The Fearless Vampire Killers

“Parody was never my intention. I wanted to make a fairy tale, something that’s frightening as well as fun, but also an adventure story.” – Roman Polanski

Fresh from psychological thriller Cul-de-Sac (1966), filmmaker Roman Polanski shifted gears with his next effort, the horror comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), where he would meet, cast and fall in love with his second wife, Sharon Tate. It saw the director in a playful mood – as if he was cheekily thumbing his nose at the successful Hammer horror movies populated with beautiful, busty women, bright red blood, and exotic Eastern European settings, usually filmed on a set. He proceeded to turn many of these elements on their head. So much so that distributor MGM decided to market the film as a farce and changed the title, saddling it with the clunky addition, Or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck, as well as cutting several minutes out. Over the years, the excised footage has been restored and the film can be seen as it was originally intended.

“Deep in the heart of Transylvania,” we meet Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran) and his assistant Alfred (Polanski) as they hunt for vampires. It’s a cold night as they make their way through a snowy landscape. Their sleigh is set upon briefly by a pack of wild dogs that only Alfred seems to notice, which establishes a slightly ominous tone. They arrive at a small village where Abronsius has to be thawed out. As he and Alfred warm-up, the older man notices strings of garlic hanging all over the inn and the nervous owner is afraid to mention the nearby castle – their ultimate destination. While staying overnight, they encounter Sarah (Tate), the innkeeper’s beautiful daughter, whom Alfred becomes fond of, and hobbies include taking numerous baths.

Polanski creates an off-kilter vibe during these scenes as he establishes the relationship between Abronsius and Alfred and the goings-on in the inn, which they inadvertently get mixed up in to comic effect. There’s a nice moment where Alfred charms Sarah by making a snowman only to get hit with a snowball by some meddlesome local children. Polanski gradually eases us into the main story by sprinkling little moments of comedy among a study of the villagers as a hard-working, superstitious lot.

Watching these early scenes with Alfred and Sarah flirting with each other one can’t help but think about how Polanski and Tate were falling in love with each other in real life. He was no doubt captivated by her considerable beauty, and this is evident in the way he films her, with close-ups that highlight her radiant face. It’s obvious that the camera loved her.

Almost 25 minutes in and Polanski masterfully orchestrates a riveting scene where, while taking a bath, Sarah is attacked from above by Count von Krolock (Ferdy Mayne) that begins with her noticing flakes of snow falling around her. Krolock appears and savagely bites her neck. As she struggles desperately, Polanski shows the splashing bath water drenching the nearby door, which an unsuspecting Alfred is behind. It is a sudden, jarring attack that is very effective in shaking things up after all the light comedy that came before it.

Another beautifully orchestrated set piece, and the one that the film is most famous for, sees the Count introduce Sarah as the latest addition to his undead “family” as the other members partake in a minuet that is quite a sight to behold – ghouls pretending to be aristocrats – while our heroes attempt to masquerade as one of them. It is a sequence that best typifies the film as a whole – the deft marriage of horror and comedy. It’s a tricky balancing act that Polanski maintains throughout. Unlike a lot of horror movies, he doesn’t wallpaper the film with scary music. He uses it judiciously and knows when silence, like when the vampire hunters sneak into the Count’s castle, is more suspenseful with just sound effects.

Abronsius is a methodical, wise old man but also physically frail, and Alfred is his bumbling, timid apprentice. They are hardly the heroic, able-bodied men of action like swashbuckler Captain Kronos in the film of the same name, but that’s the point of The Fearless Vampire Killers as Polanski deliberately goes against this convention for laughs. Jack MacGowran and Polanski play well off each other with the former trying to teach his assistant the ways to detect and kill vampires because he is getting too old physically, while the latter is too clumsy to do the job, stumbling over each other, bumping into things and generally being inept. They have their moments of competency, though, like when Alfred gracefully skis down the snow-covered countryside in pursuit of a newly turned bloodsucker.

The idea for The Fearless Vampire Killers came to Roman Polanski while on a skiing vacation in Austria during post-production on Cul-de-Sac. He and his co-writer Gerard Brach had been thinking about making a “vampire spoof” for some time. Polanski remembered seeing horror movies in Paris and audiences laughing at them. He said, “Why not make a film they could laugh with, rather than at?” He also wanted to eschew the “tatty rural location situated conveniently near a film studio,” for “swaths of frosted pine trees, massive snowdrifts, and majestic mountain peaks.”

Accompanying Polanski on this trip was his producing partner Gene Gutowski. As they were putting the finishing touches on Cul-de-Sac, the latter met with American producer Martin Ransohoff, joint head of Filmways, a production company financed by and had a distribution deal with MGM. He liked Cul-de-Sac and agreed to distribute it in the United States. He also wanted to work with Polanski and Gutowski on their next project, then-entitled, The Vampire Killers.

Ransohoff had a reputation for clashing with filmmakers and Polanski was no different. The director wanted to cast Jill St. John in the role of Sarah because he envisioned the character as a redhead, but the producer wanted Sharon Tate, a young actress he had been grooming for stardom. Polanski felt that she didn’t look Jewish enough for the role but finally agreed to do a screen test with her. Once he saw Tate in a red wig and her character’s costume, he was convinced that she was right for the role.

Polanski wanted to cast himself in the co-lead role of Alfred but neither Gutowski or Ransohoff thought he was right for the part and were concerned that he wouldn’t be able to juggle double duty as director and actor. Polanski had experience as an actor and to appease his producers did a screen test. Co-head of Filmways, John Calley, was convinced and pressed his business partner to go with the choice.

Gutowski scouted locations and found an Austrian castle in a snowbound area in Northeastern Italy. The production was all set to film there but a day before they were to fly out an unexpected change in weather caused all the snow to melt! The production scrambled to find another suitable location and settled on a snowy plateau near an Italian ski resort. There was no castle and so sets would have to be built at the studio for an additional cost, causing the budget to increase from $1 million to $2 million.

