entertainment, as he explains:
Movies were becoming an absolute obsession with me. I was enthralled by everything connected with the cinema— not just the movies themselves but the aura that surrounded them. I loved the luminous rectangle of the screen, the sight of the beam slicing through the darkness from the projection booth, the miraculous synchronization of sound and vision, even the dusty smell of the tip-up seats. More than anything else, though I was fascinated by the actual mechanics of the process.[27]
Early career
Polanski's star on the Łódź walk of fame
Polanski attended the National Film School in Łódź, the third-largest city in Poland.[28] In the 1950s Polanski took up acting, appearing in Andrzej Wajda's Pokolenie (A Generation, 1954) and in the same year in Silik Sternfeld's Zaczarowany rower (Enchanted Bicycle or Magical Bicycle). Polanski's directorial debut was also in 1955 with a short film Rower (Bicycle). Rower is a semi-autobiographical feature film, believed to be lost, which also starred Polanski. It refers to his real-life violent altercation with a notorious Kraków felon, Janusz Dziuba, who arranged to sell Polanski a bicycle, but instead beat him badly and stole his money. In real life the offender was arrested while fleeing after fracturing Polanski's skull, and executed for three murders, out of eight prior such assaults, which he had committed.[29] Several other short films made during his study at Łódź gained him considerable recognition, particularly Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958) and When Angels Fall (1959). He graduated in 1959.[28]
About 10 years of his career Polański spent in Poland and made a few noteworthy films.
Rozbijemy zabawę (pl.We will break up a party) was a short film written and directed by Roman Polański in 1957. According to Roman Polanski's autobiography, the film was a stunt which nearly got him thrown out of Łódź film school; Polanski had organized a groups of "Thugs" to go to a school dance and begin disrupting it. As the band played "When the Saints Go Marching In," some students were actually beaten up. The ironic alternate title is "Break Up the Dance".
Two Men and a Wardrobe (Polish: Dwaj ludzie z szafą) (1958) is a short Polish black and white silent movie directed by Roman Polański.
The film features two men, played by Jakub Goldberg and Henryk Kluba, who emerge from the sea carrying a large wardrobe, which they proceed to carry into a town. Carrying the wardrobe, the two encounter a series of hostile events, including being attacked by a group of youths (one of whom is played by Polanski himself). Finally, they arrive back at a beach and then disappear in the sea.[1][2]
MIKE, BOTH FILMS CONTAIN JAZZ MUSIC! And nice women..... ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Roman Polański, born 18 August 1933, is a Polish-French film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, America and France he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."[1] His films cross national and political boundaries, and expose many of the "dark psychological desires" that are common among all people.
Born in Paris to Polish parents, he moved with his family back to Poland in 1937, shortly before the outbreak of World War II.[2] He survived the Holocaust without his parents, who were forcibly taken to concentration camps for being Jewish. He was educated in Poland and became a director of both art house and commercial films.[3] Polanski's first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made in Poland, was nominated for a United States Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has since received five more Oscar nominations, along with two Baftas, four Césars, a Golden Globe Award and the Palme d'Or of the Cannes Film Festival in France. In the United Kingdom he directed three films, beginning with Repulsion (1965). In 1968 he moved to the United States, and cemented his status by directing the Oscar winning horror film Rosemary's Baby (1968).
Polanski was born as Rajmund Roman Thierry Polański in Paris, France, the son of Bula[14] (née Katz-Przedborska) and Ryszard Polański[14] (né Liebling), a painter and plastics manufacturer.[15] His mother had a daughter, Annette, by her previous husband. Annette managed to survive Auschwitz, where her mother died, and left Poland forever for France.[16] His father was Jewish and his Russian-born mother, Bula, had been raised Roman Catholic.[17][18] Ryszard Liebling had changed his surname to Polański in early 1932.[citation needed]
World War II
The Polański family moved back to the Polish city of Kraków in 1936,[14] and were living there when the World War II began with the invasion of Poland. Neither of Polanski's parents was religious. Kraków was soon occupied by the German forces. Nazi racial and religious purity laws made the Polańskis targets of persecution and forced them into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of the city's Jews.[19] He witnessed both the ghettoization of Krakow's Jews into a compact area of the city, and the subsequent deportation of all the ghetto's Jews to concentration camps, including watching as his father was taken away. He remembers from age 6, one of his first experiences of the terrors to follow:
I had just been visiting my grandmother . . . when I received a foretaste of things to come. At first I didn't know what was happening. I simply saw people scattering in all directions. Then I realized why the street had emptied so quickly. Some women were being herded along it by German soldiers. Instead of running away like the rest, I felt compelled to watch.
One older woman at the rear of the column couldn't keep up. A German officer kept prodding her back into line, but she fell down on all fours, . . . Suddenly a pistol appeared in the officer's hand. There was a loud bang, and blood came welling out of her back. I ran straight into the nearest building, squeezed into a smelly recess beneath some wooden stairs, and didn't come out for hours.
