Roman Polanski

The paper is part of the ‘Back Home’ research project carried out by a group of PhD students from the Polytechnic University of Milan within the framework of the Paquebot Laboratory. The goal of the present research is to reveal historical premises and sociocultural circumstances that provided the basis necessary for the development of the British post-war housing.
As one of the major sociocultural and architectural phenomena in the modern history of Great Britain, the new residential development has been taking shape under the impact of new realities of the post-war life. A descriptive research method has been applied in order to determine the most significant among these realities, such as the exigency of rebuilding and reforming the country immediately after the World War II, economic upheaval of the next two decades, introduction of new governmental policies, multiple cultural tendencies – form the Swinging Sixties to the Electric Eighties – and an intense critical debate of the period.
The study aims to answer the following research questions: what are the preconditions of the British post-war housing phenomenon, and what has determined the emergence of a new generation of architects ready to exploit new approaches to modernism and avant-garde in Great Britain in the 1950s-1980s. Special attention is paid to revealing innovative tendencies of art, fashion, music and cinema, which have transformed the country into the world’s cultural trendsetter for several decades and become a cardinal requirement for the residential development in post-war Great Britain.

Despite being nearly fifty-years-old, Roman Polanski's 1971 "Macbeth" is the most recent full-film version, and it stands the test of time. Overall, the acting, cinematography, and sets are high quality, and the screenplay, also written by Polanski, was nicely adapted from Shakespeare's play. In this movies review, I give a brief summary of the plot, followed by a synopsis of the film that highlights the adaptations made in transferring of the play to the screen. Lastly, I discuss Polanski's rhetorical choices: abbreviating some aspects in the play, while amplifying other aspects on screen.

An article written for educational screen studies magazine Screen Education. This article investigates the narrative devices implemented by Polanski in his film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1971), with particular focus on the haunting and sinister themes portrayed, alongside the very personal tragedies faced by the filmmaker only years prior to the film's production.

La visione del film “L’inquilino del terzo piano” può essere considerata una vera è propria esperienza all’interno del mondo paranoideo. Per buona parte del film qualsiasi spettatore non può fare altro che condividere con il protagonista il senso di inquietudine e angoscia verosimilmente provocati dall’ambiente grottesco. Tuttavia, durante lo sviluppo del film, l’atto identificativo che porta a parteggiare per Trelkovsky subisce un progressivo viraggio che sorge dalla presa di coscienza di essere dinanzi ad un caso di follia.
L’obbiettivo dell’elaborato sarà quello di osservare la qualità della patologia in tutto il sviluppo dalla fase premorbosa fino all’acuzie che determineranno il suicidio.  Dapprima verrà fornita un’analisi personologica di Trelkovsky per poi mostrare il cuore del disturbo generatore con l'appoggio delle teorie fenomenologiche e psicoanalitiche di riferimento.

This paper examines the objections leveled by semiologist and theoreticians of the visual media against the widely held belief that photographic and cinematographic images may act as realist maps of the extradiscursive world on the basis of their intrinsic features. It is argued that Saussurean semiology, as well as, to a lesser extent, Peircean semiotics, do not support the concept of photographic images as unchallengeable signs. Saussurean semiology, in particular, deals with photographs as with any other arbitrary sign. This semiological skepticism, the paper points out, informs the analysis of still photographs, cinema, and computer-generated images. Against these uncompromisingly antirealist claims, the paper sketches out a theoretical framework by means of which visual evidence may be reclaimed for realism. The argument suggests that, more than a matter of semiological analysis, what is at stake here is an axiomatic judgment about the consistency and stability of the lifeworld.

This paper is the sixth instalment of a book-length study provisionally entitled On Virtual Grounds: A Blueprint for a Postmimetic, Dialogical Realism. Previous instalments—entitled respectively “Toward a Dialogical and Postmimetic Realism,” “Classic Realism, the Nostalgic View,”  “Modernist Antirealism: Existential Alienation and the Solace of Form,” and “The Thingless Sign: The Structuralist and Poststructuralist Challenge against Referential Illusion,” and “The Politics of Mimesis”—are also available on Academia.edu.