Filming lasted five months and had its share of difficulties. Principal photography took place in a snowy environment and the crew had to haul heavy equipment through the snow over long distances every day. After shooting there, the production moved to the confines of the studio backlot in England. Due to the late start in filming, their time was limited because Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was taking up a lot of studio space. As a result, the production moved to nearby Elstree Studios.

Ransohoff did not like the time it took for principal photography to be completed or the number of takes Polanski would do – sometimes over 40 for a given scene but Gutowski defended his friend’s methods. The lengthy shoot, coupled with a busy shooting schedule at Elstree, forced the production to move yet again to Pinewood Studios.

Polanski finished his rough cut and then showed it to Ransohoff and Calley in Los Angeles. Ransohoff didn’t like it and told Polanski that it was too long and needed to be reworked, which was his right contractually as the studio could cut their own version in North America while the director could release his own version internationally. After he went off to make Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Polanski had a chance to see the version with Ransohoff’s changes and was horrified to find that he changed the title to Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck, redubbed all the actors so they would sound more American, tweaked the score, and cut 20 minutes out. Understandably upset, Polanski said at the time, “I’ve called them and asked them to have my name removed because I don’t want credit for a film I didn’t really make. The one now showing is far from the one I filmed.”

In addition, the truncated version received negative critical notices and MGM cut their losses, barely giving it a theatrical release. It didn’t screen in L.A. until almost a year later at midnight showings. Polanski’s film did find a second life at regional college film societies all over the country that rented 16mm copies of it due his rising popularity with the success of Rosemary’s Baby.

While the film’s humor is hardly subtle – it relies a lot on physical gaffs – it isn’t quite as broadly slapstick as, say, Young Frankenstein (1974). The Fearless Vampire Killers has the occasional moments of dread. It was an approach that Polanski would apply again in the underrated supernatural thriller The Ninth Gate (1999). The film ends in a fashion that is consistent with many of the filmmaker’s other efforts: pessimistically as Alfred’s love for Sarah proves to be his last inept act that he is unable to bumble his way out of thereby dooming humanity, much like the ill-fated protagonists in Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown (1974). As Glenn Erickson put it so well in a review, the ending shows “the ineffectualness of virtue in the face of organized evil.”

SOURCES

Nuiman, Philip and Constantine Nasr. “Dancing with Vampires: Roman Polanski’s Homage to Fangs, Fairy Tales and Fearless Vampire Killers.” Little Shoppe of Horrors. October 2011.

Chinatown

Chinatown (1974) is a rare example of a collection of artists at the height of their powers coming together to produce a masterpiece born out of conflict and strife. Fresh from his success on The Last Detail (1973), screenwriter Robert Towne wrote a mystery inspired by the California Water Wars that took place in Southern California at the beginning of the 20th century and involved a series of disputes over water with Los Angeles interests securing water rights in the Owens Valley. Studio chief and producer Robert Evans bankrolled the project and Towne wrote the screenplay with his good friend Jack Nicholson in mind. The actor was coming off the critically-acclaimed The Last Detail asked Roman Polanski to direct. The two men had been looking for a project to work together on and chose this one. The end result is a wonderfully complex and nuanced tale of greed and corruption whose deeper meanings and rich attention to detail reveal themselves upon subsequent viewings.

Jerry Goldsmith’s somber score, complete with mournful trumpet, sets a melancholic tone over the opening credits, evoking a bygone era. Polanski offsets this with the playful opening scene that sees private investigator J.J. Gittes (Nicholson) showing a client (Burt Young) photographs of his cheating wife. Looking visibly upset, Burt Young offsets this with exaggerated whimpers and distressed histrionics, which provokes Gittes to tell him, “Alright Curly, enough is enough. You can’t eat the venetian blinds. I just had ‘em installed on Wednesday.” Gittes dresses nice and has an expensive-looking office but he plies his trade in the seedy underbelly of society with a specialty in infidelity.

He meets a woman calling herself Evelyn Mulwray (Diane Ladd) and she hires him to uncover evidence that her husband Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), the chief engineer of Water and Power for the city, is cheating on her. At a hearing that Gittes attends, Mulwray receives considerable flack from local farmers accusing him of stealing water that is ruining their livelihood, but refuses to approve the building of a dam because of the danger it poses. Gittes and his associates follow Mulwray around for a couple of days until they find him cheating on his wife, which naturally makes a big stink in the press.

The real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) shows up with her lawyer and threatens legal action, which prompts Gittes to dig deeper. Why would someone pose as Hollis Mulwray’s wife and set him up? To complicate matters, Hollis Mulwray winds up dead, found drowned in a dried waterbed. Evelyn hires Gittes to find out what happened, which sees him cross paths with the powerful Noah Cross (John Huston), her father and former business partner of her late husband.

By the time Jack Nicholson made Chinatown he was on quite the roll with films like Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), and the aforementioned The Last Detail, among others, under his belt. As a result, he brings a relaxed confidence to his performance, effortlessly inhabiting the role of J.J. Gittes. He starts off playing the character as a man comfortable with his lot in life and is good at what he does. Over the course of the film, this confidence gradually erodes as Gittes gets deeper into the Mulwray murder. I like how Towne’s script pokes holes in Gittes’ character, showing his flaws despite a desire to appear classy, like when he tells his office cohorts an off-color joke unaware that Evelyn Mulwray is listening to the whole thing behind him. Nicholson’s glee in telling the joke is palpable and then he brilliantly turns on a dime when Gittes realizes that Mulwray heard what he said. Nicholson does a fantastic job of maintaining a tricky balancing act of playing a man brimming with confidence only to have it chipped away, bit by bit, as he finds himself embroiled in affairs much larger than himself.

Faye Dunaway is well-cast as the icy femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray. The actress maintains a frosty exterior as she portrays a woman harboring a dark secret. Evelyn forms an uneasy alliance with Gittes and the scenes between Dunaway and Nicholson crackle with an intriguing tension, which apparently mirrored their off-screen relationship as well. As the film progresses, Gittes melts some of Evelyn’s icy exterior and yet Dunaway still manages to hint at further depths to her character that are eventually revealed towards the end.