I developed a strange habit: clenching my fists so hard that my palms became permanently calloused. I also woke up one morning to find that I had wet my bed.[20]
His father survived the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, but his mother perished at Auschwitz. Polański escaped the Kraków Ghetto in 1943 and survived the war using the name Romek Wilk with the help of some Polish Roman Catholic families with whom he came into contact.[14] As a Jewish child in hiding without parents, he lived with numerous different Catholic families, attended church, learned to recite most Catholic prayers by heart, and behaved outwardly as a Roman Catholic, although he was never baptized. However, his efforts to assimilate into Catholic households as a member of the family often failed. In one instance, the parish priest visited the family and began to interrogate him, as Polanski recalls:[21]
"Who exactly are you?" he asked. "Where were you baptized?" . . . "What was the name of your parish priest?" . . . He pursued his inquisition to the bitter end. "You're a little liar," he said finally. "You've never been baptized at all." He took me by the ear and led me over to the mirror. "Look at yourself. Look at those eyes, that mouth, those ears. You aren't one of us."[21]
Writer Mitchell Glazer describes Polanski's difficult childhood:
Truth and myth about Polanski merge in a grisly, Jerzy Kosinskiesque tale: at six, slipping through the Cracow sewers with gangs of Jewish children to steal food for their families; having his mother hauled away before his eyes to perish in Auschwitz; at seven, being hidden by various non-Jews (for a fee) and finally being sent to a Polish farm to live with a peasant family. The stories become even darker: near fatal beatings (he has a metal plate in his head), starvation, night escapes across the freezing Polish countryside. And all this before he was twelve.[22]
As he roamed the countryside trying to survive in a Poland now occupied by German troops, he witnessed many horrors, such as being "forced to take part in a cruel and sadistic game in which German soldiers took shots at him for target practice."[1] Author Ian Freer concludes that his constant childhood fears of dread and violence have contributed to the "tangible atmospheres he conjures up on film."[1]
By the time the war ended in 1945, a fifth of the Polish population had been killed,[23] with the vast majority of the victims being civilians. Of those deaths, 3 million were of Polish Jews, 90% of the country's Jewish population.[24]
After the war
After the war he was reunited with his father, and moved back to Kraków. Eventually, his father remarried, but Polanski disliked his stepmother. He died of cancer in 1984. Polanski recalls the villages and families he lived with as relatively primitive by European standards:
They were really simple Catholic peasants. This Polish village was like the English village in Tess. Very primitive. No electricity. The kids with whom I lived didn't know about electricity. . . they wouldn't believe me when I told them it was enough to turn on a switch![22]
In hindsight, he states that "you must live in a Communist country to really understand how bad it can be. Then you will appreciate capitalism."[22] He does, however, remember events at the war's end and his reintroduction to mainstream society when he was 12, forming friendships with other children, such as Richard Horowitz and his family:
Richard was one of the very few children to have survived deportation from the Krakow ghetto and the only one to have survived the transit camp that followed. His father had hidden him in a latrine cesspool, neck-deep, while the other children were being rounded up for liquidation. . . Regina Horowitz was a typical Jewish mother, warm, resilient, and vital—a tower of strength. She always lit candles on Friday nights, and for the first time in my life I found myself in a household where Jewish rites were observed.[25]
Introduction to movies
Occasionally, he was able to watch films, either at school or at a local cinema, using whatever pocket money he had. Polanski writes, "Most of this went on the movies, but movie seats were dirt cheap, so a little went a long way. I lapped up every kind of film."[26] As time went on, movies became more than an escape into entertainment, as he explains:
Movies were becoming an absolute obsession with me. I was enthralled by everything connected with the cinema— not just the movies themselves but the aura that surrounded them. I loved the luminous rectangle of the screen, the sight of the beam slicing through the darkness from the projection booth, the miraculous synchronization of sound and vision, even the dusty smell of the tip-up seats. More than anything else, though I was fascinated by the actual mechanics of the process.[27]
Early career
Polanski's star on the Łódź walk of fame
Polanski attended the National Film School in Łódź, the third-largest city in Poland.[28] In the 1950s Polanski took up acting, appearing in Andrzej Wajda's Pokolenie (A Generation, 1954) and in the same year in Silik Sternfeld's Zaczarowany rower (Enchanted Bicycle or Magical Bicycle). Polanski's directorial debut was also in 1955 with a short film Rower (Bicycle). Rower is a semi-autobiographical feature film, believed to be lost, which also starred Polanski. It refers to his real-life violent altercation with a notorious Kraków felon, Janusz Dziuba, who arranged to sell Polanski a bicycle, but instead beat him badly and stole his money. In real life the offender was arrested while fleeing after fracturing Polanski's skull, and executed for three murders, out of eight prior such assaults, which he had committed.[29] Several other short films made during his study at Łódź gained him considerable recognition, particularly Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958) and When Angels Fall (1959). He graduated in 1959.[28]
About 10 years of his career Polański spent in Poland and made a few noteworthy films.
Rozbijemy zabawę (pl.We will break up a party) was a short film written and directed by Roman Polański in 1957. According to Roman Polanski's autobiography, the film was a stunt which nearly got him thrown out of Łódź film school; Polanski had organized a groups of "Thugs" to go to a school dance and begin disrupting it. As the band played "When the Saints Go Marching In," some students were actually beaten up. The ironic alternate title is "Break Up the Dance".
Two Men and a Wardrobe (Polish: Dwaj ludzie z szafą) (1958) is a short Polish black and white silent movie directed by Roman Polański.
The film features two men, played by Jakub Goldberg and Henryk Kluba, who emerge from the sea carrying a large wardrobe, which they proceed to carry into a town. Carrying the wardrobe, the two encounter a series of hostile events, including being attacked by a group of youths (one of whom is played by Polanski himself). Finally, they arrive back at a beach and then disappear in the sea.[1][2]
MIKE, BOTH FILMS CONTAIN JAZZ MUSIC! And nice women..... ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
