A Study On Roman Polanski

Polish French director Roman Polanski has a nearly60-years-long career since he first started making films in the late1950s.Though morally controversial, Roman Polanski has still been nominated various times by important film awards with his outstanding artistic taste and talent.Polanski did not make lots of films during his long directing career, but some of his films definitely deserve positive comments with their artistic achievements.This paper has selected some early short films and seven feature films directed by Roman Polanski as study subjects covering his early Modernism, genre film and late literary adaptation. These film themes may not be about everything, but they are significantly involved in all Polanski’s films.The first chapter talks about some Polanski’s early short films and his feature film debut "Knife In the Water". The learning experience in Lodz Film School made contributions to the formation of his artistic taste and thought in his youth which has influenced his film-making ideology later on. Meanwhile, this chapter deals with his cinematic style when he was in Poland combining the impact from the postwar Polish film system and western modern art at the time.The second chapter analyses Polanski’s films and their cinematic style in a new period exemplifying his films shot in different countries separately and how these films absorbed and mixed different culture. From1960s to1970s, Polanski made this period his career climax successfully with western society transforming drastically.The third chapter explores Polanski’s unique but interesting literary taste, especially when it comes to the adaptation of classical literature and contemporary plays. We can see the impact from those masters such as Beckett, Kafka and Pinter and his own contributions to literary adaptation and the uniqueness presented. The last chapter analyses the autobiographical effects in this director’s films which cannot be avoided exposing his real life under a "mask" and talks about his award-winning film "The Pianist" which put his personal life tragedy together with his artistic talent.Through all the analyses, this paper has affirmed Roman Polanski’s contributions to contemporary western cinema.