Polanski sprinkles playful moments throughout the film to offset the pervasive pessimistic mood. This is evident in a scene where Gittes runs afoul of two henchmen, one whom is played by the director. Polanski’s first line is said off-camera – “Hey there, kitty cat,” and he proceeds to slice open Gittes’ nose with a switchblade. For a good portion of the film, Nicholson sports a large bandage on his face, which subversively messes with the leading man’s good looks. A move like that would never fly with studio executives today who are scared to death of messing with any formula that could cost them money and this is just one of the chances Chinatown takes.

Another fantastic scene is Gittes’ lunch with Noah Cross where we get to see the legendary John Huston play off against Nicholson. The former exudes the confidence of a powerful man like Cross and the actor is clearly having fun with the role, like how he repeatedly mispronounces Gittes’ name as a way of subtly exerting control over the private investigator. Cross expertly dances around Gittes’ questions but the latter doesn’t back down either. The scene is a fascinating battle of wills as Gittes begins to realize what he’s up against.

Polanski brings an assured touch to the direction, masterfully utilizing the widescreen aspect ratio with the help of cinematographer John A. Alonzo. They manage to simultaneously evoke classic Hollywood cinema with the retro-noir period trappings while also bringing a European sensibility, mostly through the psychological underpinnings of the story. These visuals and the atmosphere that is created is greatly enhanced by Jerry Goldsmith’s score, which not only evokes a more elegant time but also expertly services a given scene, like being suspenseful when necessary and so on.

Thanks to all the political assassinations that occurred in the 1960s and then the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, government corruption was very much on peoples’ minds at the time Chinatown was released and this is reflected in the story that sees Gittes mired in corruption. Like most private investigator/mystery stories, much of the pleasure comes from the colorful characters Gittes encounters and how he unravels the various layers of the complicated plot.

While walking in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, screenwriter Robert Towne came up with the idea for a detective story about the corruption of the land by developers. While filming Drive, He Said (1971) in Eugene, Oregon in the spring of 1970, he checked out a book from the local library by Carey McWIlliams about the history of oil and water exploitation in Southern California. It inspired him to base one of the crucial characters on William Mulholland, a pioneering Los Angeles water-supply engineer.

For the retro-vibe that he wanted to evoke, Towne read a photo essay entitled “Raymond Chandler’s L.A.” in New West magazine and drove around the city while also looking at old postcards that reminded him of “the sights and sounds of childhood.” He also read plenty of hardboiled fiction by Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, especially the former for his descriptions of L.A.

Towne first worked on the characters of Noah Cross and the incestuous relationship with his daughter Evelyn Mulwray. Then, he switched his focus to the detective-hero, which he named J.J. Gittes after a mutual friend of his and Jack Nicholson’s, Harry Gittes. Towne and Nicholson had been good friends for some time and the former tailored the role of Gittes specifically for the latter. While writing the script, the scope and density of the script was daunting for Towne as he found himself trying “one way and another casually to reveal mountains of information about dams, orange groves, incest, elevator operators, etc.”

Initially, Towne envisioned himself directing, “figuring no matter how bad I was as a director, if I could tell a decent story they would watch it.” However, he was broke at the time and need money to finish the script. Paramount Studios executive and producer Robert Evans originally approached Towne to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby for a sizable paycheck but he passed on the assignment to focus on Chinatown instead and made a deal that gave the studio a 30-day option on it.

Nicholson had wanted to work with film director Roman Polanski for some time. They were friends socially and Nicholson called and asked him to direct Chinatown. The director was happily living in Rome, recovering from making What? (1972) and was not keen on returning to the United States, a place where his wife Sharon Tate had been brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969. Originally, Evans wanted Peter Bogdanovich to direct but when he passed the producer persuaded Polanski to fly to L.A. and meet with Towne. Aside from the chance to work with the likes of Nicholson and Towne, Polanski was low on funds and his bills were accumulating. He needed money.

Polanski read Towne’s initial draft and felt it was “brimming with ideas, great dialogue, and masterful characterization,” but that it “suffered from an excessively convoluted plot that veered off in all directions.” Towne wasn’t thrilled with Polanski’s criticisms but was convinced by the powers that be to do some rewrites on the script. Polanski found the revised draft even more difficult to follow and didn’t like the ambiguity of the film’s title, insisting that at least one scene take place in that location. Towne had gotten the title from a Hungarian vice cop who told him he had worked vice in Chinatown in L.A. When the writer asked him what he did there, the cop replied, “As little as possible.”

Polanski felt that Towne was prone to procrastination and so he created a routine consisting of eight-hour work days and partying away the night. The writer remembers, “The mood at night was—it was the 1970s.  We had a good time.” The rewriting consisted of Towne re-sequencing scenes and clarifying the complicated plot while Polanski worked on the dialogue and changing the focus so that the entire film is from Gittes’ point-of-view. Within eight weeks they had created a shooting script. Towne has said that he fought with Polanski every day and Evans said the final product was the result of “a lot of arguments, fights. There was warfare throughout the picture, but that’s healthy.” After the dust settled, Polanski and Towne were no longer speaking to each other.

When it came to casting, Evans picked then-wife Ali MacGraw to play Evelyn Mulwray but when she ran off to marry actor Steve McQueen, he offered the part to Jane Fonda who turned it down. Polanski suggested Faye Dunaway who he knew socially and liked her “retro” look but Evans didn’t like the idea and considered the actress to be trouble.

Polanski’s approach to filming Chinatown was not as a classic black and white movie “but as a film about the Thirties seen through the camera eye of the Seventies.” He insisted on shooting in color and Panavision. He originally hired legendary cinematographer Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons) but when he didn’t work out, Polanski skewed younger with John Alonzo (Harold and Maude) instead.