How does a unit of space become a home? From a phenomenological perspective, the response to this question has been to accent the lived relations we have with spatiality, both subjectively and intersubjectively. Thus, for Gaston Bachelard, homliness is predicated on the rapport between memory and imagination working in tandem (Bachelard 1994). But what has been overlooked in this tradition is what I’m calling the prehistory of the home. The life of an apartment does not begin and end with our own occupancy. Rather, it extends itself in time to accommodate those who come after us, and it attests to a history prior to us. In this paper, I explore these relations and tensions through situating Roman Polanski’s 1976 film The Tenant in dialogue with Bachelard. Polanski’s film is notable for eliciting the uncanny and anxiety-provoking rapport between the prehistory of an apartment and the identity of the dweller, such that there is an increasing loss of distinction between the two.

Roman Polanski'nin Apartman Üçlemesi'nde kent hayatının bir sembolü olan apartmanlar, dışarısının tacizkar ve ihlalci yapılanmasını içeriye sızdırarak ruhsal aygıtı şekillendiren "tekinsiz" yapılar olarak ele alınmıştır. Apartman Üçlemesi'nde milyonlarca Polonyalının katledilmesine sebep olmuş Nasyonal sosyalist rejim ve savaş sonrasında ülkeyi 44 yıl uydu devlet olarak kullanan totaliter Sovyet rejimi, "içerisi" ve "dışarısı" ayrımıyla ilişkilendirilmektedir. Üçlemenin ilk filmi Tiksinti (1965) iğrenmenin psişik mekanizması üzerinde durmasıyla diğer filmlerden ayrılmaktadır. Filmin baş karakteri Carol, erkeklere ve erkekliği çağrıştıran nesnelere karşı zapt edilmez bir iğrenme hissine sahiptir. Bu bağlamda Carol'ın "dışarısı"nı erkeklerle ve erkeklik kodlarıyla bağdaştırarak kendisini dışarıdan soyutlama çabası, bedenin içerisi ve dışarısı ayrımının ben'lik oluşumuna etkisini irdeleyen psikanalatik kavramlarla ele alınmıştır. Sigmund Freud'un tuhaf ve aynı zamanda tanıdıklık hissine karşı kullandığı "tekinsiz" kavramı; Julia Kristeva'nın iğrenç olanın kimliği, düzeni ve sistemi tehdit edici yapısını öne çıkaran "abject" kavramı, Didier Anzieu'nun derinin içi ve dışı arasındaki sınırın, öznenin nesneyle ve ötekiyle olan ilişkisini belirlediğini öne sürdüğü "deri-ben" kavramı ile filmin okuması yapılmıştır.

W fabule "Noża w wodzie" właściwie nie ma odwołań do czasu akcji czy też osadzenia jej w konkretnej rzeczywistości. Widz przyjmuje, że ma do czynienia z Polską początku lat 60., choć wskazówki są nieliczne – bohaterowie chcą pojechać na milicję, posiadają polskie imiona. Gdy pozbyć się tych kilku szczegółów, wydarzenia mogłoby się rozgrywać gdziekolwiek, a wręcz kiedykolwiek. Bohaterowie są bardziej prezentacją pewnych postaw życiowych niż wyobrażeniami konkretnych ludzi, pomimo że znacznie rozbudowano ich psychologię. Tutaj należy także doszukiwać się stałej popularności Noża w wodzie, nie potrzeba tutaj budowania sieci kontekstów, ponieważ idea filmu jest od nich niezależna, a obraz mówi sam za siebie, jest uniwersalny.

