Hello and welcome to Director of the Month, your cut-out-and-keep guide to the very finest auteurs in filmland…

This month: Roman Polanski

Nationality: French/Polish

D.O.B: 18/08/1933

Years active: 1955 – present

Number of films (as director): 18

Do say: “With your beady eye for the macabre, and your cackling delight in the absurd, you are certainly one of the most distinctive directors of the latter half of the last century.”

Don’t say: “So, why didn’t you to go to America to pick up your Oscar that time?”

Who Hell He? Roman Polanski is one of a surprisingly small handful of living film directors whose name and persona are both widely known to the public at large. Of course, the more controversial aspects of his personal life are probably as much a reason for this fame as his actual films, but let’s not deny him his due as an auteur who has enjoyed both commercial and critical success on an almost equal level. Witness Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, for example; more than 40 years on, few films have managed to be quite so dark and cerebral whilst simultenously scoring so big at the box-office.

Influenced himself by some of cinema’s greatest cryptic visionairies, including  Hitchcock, Bunuel, and his fellow Pole and mentor Andrzej Wadja, Polanski has come to cast as large a shadow on cinema as almost anyone before or since. Few directors could claim to have inspired talents as seemingly disperate as family-friendly fantasist Tim Burton, and troubled, left-field dramatist Lars Von Trier, to name but two. Still, Polanski’s style remains resolutely his own, and while he hasn’t really performed anywhere near the peak of his powers since the late 70s, the cream of his filmography will always make for strange, intense and truly unique viewing.

Six of the best:

Knife in the Water (1962)

One of the great debuts in world cinema, Knife in the Water’s reputation has only been diminished by the strength of the work that immediately followed it. Setting out his stall with confidence, Polanski brings us a tale soaked through with the same queasy sense of threat and paranoia that would prevade all of his best work, as an unhappy couple invite a potentially dangerous stranger to join them on a boating trip. A nomination for Best Foreign Film at the 1963 Academy Awards would pave the young director’s way out of communist Poland.

Repulsion (1965)

Relocating to London, Polanski made an even greater splash with this entrancing, psycho-sexual chamber piece. Catherine Deneuve stars as a terrified young woman tormented by grotesque nightmares which slowly seep into reality after her jet-setting sister leaves her alone in their shared flat. A truly striking sequence in which pallid, deathly hands tear through a stone wall and grasp our heroine has become a much copied staple of the horror genre.

Cul-de-Sac (1966)

My own personal favourite Polanski film, and the one I think best displays his bizarre, beguilling style, with plenty of nods to literary influences such as Beckett and Pinter. Lionel Stander plays a thuggish, wounded criminal on-the-run, who hides out in the home of warring couple Donald Pleasance and Francoise Dorleac, before deciding to hold them hostage. Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda contributed four impeccable scores for Polanski before his untimely death in 1969, and the fuzzy, melancholy jazz in Cul-de-Sac represents the peak of their collaboration.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

Originally entitled Dance of the Vampires, this somewhat light and frothy Hammer spoof rarely sees the light of day (no pun intended!) under that title, despite it’s director’s wishes to the contrary. I emphasise the somewhat when it comes to the light and frothy, as this is still a Polanski film, and for all the slapstick shenanigans featured therein, The Fearless Vampire Killers is still a typically offbeat effort complete with a memorably sour finale. Also, has there ever been another spoof that you could describe as truly haunting, visually dazzling, and masterfully orchestrated? Certainly not Hot Shots Part Deux, anyway.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

For his American debut, Polanski turned in this bona fide horror classic, which remains quite posibly his most famous film to this day. Mia Farrow stars as the New York apartment-dwelling mum-to-be, who wakes up to a living nightmare when she discovers her unscrupulous actor husband has sold both her womb and unborn babe to some local satanists! Ruth “Harold and Maude” Gordon brilliantly supplies the standard gallow’s humour as a doting, interfering and possibly demonic old lady next door.

Chinatown (1974)

Forever billed as the writer of “The Greatest Screenplay of All Time” as a result of Chinatown, Robert Towne in fact lobbied long and hard for this seminal neo-noir tragedy to have a happy ending! A mere five years after the notorious murder of his actress wife Sharon Tate, Polanski wouldn’t hear of it, and it was he who dreamt up the gloomy and nihilistic finale for this legendary film. Not to do Towne too much of a disservice, and his tale of a private investigator uncovering untold corruption in depression-era LA is a work of genius, but by refusing to compromise his enduringly dark world view Roman Polanski seized ownership of this film first and foremost.

What about the rest?: Macbeth (1971) is a handsome, if not quite brilliant, literary adaptation which may or may not refer to tragic events in Polanski’s real life (the Sharon Tate murders)… What? (1973) is the least acknowledged effort in the Polanski canon, a surreal, meandering sex comedy, starring Fellini’s onscreen alter-ego, Marcello Mastroianni… The Tenant (1976) is a fine, if slightly below-standard, film which forms a loose trilogy with Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, as Polanski himself stars as a psychologically tormented flat-dweller… Tess (1979) is a handsome, if not quite brilliant, literary adaptation which may or may not refer to unfortunate events in Polanski’s real life (the sexual assault case brought against him in America)… Pirates (1986) is a fun, historical romp that recalls aspects of The Fearless Vampire Killers without being anywhere near as good… Frantic (1988) is a not-bad-at-all mainstream thriller, written with long-time collaborator Gerard Brach and boasting a Morricone score… Bitter Moon (1992) is not to be confused with Button Moon, while to many it should be called Boring Moon, but this pre-Four Weddings Hugh Grant-starring drama ain’t all that bad… Death and the Maiden (1994) is another rather staid and heavy drama, this time with even less to recommend it… The Ninth Gate (1999) is a competent occult thriller, and a bit of a curate’s egg, being neither full return to form nor embarrassing attempt to relive former glories… The Pianist (2002) is Polanski’s most famous recent film, and sees him revisiting the occupied Poland of his youth via the best-selling autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman… Oliver Twist (2005) is yet another handsome, if this time rather far from brilliant, literary adaptation which presumably has little to do with any events in Polanski’s real life… and finally, The Ghost Writer (2010) is an upcoming adaptation of Robert Harris’ Blair-spearing political novel, The Ghost.

Pssst… Now you know all about Roman Polanski, why don’t you check out his Directorspective at the brilliant Barbican this month? Go on!

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