When filming began in the fall of 1973, Polanski and Dunaway did not get along. According to him, she fretted over her appearance, didn’t always know her lines, and bothered him to rewrite them. When he did she would then go back to the original dialogue. She would ask him for her character’s motivation and he screamed at her that the salary she was being paid was all the motivation she needed. It got so bad between them that Evans arranged a meeting with Dunaway, her agent and Polanski. Evans decided to keep Dunaway off the set for three weeks to let things cool down and when she returned the actress no longer spoke to Polanski and was all business when it came to direction. The actress recalled, “I thought Roman was thwarting me and not supporting me.”

Nicholson wasn’t crazy about Polanski’s habit for multiple takes and being given line readings – two things he hated as an actor. Nicholson recognized that Polanski was a brilliant filmmaker who liked to argue and adjusted accordingly. During filming, Polanski made two significant changes to Towne’s script with Evans’ approval, much to the writer’s chagrin and who subsequently felt betrayed. The most notable one was changing the ending, which he made much more nihilistic than Towne intended, prompting the writer to call it, “the literal and ghoulishly bleak climax.” Years later and with the benefit of hindsight, Towne agrees that Polanski was right to change the ending.

When it came to post-production, Polanski hired classical composer Philip Lambro to score Chinatown. Seven weeks before the film’s premiere it was previewed in San Luis Obispo. It was a disaster according to Evans who recalled, “By the time the lights came up, half the audience had walked out, scratching their heads.” He felt that Lambro’s “dissonant, weird, scratchy” music was to blame. Evans delayed the film’s premiere and brought in Jerry Goldsmith to create a new score, which he did in a staggering ten days! According to Evans, seeing the film with Goldsmith’s music was like seeing a completely different film.

Not surprisingly, Chinatown received mixed reviews from the major critics back in the day. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and praised Polanski’s work: “He’s made a perceptive, loving comment on a kind of movie and a time in the nation’s history that are both long past. Chinatown is almost a lesson on how to experience this kind of movie.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Mr. Polanski and Mr. Towne have attempted nothing so witty and entertaining, being content instead to make a competently stylish, more or less thirties-ish movie that continually made me wish I were back seeing The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep. Others may not be as finicky.” The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael wrote, “The film holds you, in a suffocating way. Polanski never lets the story tell itself. It’s all over-deliberate, mauve, nightmarish; everyone is yellow-lacquered, and evil runs rampant. You don’t care who is hurt, since everything is blighted. And yet the nastiness has a look, and a fascination.” Finally, in his review for the Village Voice, Andrew Sarris wrote, “It is Polanski’s decision alone to tilt Chinatown toward tragedy that ultimately redeems the enormous contributions of the others. Yet even Polanski’s intense feeling for tragedy could never have been realized without the vision of tragedy expressed in Nicholson’s star-crossed eyes.” Finally, in his review for the Village Voice, Andrew Sarris wrote, “It is Polanski’s decision alone to tilt Chinatown toward tragedy that ultimately redeems the enormous contributions of the others. Yet even Polanski’s intense feeling for tragedy could never have been realized without the vision of tragedy expressed in Nicholson’s star-crossed eyes.” Chinatown was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including ones for Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Original Screenplay, winning for the latter.

Chinatown sheds light on one of the many dirty secrets of L.A. and shows how the expansion of the city didn’t come easily – a lot of wheels were greased in the process and lives were ruined because of all the money that was at stake. It was something that people in the ‘70s could relate to and this translated into commercial and critical success. Its legacy is an impressive one with flawed neo-noirs like Mulholland Falls (1996) and masterful ones like L.A. Confidential (1997) influenced by it. Towne and Nicholson even revisited the character of Gittes with The Two Jakes (1990) but without Polanski and it wasn’t as well-received, proving that the alchemy of Chinatown, with everything coming together like it did, was impossible to replicate. As of Gittes’ associates tells him at the end of the film, “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

SOURCES

Dunaway, Faye with Betsy Sharkey. Looking for Gatsby: My Life. Simon & Schuster. 1995.

Evans, Robert. The Kid Stays in the Picture. Hachette Books. 1994.

Iorio, Paul. “Sleuthing Chinatown.” Los Angeles Times. July 8, 1999.

King, Susan. “A Vintage L.A. Story.” Los Angeles Times. November 15, 2004

McGilligan, Patrick. Jack’s Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson. W.W. Norton & Company. 1995.

Meikle, Denis. Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out. Reynolds & Hearn Ltd. 2006.

Teachout, Terry. “The Perfect Film Score.” Wall Street Journal. July 10, 2009.

Frantic

By the time he had made Frantic (1988), filmmaker Roman Polanski was in need of a commercial hit at the box office. His previous film Pirates (1986) bombed spectacularly both with audiences and critics. In a canny move, he cast Harrison Ford as the lead actor in his new film. As luck would have it, Ford was in a very interesting place, career-wise. Thanks to the massive success of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, he had the clout and the confidence to try riskier films that played around with the public’s perception of him. With Blade Runner (1982), Ford played an emotionally distant cop hunting down replicants in a future dystopia. In Witness (1985), he played a gruff Philadelphia cop who hides out in Amish country when he uncovers corruption in his department. Mosquito Coast (1986) may have been his most challenging role as an inventor who moves his entire family to the jungles of South America and gradually loses his mind.

Finally, he took a stab at comedy with Working Girl (1988) playing a no-nonsense business executive helping a plucky young secretary masquerading as a financial executive broker an ambitious merger deal. Throw in Frantic and you have a pretty diverse collection of films that saw Ford unafraid to play abrasive even sometimes unlikable characters. With Polanski’s film, Ford would be on the director’s turf, thrust in a world of moral ambiguity with a dash of paranoia. It made for a fascinating clash of styles and results in an excellent thriller and something of an under-appreciated work in both men’s filmography.

“Do you know where you are?” These are the first words spoken in Frantic and they foreshadow the feelings of displacement that the film’s protagonist will experience. Sondra Walker (Betty Buckley) says these words to her husband Dr. Richard Walker (Harrison Ford) as they drive from the airport to their Paris hotel in a taxi cab. He’s there to attend a convention and en route their taxi develops a flat tire. The driver is unable to fix it which is not a good start to the Walkers’ trip so far and a bad omen for what is to come.