Course Description As the title listed in the course catalog suggests, in CLCS 3207, students will view and study films from a variety of genres and will be able to identify the narrative and formal elements germane to certain genres thereby laying the groundwork for deeper appreciation of the movie experience. However, moving beyond the generic, this fall's lecture content and delivery is informed by the principles of universal design and aims to encourage each student's active versus passive engagement in the cinematic experience. Students will increase their analytical skills by studying the relationship between the "Viewer" and the "Maker" and the "Candlestick Breaker". That is, through a thematic, subject-based inquiry approach, students should expect to contribute to the conscious cultural exploration of the meaning and making of a film genre. Each student will engage in practical and reflective writing activities throughout the course. Additionally, through a combination of twenty-first century skill-building strategies coupled with experiential, project-based learning assessments, students will develop their roles as both "Viewers" and "Makers" and, finally, participate in their own personal candlestick breaking. Film screenings (not in order):
The Social Dilemma (2020); Best in Show (2000); La Jetée (1965);
American Psycho (2000); Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969); Run Lola Run (1998); Blues Brothers (1980); Chinatown (1974); The Big Lebowski (1998); Hugo (2011); Grand Budapest Hotel (2014); Anomalisa (2015); Voyage dans la Lune (1902)—the 2011, restored version; 12 Monkeys (1995); Wolf of Wallstreet (2013); Easy Rider (1969).

Cinema is the art which is representing existing reality as most accurate and most obvious way. However, sometimes the reality and the screen may be different from each other. In addition to that, it is possible to say that cinema is a tool of the ideological discourse. Ideology is an important phenomenon embedded in the world cinema. We frequently can find ideological rhetoric in films. It can be observed that movies, which are related to World War II, are mostly ideological origin. In this study, the movie, the Pianist which is shooted by Roman Polanski in 2002, will be examined. This film approaches to World War II in the context of colonialism and racism cases. Moreover, Wladyslaw Szpilman, who is described Jewish descent and Polish composer, is narrated with his tragic event in this film. The movie is analyzed by using semiotic analysis method in the context of colonialism and racism events. In this film, it demonstrated that Nazis applied pressure and established domination to the Jews. Therefore, the socio-economic, socio-political and socio-cultural situation of that period has been made to transfer with examples.

Semiotics is a great importance method in terms of film analysis. This research has focused on three indicators, which are icon, index and symbol. The film focuses more the index, which is important to create meaning the use of technical codes. The most fundamental factor of affecting the formation process of the Pianist movie is colonialism. Colonialism is the political and economic phenomenon, which has started in the late 15th century, and the discovery of a variety of different areas of the world of European countries to occur for the purposes of conquest. When we focus on literature, it is clearly seen that there are various definitions on the case of "colonialism". Colonialism is " the doctrine or behavior which envisages the acquisition colonial." The colonization is "a special form of interstate relations." It is an action that defines a public or colonization or colonized until the dominance of another ring (the rule) to impose and implement it (Meydan Larousse, 1992: 251). Today, a colonialism strategy has continued its impact by increasing. Colonial states are to be engaged in activities to make countries addicted to them with short, medium and long-term plans. The idea of the superior race is one of the film's touchstones. The superiority of the German race and desire to rule over the world has felt itself throughout the film. Before mentioning the superior race debate, it is important to analyze the concept of race. The word of race was used in the sense of race and generation pedigree firstly. Huxley says that the word of race refers to a word that originated in the Hebrew, in the West. Previously it was used to express the same ancestors from generation to animals. In the 1600s, it has described the human species (Aşar, 2009:9). On the basis of the idea of superior race is situated Nazi idea. Therefore, the rise of this idea is based on Nazism thoughts. A superior race debate emerged in the late 19th century and in the early 20th century and was based on the idea of a pure race.

