Roman Polanski
 Roman Polanski     (film director) | |
|---|---|
 Polanski with wife Emmanuelle Seigner at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival | |
| Born | 18 August 1933 Paris, France |
| Nationality | French, Polish |
| Ethnicity | Jewish |
| Spouse | • Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass • Sharon Tate • Emmanuelle Seigner |
Polish-French filmmaker who escaped the US for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. | |
Raymond Roman Thierry Polański is a French and Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor.
In 1977, Polanski was arrested for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sex with a minor in exchange for a probation-only sentence. The night before his sentencing hearing in 1978, he learned the judge planned to renege on the deal, so he fled the U.S. to Europe, where he continued his career. He remains a fugitive of the U.S. justice system. Further allegations of abuse have been made by other women.
The Ghost Writer
In 2010, he directed the political thriller The Ghost Writer, depicting a politician obviously based on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a CIA stooge.
There is a chronological match between the end of the filming at the beginning of autumn 2010 and the resurrection of Polanski's legal case in the USA, with a request for extradition, which was denied by Switzerland[1].
The WSWS reviewed the movies as:
Its central character, Adam Lang, is a figure obviously based on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the course of ghost-writing Lang's memoirs, the movie's unnamed ghost-writer comes across vital evidence which accounts for the utter subordination of the British prime minister to the administration in Washington- a subordination which goes as far as to implicate the Lang-Blair figure in war crimes...
In Berlin for the festival, Harris sought to downplay the parallels between Lang and Blair, but the similarities and political context drawn in his book and the film are evident. [...] Harris’s novel and script reduce the complexities of the British government's involvement in the Iraq war and its post-Second World War subservience to the US to a CIA conspiracy, but based on a talented cast and tight direction, Polanski has produced a compelling political thriller, which is unlikely to win him any new friends in Westminster or Washington.[2]