Polanski establishes the dynamic between Richard and Sondra in a relatively short time as they get settled in their hotel room. Harrison Ford and Betty Buckley do an excellent job portraying a couple that have clearly been married for some time. This is evident in the familiar shorthand between them, like how they act towards each other, the playful needling Sondra gives her husband about the swanky luncheon he’s supposed to have with the chairman of the convention at the Eiffel Tower. This early scene also establishes how out of his element Richard is as she points out that he doesn’t speak French and doesn’t even know how to use the hotel room phone. We see how easily they can get on each other’s nerves and how they quickly reconcile like any couple who has been in love for a long period of time.

They soon discover that Sondra grabbed the wrong suitcase at the airport and has someone else’s luggage. Richard takes a shower and in those few minutes his wife disappears. Polanski places the camera in the shower with Richard so that we see and hear what he does. The camera slowly pushes in in an ever-so slightly way – it’s subtle but does make you wonder what’s happening in the other room. Initially, Richard most likely assumes that Sondra went out to buy some clothes or is in another part of the hotel. However, enough time passes that he becomes understandably concerned and decides to search the hotel lobby. Polanski’s camera follows Richard from a distance so that he looks slightly diminished and out of sorts in this strange and disorienting place.

When the hotel staff is unable to help him, Richard hits the streets. We quickly see how disadvantaged he is as he wanders into a flower shop and tries to explain to the two people who work there about his wife. They don’t speak English and assume that he wants to buy her flowers. He has slightly better luck at a nearby bar when a scruffy-looking, bearded barfly (played by Jean-Pierre Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon) claims that a couple of his friends saw Sondra being forcibly pushed into a car. When he asks the man to take him to the spot where it happened he finds her bracelet on the ground.

Richard goes to the local cops and then the American Embassy but neither are much help, mired as they are in bureaucracy and paperwork. Understandably frustrated, he decides to conduct his own investigation, one that takes him through a Paris you won’t see in any tourism ads. Along the way, he tries some cocaine (?!), discovers a dead body and meets Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner), a mysterious and beautiful young woman who picked up Sondra’s suitcase. With Michelle’s help, he begins to figure out what happened to his wife.

Harrison Ford is quite good as a man clearly out of his element, the classic stranger in a strange land. He plays a normal guy thrust into extraordinary circumstances. As the film progresses, Richard becomes more savvy and uses his intelligence to piece things together. This is not your typical man-of-action role that we normally associate with Ford. For example, there’s a nice scene where Richard takes a break from searching for his wife and calls home just so he can hear the reassuring sound of his daughter’s voice. Ford does a nice job of showing his character on the verge of tears, trying to keep it together as he chit chats with one of his children who is oblivious as to what is happening to her parents in Paris. Polanski lets the scene play out in one long, uninterrupted take, the camera gradually pushing in on Ford and focusing on his visibly upset face. He conveys a touching vulnerability in this scene and watching this film again is a sobering reminder of what an excellent actor he can be.

Of note, the always reliable character actor John Mahoney has a minor role as an ineffectual American bureaucrat who does little to help Richard and proves to be more of an annoyance than anything else. And what kind of influence did Grace Jones have on Polanski to get her song “I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango)” played so often and prominently in the film? The lyrics to the song are certainly appropriate to what Richard is going through in a kind of New Wave meets film noir way as Jones describes the dark side of the nightlife in Paris.

After the failure of Pirates, Polanski began work in Paris on an adaptation of the Belgian comic strip character Tin-Tin with screenwriter Melissa Mathison, Ford’s then-wife. The actor flew in to visit her just as Warner Brothers asked Polanski if he had a project. The director remembers, “I said yes, of course; it was so good to be asked, because my last film, Pirates, was such a flop, so painful in every way, I was in the deepest depression.” However, he had to come up with an idea and thought of a thriller set in Paris. Polanski talked to his writing partner for 25 years, Parisian screenwriter Gerard Brach about a story and then he told Ford who agreed to do the film. The studio agreed to finance and distribute it with a budget under $20 million. With Frantic, Polanski wanted to show the Paris he knew, “the one with garbage collectors, not the one in Irma La Douce.”

The rest of the cast fell into place with Polanski being impressed by the maturity of Betty Buckley in her audition tape, and 21-year-old ex-model Emmanuelle Seigner who the director had been living with for three years. On set, Polanski has a reputation for being a very hands-on director in order to get exactly what he wants out of an actor. For the scene where Ford’s character almost falls off a steep roof, he and Polanski actually climbed out on it to work out the shots. Either one of them could have been killed had they slipped. Buckley remembers that during the climactic shoot-out, “I knelt beside a woman who’d been shot, as Harrison checked out her wounds, Roman directed me to see a horrible injury that wasn’t actually there.” Unhappy with her reaction after multiple takes, Polanski secretly told his makeup man to create extremely gory wounds. On the next take, Buckley remembers, “it was so ugly I wanted to vomit. I totally lost it on camera, which was not my choice. But Roman got exactly what he wanted.”

Most critics heralded Frantic as a return to form for Polanski after the disappointing Pirates. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “even with its excesses, Frantic is a reminder of how absorbing a good thriller can be.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Ford’s performance: “He's able to convey great determination, as well as a restraint that barely masks the character's mounting rage, and he makes a compelling if rather uncomplicated hero.” The Washington Post’s Hal Hinson wrote, “What Frantic signals is a return to form for the turbulent Pole. It’s not great, but it’s good enough to be excited about, both for itself and the promise it holds out for the future.” In his review for the Globe and Mail, Jay Scott wrote, “The humor, much of it built into Harrison Ford’s phenomenal characterization of a reasonable man drowning in irrationality, is deft and sly.” Finally, Newsweek magazine’s Jack Kroll felt that “Frantic is Polanski’s best movie since the 1974 Chinatown.”