The basis of the idea of superior race is located on Nazi thinking. This idea is based on the rise of Nazism thought. Superior race debates emerged in the late 19th century and in the early 20th century and it has been based on the idea of a pure breed. According to Nazis thought this race lived in the plains of northern Germany in the years before Christ and it did not lose the essence in any way (Winey, 1907: 2-7). The concept of race has been considered “cultural, ethnic, not linguistic and a biological concept in anthropology and genetic. Şenel, (1984: 20-30), indicates that except various psychological and pathological features, there is no scientific evidence about transmitting the cultural and intellectual properties with inherited over to other generations. On the contrary, the studies have showed that the cultural and intellectual properties have been acquired with environmental way. It can be understood more easily that a trait is not to be all individuals in the community. Moreover; it could not be proven until this stage that various races have not been superior from other races as inherited, intellectually and culturally.  As a result, whether a race is warrior and peaceful or egalitarian or unequal is the problem of the philosophy even the problem of the ethical dimension of philosophy. However, today there is no biological purpose of racism. Şenel says that this case actualizes with different purposes and the purpose of establishing the rule.

Tekin Akıllıoğlu, stating his views on the concept of racism (ack. Yılmaz, 2008: 25), associates directly racism, especially showed regrowth recently, with different concepts such as xenophobia and discrimination. Moreover, he states that racism occurs in the environment of the social insecurity. Another point of Akıllıoğlu that the future fears and insecurity breeds racism. He also adds that racism feds from unemployment, poverty and social inequality. However, experienced racism activities are separated from the various aspects of traditional racism. Akıllıoğlu has argued that the concept of the master race cease to be a dominant discourse and this concept ended its satisfactory and sufficient feature. The immigrant element which is encountered and most used in racism rhetoric is perceived as an inferior race. Therefore, this concept is exposed hate speech by exclusion from society linked to economic and social factors. With this and similar reasons, economic factors have situated in the essence of the new era racism and migrant workers have exploited the new victims of racism.

It is more appropriate to open separate brackets to Germany and Hitler in World War II. Hitler's Nazism idea spread all over Germany. World War II which was one of the world's largest war was virtually extinct in Europe, where it began, with Hitler's successor, Admiral Donitz, signed the document, included that Germany delivered as unconditional and indifferently.

"Pianist”, which Adrien Brody is starring and was directed by Roman Polanski, is a biographical war film and was set for release in 2002. The film was adapted from a real Jewish-Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman's life. The film is co-productions of France, Germany, Great Britain and Poland. "Pianist" encountered accolades and was honored with many awards. The film has won best screenplay, best director and best actor awards in 75th Academy Award. It also has been suggested nominations in four other categories. A successful pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, running in Warsaw Radio, was sent to concentration camps like other Jewish prisoners along the German occupation. However, an officer who knew him when he was about to put on a train with his family rescued him. As a result, Szpilman maintained his life by escaping and hiding in the wreckage. Today, implicit messages and concepts underlying many movies are also available in the 2002's film the Pianist. However, it is possible to say that this film distinguishes from other war films by using the narrative form. From inner world of the character Szpilman to trying to tell a great event with small details, this film used to reinforce the audience sense of reality by using technique encodes and the messages, wanted to give by director, are quoted literally.

Szpilman creates depressed atmosphere on the audience and this has impact twice on the viewer. Therefore, paranoia swings surrounding the character, takes you to the point where the eye drops while Szpilman was looking at it from window frame. Moreover, the audience feels to see with his own eyes not Szpilman's eyes. We can say that this is an effective representation of the message that was given element. Because the temporal and spatial integrity has included the audience into the story and it has established itself in the spectator camera lens of the camera wherever he went. The film has reached its objective in the sense that he wants to tell the indicators. Realism plays an important role in a film "Pianist" because what is desired is persuade the audience that genocide movement applied to Jews destroyed millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Also, it attempts to keep fresh this information from the past in consciousness. For this film no matter how much he would be believable and realistic to greatly contribute to the creation of reality in the mind of the viewer. Again, the movement within the film text styles is one of the important factors in the formation of this realism. The film makes a serious whisper echo effect.

