Polanski and Perception: The Psychology of Seeing and the Cinema of Roman Polanski

by Davide Caputo

Overview

A new approach to a director whose contribution to cinema is often overshadowed his personal life, Polanski and Perception focuses on Roman Polanski’s interest in the nature of perception and how this is manifested in his films. The incorporation of cognitive research into film theory is becoming increasingly widespread, with novel cinematic technologies and recent developments in digital projection making a strong grasp of perceptual psychology critical to fostering cognitive engagement.
Informed by the work of neuropsychologist R. L. Gregory, this volume focuses primarily on two sets of films: the Apartment trilogyof Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant; and the Investigation trilogy of Chinatown, Frantic, and The Ninth Gate. Also included are case studies of Knife in the Water, Death and the Maiden, and The Ghost.Polanski and Perception presents a highly original and engaging new look at the work of this influential filmmaker.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781841505527
Publisher:	Intellect, Limited
Publication date:	07/15/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Davide Caputo recently completed his PhD at University of Exeter, where his research focused on film and psychology. He has contributed essays and reviews to Film International.

Read an Excerpt

Polanski and Perception

The Psychology of Seeing and the Cinema of Roman Polanski

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By Davide Caputo

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-552-7

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CHAPTER 1

'Locating' Polanski

Polanski and Poland

Roman Polanski began his career in cinema as a young actor, most notably featuring in Andrzej Wajda's A Generation (1955). Wajda's film is credited with starting the Polish Film School, a movement that broke from the Marxist didacticism of Poland's post-war 'socialist realism', in favour of providing a more 'individualised vision' (Ostrowska, 2006: 63) of cinema. Although Polanski's early involvement with Wajda probably accounts for a large part of his early education as a film-maker, Polanski's own cinema, even his early 'Polish' output, sits uncomfortably alongside the Polish School, with his first feature, Knife in the Water, marking yet another 'break' in Polish cinema. Whilst Polanski's cinema shares, to varying degrees, Wajda's concern with the plight of the individual, the idea of cinema serving as 'psychotherapist of the Polish audience' (Ostrowska, 2006: 66) was rejected by Polanski. Even Polanski's cycle of schizophrenia-based films (what I refer to as 'The Apartment Trilogy'), although heavily concerned with psychosis, offers no therapy. Whilst the Polish School rejected the prescriptive aesthetics of the ideologically didactic post-war Polish cinema, these films were equally defined by their resistance to it. Knife in the Water, in contrast, is one of the first examples of truly post-regime Polish cinema.

Nevertheless, Polanski's cinema is certainly influenced by his direct experience of the Polish School, especially in its emphasis on the technical prowess of its film-makers. There are also indications of strong Polish cultural influences on Polanski's work, from Polish romanticism to the Theatre of the Absurd, from Gombrowicz to Grotowski. These influences are often papered-over in the analyses of Polanski's cinema, which tend to identify Polanski as a global entity; as convincingly argued by Mazierska (2007), however, examining the 'Polishness' in Polanski's cinema is indeed informative and not to be entirely overlooked. But the greatest influence on Polanski's early cinema education is, ultimately, cinema itself. Whilst studying at Lódz, Polanski was able to access a far greater range of world cinema than would have been possible for even the most passionate Polish cinephile in the mid-1950s, a special privilege that the government afforded film students (Polanski, 1984: 112), along with granting access to otherwise banned texts (if not directly, then through professors who 'carelessly' left these books scattered about classrooms [see Polanski, 1984: 80]). So whilst the influence of distinctly Polish culture on the formation of Polanski's approach to cinema should not be undervalued, it is the influence of film-makers, not only Wajda, but globally renowned directors like Carol Reed and Orson Welles, that probably most deeply informed his craft.

The only example of Polanski's early works to employ a specifically Polish set of references is When Angels Fall (1959), a film that combines historical events, mythology and the personal recollections of an old woman in order to explore the ways in which all three intermingle and inform the formation of memory. Even without dialogue, the foregrounding of these iconic Polish elements firmly established Angels as a 'Polish' text. Polanski anchors the cinematic experience to the vision of an individual: the old woman (a Polish icon in her own right), whose subjective recollection-images we are permitted to observe. Oddly, at times, these 'subjective' images move beyond her (life's) perceptual reach, to an era before her birth. Thus the film transcends its specifically Polish framework to explore the malleability of memory and the influence that popular mythology, and possibly even the state, can have on personal recollections of the past. Here we have the first hint of Polanski's concern with the manner in which perceptions are formed, a concept that dominates much of his cinema.