Frantic’s premise is pure Hitchcock albeit with Polanski’s trademark perversity. The screenplay only doles out information as Richard uncovers it which helps us identify with him – we only know what he does. The director doesn’t skimp on the thriller aspects of the film either. There’s a tension-filled scene where Richard scrambles across a very precarious rooftop with the piece of luggage that everyone seems to be after. There’s also a car chase through the streets of Paris as Richard pursues the men who have his wife. Unlike most thrillers made nowadays that are all frenetic action and spastic editing, Polanski lets his story breath. He takes the time to establish the main characters and allows us to empathize with Richard’s situation, one in which is eerily relevant to today’s political climate and feeds on the anxiety Americans have with traveling abroad. Polanski still fulfills genre conventions at the film’s climax with an exciting shoot-out but delivers a bittersweet ending reminiscent of his 1970s output and this must’ve been jarring to audiences at the time expecting an uplifting ending more typical of Ford’s mainstream work in the 1980s.

Check out Movie City News which did a really nice appreciation of Polanski's film.


SOURCES

McBride, Stewart. "Roman Empire." The Advertiser. March 12, 1988.

Scott, Jay. "Polanski Has Transformed Loss into Artistic Gain." Globe and Mail. February 28, 1988.

DVD of the Week: Repulsion: Criterion Collection

Repulsion (1965) was Roman Polanski’s second feature after the auspicious debut of Knife in the Water (1962) and established him as a filmmaker with a knack for conveying psychological horror. The film is also a startling study of loneliness and one person’s descent into madness. The success of Repulsion would soon attract the attention of Hollywood and lead to the playful horror film Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and the horror masterpiece Rosemary’s Baby (1968).

We meet Carol (Catherine Deneuve) working at a beauty salon in London. She keeps nodding off much to the annoyance of her client. She then meets her boyfriend and they have a conversation where she appears to be distracted and barely contributing. Carol seems unable or unwilling to relate to anyone, even her older sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux). She sits alone in her apartment and Polanski amplifies the sounds of dripping water and a ticking clock to reflect her slowly deteriorating mind. There are also shots of Carol walking the streets of London to the jazzy soundtrack of Chico Hamilton that provide a snapshot of the city – one of the hippest places in the world at the time. Carol forgets about a dinner date with her boyfriend and he finds her on a street bench staring at a crack in the sidewalk. What makes what’s happening to her all the more disturbing is that Polanski gives us no explanation as to why this is happening to her – it just is. When Helen, one of Carol’s last ties to reality, leaves for vacation with her boyfriend, she really goes off the deep end which culminates in a truly chilling conclusion.

Catherine Deneuve delivers an astonishing performance as a lost, lonely woman losing touch with reality. So much of her performance is internalized and she conveys Carol’s madness in the listless way she seems to be going through the motions, or in her eyes, the glazed expression she has while zoning out at work. In the hands of a lesser actress some of the things she does or the way she behaves could come across as silly but there is a complete conviction to her performance, a willingness to go all the way which is impressive to watch. There are large portions of the film where Deneuve is acting on her own and reacting to her environment, or what she perceives to be her environment, that is not an easy thing to pull off but she is more than up to the task.

Throughout most of Repulsion, and especially after Helen leaves for vacation, we question what is actually reality and what is only happening in Carol’s fevered imagination. At a certain point it becomes obvious that she is becoming a danger to herself and to those around her and yet no one seems to notice or wants to get involved, her sister included. But then do any of us stop to help that crazy homeless person talking to themselves? The sad reality of Repulsion is that Carol has so far alienated herself from society that she is beyond help and that is the true horror and tragedy of Polanski’s film.

Special Features:

There is an audio commentary by director Roman Polanski and actress Catherine Deneuve. Polanski considers the film one of his “shabbiest” in terms of technique. He says that the entire film is intended to be seen from Carol’s point-of-view. Deneuve says that she lived in London and says that it is easy to feel lonely in the city. She talks about the challenge of filming on the noisy streets of the city. Polanski points out shots or camerawork that he would do differently now while Deneuve says that he was difficult to work with but that it helped her performance.

Also included are two trailers.

“A British Horror Film” is a retrospective featurette with key crew members, including Polanski. They talk about the origins of the project – how they came up with the story, the financing and so on. Everyone interviewed tells engaging anecdotes about how the film was made.

“Grand Ecran” was made for French television and features rare footage of Polanski and Deneuve at work on the set of the film. It provides fascinating insight into the director’s working methods at the time.

DVD of the Week: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

In the 1970s, Roman Polanski’s career was at its zenith with classics like The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971) and Chinatown (1974) but his personal life was in shambles. His wife, model-turned-actress Sharon Tate had been brutally murdered by the Charles Manson family. To make matters worse, on March 11, 1977, he was arrested in Los Angeles and charged on multiple counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. In February 1978, he fled the United States and has never returned.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008) is a documentary that re-opens the case and examines the subsequent investigation, interviewing the lawyers representing the case and the victim herself. It also examines the media firestorm that surrounded Polanski and the case. The doc spends time introducing all the major players involved in the case – the attorneys and the judge – and then proceeds to take a look at how it all played out with tons of archival footage.

Wanted and Desired paints a fascinating, complex portrait of Polanski – the controversial filmmaker and the devastation left in the wake of his wife’s murder. It also helps set the stage for the court case, which unfolded in a very unconventional fashion and in a way that neither attorney could have predicted. Judge Rittenband, who presided over the case, was easily manipulated and liked to be surrounded by celebrities. He comes across as somewhat incompetent and out of his depth.

While Wanted and Desired does create some empathy for Polanski and provides possible motivation for his actions, it also demonstrates that, at times, he was his own worst enemy. This doc is a fascinating look not just at Polanski, but the byzantine machinations of the U.S. legal system and how justice is rarely blind. It doesn’t excuse what Polanski did but puts it into historical context and shows how the judge’s personal views impacted the case, changing the filmmaker’s life forever.