Η παρούσα εργασία πραγματοποιήθηκε στο πλαίσιο του μαθήματος «Εικόνα, βλέμμα και φύλο στον  κινηματογράφο» με διδάσκοντες τους Ιωάννα Αθανασάτου, Σάββα Μιχαήλ και Δημήτρη Παπαχαραλάμπους, υπό την ανάθεση και την καθοδήγηση του τελευταίου.
Με αφετηρία τις ταινίες Night and the City (1950) και Chinatown (1974), που ανήκουν στα κινηματογραφικά είδη noir και νέο-noir αντίστοιχα, θα μελετήσω την συντριβή του noir ήρωα καθώς και την διαφοροποιημένη εκδοχή του κινηματογραφικού αντρικού προτύπου, που υποβάλλεται ή αυθυποβάλλεται σε ένα πλαίσιο δοκιμασίας απέναντι στην ανδρική κοινωνική δομή, τον noir φαταλιστικό εφιάλτη και τέλος, τα καθιερωμένα ανδρικά στερεότυπα με βάση την θεωρία της επιτελεστικότητας της Judith Butler. Στην συνέχεια, θα αναφερθώ στο ανδρικό πρότυπο, σύμφωνα με το πως επικρατεί και προάγεται στις δύο εποχές που γυρίστηκαν οι δύο ταινίες, κάνοντας και μία αδρομερή περιγραφή των σημερινών δεδομένων.

This course will examine films of director Roman Polanki. We will come to know his body of work as a series of narrative, visual, and thematic preoccupations that have influenced to a variety of film artists. We will also invite a certain biographical criticism of Polaski's work, including his family's experiences with the Holocaust in Poland, the 1969 murder of his wife by the Manson cult, and finally his 1977 arrest for statutory rape and his subsequent self-induced exile. Students can expect to examine a variety of cinematic texts from a mix of critical lenses, including class, race, gender, sexuality, and disability.

Bu makalede, Polonyalı yönetmen Roman Polanski'nin Apartman Üçlemesi psikanaliz kuramın temel kavramları eşliğinde, bilinçaltı süreçler ve kent hayatının bu süreçlere etkisi bağlamında analiz edilmiştir. Çalışmada psikanaliz yöntem kullanılırken, kuramın öncülerinden Sigmund Freud, kuramı kültür ve dil ilişkisi bağlamında ele alan Jacques Lacan ve Lacan'dan yola çıkarak birçok filmi yorumlayan Slavoj Zizek'in temel kavramları açıklanarak film okuması yapılmıştır.  Bu bağlamda araştırma kapsamına psikanaliz kuramın temel kavramları, auteur yönetmen olarak Polanski ve üçlemede yer alan filmler (Repulsion,1965) , (Rosemary's Baby,1968), (The Tenant,1976) dâhil edilmiştir. Çalışmada yönetmenin ve bireyin içinde bulunduğu toplumsal koşullar ve bilhassa kentlerdeki apartman yaşamının bilinçaltına ve davranışlara etki edip etmediği sorularına yanıt aranmıştır. Bu bağlamda söz konusu filmlerin konusu, karakterleri ve barındırdıkları ortak anlamlar incelenmiş ve analiz sonucunda içinde bulunulan çevrenin yönetmenin bilinçaltına, dolayısıyla filmlerine ve bu bağlamda bireyin bilinçaltının kent yaşamından etkilendiği gözlemlenmiştir.

This essay points out the limitations of the contemporary tendency to analyze social relations in terms of power while ignoring the role of enjoyment. In studying Roman Polanski's film Ninth Gate, the essay discovers a detailed cri­tique of this hermeneutic of power. Polanski's film shows how power actually functions to disguise - even from subjects themselves - the unconscious effects of enjoyment in directing the activity of subjects. This becomes especially apparent in the case of diabolical evil, which the film explores in detail. Ninth Gate demonstrates that the subjects seek to become evil in order to access an otherwise impossible enjoyment rather than to become powerful. Evil appeals to us unconsciously because it offers a way of escaping altogether the regime of power.

The religious landscape in Europe is changing dramatically. While the authority of institutional religion has weakened, a growing number of people now desire individualized religious and spiritual experiences, finding the self-complacency of secularism unfulfilling. The "crisis of religion" is itself a form of religious life. A sense of complex, subterraneous interaction between religious, heterodox, secular and atheistic experiences has thus emerged, which makes the phenomenon all the more fascinating to study, and this is what Religion in Contemporary European Cinema does. The book explores the mutual influences, structural analogies, shared dilemmas, as well as the historical roots of such a "post-secular constellation" as seen through the lens of European cinema. Bringing together scholars from film theory and political science, ethics and philosophy of religion, philosophy of film and theology, this volume casts new light on the relationship between the religious and secular experience after the death of the death of God.

En este artículo, estudiamos cómo se gesta, en la novela "Estrella distante", no sólo
el Mal absoluto, sino la figura del monstruo encarnado en el personaje de Alberto Ruiz­Tagle, alias Carlos Wieder. Luego de una incursión en la temática del doble, y basándonos en determinados casos en detalles del discurso narrativo, mostramos cómo el texto propone el nacimiento del monstruo y la configuración del personaje central como “Anticristo”. Para ello se establecen nexos intertextuales con la película de
Roman Polanski, "Rosemary’s Baby" (1968), y la resonancia de los ecos de "La
resistible ascensión de Arturo Ui" (1941), de Bertolt Brecht.

Pour citer cet article :
LANGLUMÉ Diane, « La Grande Prostituée de Babylone à l’écran dans Métropolis (et quelques autres films) » in BARON Anne-Marie (dir.), CinémAction n°160 - La Bible à l’écran  Condé-sur-Noireau : Éditions Charles Corlet, Septembre 2016, 207 pages, p.163-173.

This interview I conducted with the late Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski would be the final interview he gave before his death in 2009 at the age of 81. It appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of the journal Dædalus, of which I was a contributing editor at the time. It was conducted in Kolakowski's home in Oxford (UK) in December of 2004.

The present article compares the famous film adaptation of Shakespeare’s classical work with the tradition of mainly American film noir. The author points out many general and detailed signs of Polanski’s film’s indebtedness to that tradition, which casts some new light on the film in question. Particular attention is paid to the principle of paradox succinctly expressed by the well-known quotation "fair is foul, and foul is fair", and to the atmosphere of a grim grotesque treated as the main common denominators connecting the two discussed phenomena. The author emphasises that certain elements of the film noir are already encoded in Shakespeare's work itself. We may find here also a detailed analysis of the characters of Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters, in which their paradoxical and androgynous nature, visible already in Shakespeare and relentlessly exploited by Polanski, is underlined.

Cinema is the art which is representing existing reality as most accurate and most obvious way. However, sometimes the reality and the screen may be different from each other. In addition to that, it is possible to say that cinema is a tool of the ideological discourse. Ideology is an important phenomenon embedded in the world cinema. We frequently can find ideological rhetoric in films. It can be observed that movies, which are related to World War II, are mostly ideological origin. In this study, the movie, the Pianist which is shooted by Roman Polanski in 2002, will be examined. This film approaches to World War II in the context of colonialism and racism cases. Moreover, Wladyslaw Szpilman, who is described Jewish descent and Polish composer, is narrated with his tragic event in this film. The movie is analyzed by using semiotic analysis method in the context of colonialism and racism events. In this film, it demonstrated that Nazis applied pressure and established domination to...