Special Features:

There is an audio commentary by director Marina Zenovich and editor Joe Bini. She says that it took five years to get the film made: two to get financing and three to actually do it. She also talks about the challenge of merging Polanski’s life and the court case. Zenovich points out that it was hard getting archival footage from the 1970s because much of it had been either taped over or lost. Bini talks a lot about the structure of the doc. – for example, where should they start the story? This quite a chatty track as Zenovich and Bini talk about how they put this film together.

Also included are five deleted scenes that feature the current L.A. District Attorney and his thoughts on Judge Rittenband. Prosecutor Roger Gunson returns to Rittenband’s old courtroom. He also shares some of his memories of the case.

There are “Extra Interviews” with various attorneys talking about the case then and now, including the possibility that Polanski may come back to the U.S. They also discuss the possibility that he might be pardoned.

“Friends and Colleagues Talk about Polanski” feature several childhood friends and people who have worked with Polanski on films in the past. They talk about his rough upbringing during World War II and his time spent in film school in Poland. They take us through various periods in his life. Naturally, Mia Farrow talks about making Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and speaks fondly of working with Polanski.

“Writers of Polanski” features three journalists talking about Polanski, the man and his career.

Finally, there is “Will He Ever Come Back?”, a question posed to various people in the doc. Not surprisingly they almost all say no for a variety of reasons.

The Ninth Gate

Critical and commercial reaction to Roman Polanski’s films has always been mixed at best. To say that they are an acquired taste is an understatement. The Ninth Gate (1999) is no exception. Despite what the film’s misleading trailer promoted at the time of its initial release, it is not a straight-forward supernatural thriller but rather showcases the auteur in a darkly humorous mood as he plays around with the conventions of this genre.

Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is an unscrupulous book dealer whose motivation is purely for financial gain. He swindles a naïve couple from a set of rare and priceless books in an amusing scene that sets up his character beautifully. A very rich book collector by the name of Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) hires Corso to validate his recently purchased copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, one of only three copies that exist in the world. The book contains nine engravings which, when correctly deciphered and the interpretations properly spoken, are supposed to conjure the Devil. Balkan believes that only one book is authentic so he hires Corso to track down each copy and verify their authenticity. It seems like a simple enough task but as Corso soon finds out, someone does not want him to complete the job. He crosses paths with an odd assortment of characters, from a mysterious woman (Emmanuelle Seigner) who seems to help him in his quest, to another, more obviously evil, woman, Laina Telfer (Lena Olin) intent on impeding his progress and quite possibly trying to kill him.

Polanski received the screenplay by Enrique Urbizu and was so taken by it that he read the book it was based on, El Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte. He liked the novel because, "I saw so many elements that seemed good for a movie. It was suspenseful, funny, and there were a great number of secondary characters that are tremendously cinematic.” The novel featured several intertwined plots and so Polanski decided to write his own draft with long-time screenwriting partner, John Brownjohn (they had collaborated previously on Tess, Pirates and Bitter Moon). Perez-Reverte’s book contains numerous literary references and a subplot concerning Corso’s investigation into an unpublished chapter of The Three Musketeers. Polanski and Brownjohn jettisoned these elements and focused on one particular plot line: Corso’s pursuit of the authentic copy of The Nine Gates. For Polanski, the story had “all the ingredients that I like. It’s a great dose of a certain kind of irony and humor, and a bit of the supernatural or metaphysical or whatever you call it. Suspense and a central character, which I found very appealing.”

Johnny Depp became attached to the project as early as 1997 when he met Polanski at the Cannes Film Festival promoting his directorial debut The Brave (1997) that was in competition. Initially, the veteran filmmaker did not think that Depp was right for the role of Corso because the character was 40 years old. Polanski was thinking of casting an older actor but Depp was persistent and wanted to work with him. According to the director, Corso's disheveled look was modeled after Raymond Chandler's famous sleuth, Philip Marlowe and there is a hint of that rumpled cynical vibe that is the trademark of that character. Hints of friction between Depp and Polanski while working on the film surfaced in the press around the time of its North American release. The actor said, "It's the director's job to push, to provoke things out of an actor.” Polanski told one interviewer, "He [Depp] decided to play it rather flat which wasn't how I envisioned it. And I didn't tell him it wasn't how I saw it."

Polanski cast Frank Langella as Balkan after seeing him in Adrian Lyne’s version of Lolita (1997). The director liked how the actor could be “charming and disturbing at the same time. Polanski cast Lena Olin as Liana Telfer because he needed “an actress who could give the impression that she’s an intellectual and, at the same time, a very sensuous woman capable of great bursts of violence.” Barbara Jefford was a last minute casting decision because the German actress originally chosen was struck with pneumonia and another actress could not learn the lines. Jefford came in with only a few days notice, learned her lines, and affected a German accent. Casting Jefford was a nice nod to her role in the Hammer Horror film, Lust for a Vampire (1971), where she played a countess who conducts a satanic ceremony to resurrect the body of her daughter.

Polanski admired the work of director of cinematography, Darius Khondji. “I love his lighting, because he knows how to make it both sophisticated and realistic. It keeps you on the fringe of fantasy so when you tip over into the supernatural, it doesn’t feel artificial at all,” he remarked in an interview. Khondji was also keen to work with the director. “I’ve always wanted to make a movie with a witchcraft or supernatural subtext – I love those kinds of stories. Roman is obviously one of the best directors in the world to work with in that genre.” Filming took place in France, Portugal and Spain during the summer of 1998.

While the film’s slow, deliberate pacing turned off many, there is a method to Polanski’s madness. The gradual pacing draws one into this engaging world. Perhaps it is the European setting but The Ninth Gate has an otherworldly atmosphere that is well done. The attention to detail and Khondji’s richly textured cinematography is exquisite and contributes to the overall mood of this vivid world. For example, the New York City scenes have a very 1940s vibe to them, utilizing brown and blacks with a warm gold glow from the street lamps. This is, in turn, contrasted with the green and red in the phone booth when Corso is trying to contact Balkan.