In our confined lifestyle in this period we have to get ready to the locking of all doors and we will be left alone in front of our fear of solitude, our fright in the dark, our angst in front of a futureless world. Horror is the solution and we can get to some kind of mental climax if we dare.
We all have a secret window that can open on some secret garden where some secret monsters live quietly and are actually our friends and our solace.
The great names of thrillers and horror literature, all on screens, small and big, can be there with you and I have filled many pages to help you have a joyful and enriching trip in horrorland.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1- AMAZON PRIME – ABSENTIA SEASON 1 - 2018
2- AMAZON PRIME – ABSENTIA SEASON 2 - 2019
3- ANNA DEAVERE SMITH – HOUSE ARREST – 2003
4- ANNA DEAVERE SMITH – PIANO – 2004
5- HERBERT SELPIN – TITANIC – 1943/2004
6- JAMES WATKINS – DANIEL RATCLIFFE – THE WOMAN IN BLACK – 2012
7- TOM HARPER - THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2: ANGEL OF DEATH – 2014
8- ROMAN POLANSKY – JOHNNY DEPP –
THE NINTH GATE – 2000
AN OLDER REVIEW
VARIOUS TITLES OF THIS OLDER REVIEW
Welcome to the heretic sinkhole of the Mediterranean
Gosh! that devil is as sexy as a harmless har(p)lot
L’atout bipolaire des suprémacistes blancs : le DIABLE
Et dire que le diable doit faire peur !
9- STEPHEN KING – DAVID KOEPP – JOHNNY DEPP – SECRET WINDOW – 2004
AN OLDER REVIEW
VARIOUS TITLES OF THIS OLDER REVIEW
Get lost in the real phantasm of a fantasized life
Ne faites jamais confiance à un écrivain.
Deep and shallow, all at once.

Libro #2: "La trilogía del Apartamento de Roman Polanski".
Capítulo: "En clave de sol: la música en el cine de Polanski", págs. 267–284.
Marta Villarreal y Ricardo Sánchez Ramos (coords.)
Solaris, Textos de Cine / Trama Editorial, enero de 2020
ISBN: 978-84-120493-8-1

· Ficha de la editorial: http://www.tramaeditorial.es/libro/trilogia-del-apartamento-de-roman-polanski/
+ info: https://solaristextosdecine.com/libro/trilogia-del-apartamento-de-roman-polanski/

A Scapegoat and a Flawless Man: The Dreyfus Affair in Roman Polański’s Film “An Officer and a Spy” and Selected Problems of Its Reception

The article concerns Roman Polański’s film An Officer and a Spy, whose plot is based on the story of one of the most famous trials, known as the Dreyfus affair. The author analyses the attitudes of the film protagonists in the context of the well-known “scapegoat theory”, proposed by Rene Girard. Here, the notion of a scapegoat refers to Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew accused and unjustly sentenced to exile as an alleged German spy. The sentence is challenged by lieutenant colonel Picquart, who is defined in the film as a “flawless man”. The problem of “flaw” in relation to him and other characters and the world presented is much more complex, and indifference turns out to be the greatest flaw of the human nature.

Na breve análise que se desdobrará a seguir, discutem-se três longas-metragens e uma minissérie que versam sobre a gestação e as mudanças físicas e psicológicas que acompanham a mulher nesta fase de transformação; as mães dessas produções e a maternagem compõem parte importante das tramas. Eles são O bebê de Rosemary
(POLANSKI, 1968), No limiar da vida (BERGMAN, 1958), Semente do diabo (FRANKENHEIMER, 1979) e a minissérie O reino (TRIER, 1994).

Here's the text of a talk I gave at ALL THEM WITCHES, a symposium on Rosemary's Baby that took place at The Swiss Institute on 4/9.

I'd love to hear thoughts and feedback. And if anyone is interested, I'd be more than happy to share image slides.

Resumo: O presente artigo visa abordar como Marquês de Sade e Leopold Sacher-Masoch foram entes de influência cultural/intelectual no cenário europeu e como essa riqueza antropológica terminou por levá-los a receberem diferentes apropriações no cinema. Consideramos o sadomasoquismo como um conceito polissêmico, assim tentamos relacionar diferentes leituras de tal termo a diferentes aspectos ressaltados em certas produções. Nosso aporte teórico se mostra bastante variado, indo desde a leitura das próprias obras de Sade e Sacher-Masoch até comentadores mais recentes como: Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jorge Leite Jr., Rodrigo Gerace etc. Nossa conclusão envolve ver como o cinema sempre possuiu margem para diferentes apropriações do erótico e como não há uma visão correta e derradeira do sadomasoquismo no cinema, mas diferentes leituras dependendo dos elementos que estão sendo ressaltados.
Palavras-chave: Sade; Sadomasoquismo; Cinema explícito.