However, The Ninth Gate does not just have atmosphere going for it. Johnny Depp adds yet another intriguing character to his roster of unconventional roles. Corso is an unethical cheat who would do anything to make a buck. A rival describes him as a “vulture” and “unscrupulous” to which he freely admits to as he swindles four volumes of a rare edition of Don Quixote. He really does not care about others and yet, despite all of his reprehensible qualities, Depp’s natural charisma and charm make him kind of an endearing character that you care more about as he delves deeper into dangerous waters.

Balkan is a pompous windbag filled with self-importance but Frank Langella stops just short of being a cliched, moustache-twirling villain. He’s melodramatic and his presence is a nod to horror fans who recall his most famous role in Dracula (1979). Lena Olin’s dangerous Telfer widow evokes her femme fatale character from Romeo is Bleeding (1993). She smokes and even flashes a suggestive shot of her black garter-clad thighs in an attempt to seduce Corso and draw him into her web. She uses sex to get what she wants and when that fails she resorts to violence, attacking him in an animalistic frenzy.

Emmanuelle Seigner plays a mysterious woman who constantly shadows Corso and sometimes helps him out when gets in dangerous situations. Her motives do not become fully apparent until the end and even then it is open to interpretation. She helps him get inside the Fargas house and flies with him to France. Who or what is she? At one point, she literally glides down a flight of stairs and saves Corso from getting a beating at the hands of Telfer’s henchman.

This movie is ample with clues, a puzzle waiting to be solved. For example, in Balkan’s lecture at the beginning of the movie, he suggests that all witches are evil and in league with Satan. The irony is that Corso sleeps through this important clue to Balkan’s real intentions. There is also the odd, disregard for The Book of Shadows, a book worth an estimated $1 million. It is placed in constant peril and is even flicked with ash when the Ceniza brothers analyze it.

As for the cliché aspects of the film, one should be less concerned at anticipating plot twists and predictable elements in favor of simply enjoying the ride. Polanski probably was aware of this and decided to have fun with them. There is Balkan’s “666” password, Corso’s perchance for getting the crap kicked out of him, and the one-armed woman book dealer that all contribute to a playful mood that punctuates the film whenever it runs dangerously close to being too pretentious or self-important. Polanski approached the subject matter with a certain amount of skepticism as he said in an interview, "I don't believe in the occult. I don't believe. Period." He wanted to have fun with the genre. "There is a great number of clichés of this type in The Ninth Gate which I tried to turn around a bit. You can make them appear serious on the surface, but you cannot help but laugh at them." For Polanski, the appeal of the film was that it featured "a mystery in which a book is the leading character" and its illustrations "are also essential clues." The film has a playful tone but Polanski knows when to reign things in. As the horror is heightened so is the film’s dark comedy during the climactic moments. The screenplay is in perfect synchronicity with the direction.

For a film supposedly steeped in literature, the text, and by that I mean the story, is irrelevant. There are many clues scattered throughout the film that suggest this to be the case. One has to understand that among the characters there is a hierarchy. At the bottom level is the Frenchman that Corso meets early on. He owns one of The Nine Gates but is not all that interested in it except for the craftsmanship of its binding. Then, there is the Baroness who has spent her life writing about The Devil but never considered the meaning behind the images in her copy of The Nine Gates. And, if you take her word, she had the best clue because she claimed to see the Devil when she was a child. At the next level is Laina who is aware that the book has some power but is still focused on the words and not the images. Above her is Balkan who knows that the text is irrelevant and that the pictures are crucial but incorrectly thinks that the key to summoning the Devil lies in them.

The Ceniza brothers have the ability to tinker with the power of the pictures. They are allusive figures that seem whimsical when Corso first meets them and then are gone when he visits their now defunct store at the film’s end but thanks to the movers who are disassembling the store he gets the final piece of the puzzle. Corso starts off at the bottom because the value of books are neither in the text nor in the pictures but in their binding and availability. By the film’s end he realizes that the power is not in the pictures but the quest itself. There is the mysterious woman who resembles one of the figures in the engravings and actually provides the final clue for Corso to reach the end of the quest. The final layer is the viewer. That makes nine players and eight levels of consciousness created by Polanski.

The film struggled at the North American box office but performed strong enough in Europe to pull in a profit. However, critics generally were not kind to Polanski’s film. In Roger Ebert's review for the Chicago Sun-Times, he felt that the film's ending was lackluster, "while at the end I didn't yearn for spectacular special effects, I did wish for spectacular information – something awesome, not just a fade to white." Elvis Mitchell in The New York Times criticized the film for being "about as scary as a sock-puppet re-enactment of The Blair Witch Project, and not nearly as funny." However, Philip Strick's review in Sight and Sound magazine was more sympathetic, recognizing that it was "not particularly liked at first outing – partly because Johnny Depp, in fake grey temples, personifies the odious Corso of the book a little too accurately – the film is intricately well-made, deserves a second chance despite its disintegrations, and in time will undoubtedly acquire its own coven of heretical fans."

The Ninth Gate was a refreshing change from the trend of mundane Hollywood supernatural schlock at the time (i.e. The Bone Collector, Stigmata, End of Days, et al.) that took itself way too seriously and tried too hard. Unlike those films, The Ninth Gate never falls into that trap. It contains some truly vintage Polanski black humor that, alas, North American audiences and critics alike did not appreciate. They wanted meat and potatoes filmmaking that he has always resisted in favor of subversive thrills and following his own muse come hell or high water.

SOURCES

Arnold, Gary. “Polanski’s Dark Side.” Washington Times. March 11, 2000.

Howell, Peter. “Polanski’s Demons.” Toronto Star. March 3, 2000.

Schaefer, Stephen. “The Devil and Roman Polanski.” Boston Herald. March 10, 2000.

Shprintz, Janet. “Artisan Sues Polanski, Alleges He Took Money.” Variety. July 18, 2000.