As Ostrowska writes, 'Polanski's scepticism towards the possibilities of direct access to memory put him in opposition to the exploring of it, the central task of Polish cinema [i.e. the Polish School] at the time' (2006: 66). Nevertheless, the most enduring strength of Angels is not specifically its Polish iconography, but its discussion of memory through the superimposition of the woman's vivid recollection-images onto the film's drab actual-image of the men's toilet in which she works. To overemphasise the 'Polishness' of When Angels Fall is to miss much of what Polanski is observing about the functioning of human memory and the manner in which each of our concepts of reality are constructed by our individual perceptual mechanisms.

The rest of Polanski's shorts are far more difficult to identify as specifically Polish, although all, save The Fat and Lean (1961), were made in Poland during Polanski's time at Lódz. Much of this is simply down to Polanski's tendency of keeping his shorts abstract and dialogue-free. Polanski's preference for dialogue-free shorts, which he nevertheless considered to be the 'correct' language of the short film, suggests a desire to move beyond fixed concepts of nation-, linguistic- or culture- based cinema towards that elusive universal language of the moving picture, that purely visual form of communication cultivated by the likes of Murnau, Chaplin and Griffith that had been all but forsaken after the birth of the talkie:

Cartoons and documentaries proved that even very short films could tell a convincing story with a beginning and an end, but to do the same with actors required a different approach. Sounds had to be used as punctuation, dialogue kept to a minimum or dispensed with altogether. As far as I was concerned, a realistic theme was out. Though hung up on surrealism, I also wanted to convey a message. The short I aspired to make would have to be poetic and allegorical yet readily comprehensible.

(Polanski, 1984: 132)

In Knife in the Water, Polanski manages to retain the allegorical element of his more abstract, silent shorts, but combines symbolic imagery with the realism offered by the inclusion of dialogue, the form he believes should be reserved for the feature film. But as soon as his characters begin to speak, an inextricable link is inevitably forged between language and the nation with which it is associated. Whilst Knife in the Water did not fit into the individual-focused Polish School, with its attempts to assume 'the role of "psychotherapist" of the Polish audience' (Ostrowska, 2006: 66) through neorealist-influenced recreations of wartime and post-war Poland, it was certainly not the sort of contemporary social(ist) realism preferred by the state. Polanski's Polish films move beyond a Polish cinema defined by either adherence or resistance to communist ideology. As Wajda himself identified, Knife in the Water marked the end of the Polish School, signalling 'the beginning of the new Polish cinema' (in Meikle, 2006: 64), a type of film undefined by the regime; instead, with Knife in the Water, Polanski contemporises Polish cinema whilst depoliticising it, offering observations on humanity, but not analysis. The camera does adopt an objective standpoint, but not quite like the neorealist style aped by the Polish School. Polanski's camera 'sees' the unseeable through intra-frame compositions that betray the film's unspoken power struggle and gender relations; analysis, however, is left up to the audience. Polanski's observational stance in Knife in the Water would prove to be one of the most enduring aspects of his work; consistent with this 'distance' is Polanski's refusal to become a moralist film-maker, favouring stories that explore the complexities of morality over didactic tales of right and wrong (or those that try to right wrongs).

Haltof (2002) makes notes of the 'split' that was beginning to form in the mid-1950s between Poland's established film-makers such as Aleksander Ford and Wanda Jakubowska and the new generation of Lódz graduates influenced by the Italian neorealist films they had the privilege of seeing at university; these graduates were more concerned with individual expression and the 'genuine depiction of national themes' (79) than they were with the Marxist ideology or socialist realism. Coates compares this division to the Polish flag itself, 'torn across, between politics and aesthetics ... between ... "the red and the white"' (2005: 1). The influence of neorealism is evident in Wadja's A Generation, a film Haltof argues to be a 'transitional' work that 'heralds the Polish School phenomenon' (79); but even Wadja's film, Haltof argues, is a 'work tainted by political compromise', which still bears the marks of socialist realism and is 'heavily stereotyped' in its re-creation of 'recent Polish history from the communist perspective' (79).

In the early 1960s, a discernable 'third generation' of young Polish film-makers was beginning to make its mark; this group included filmmakers such as Janusz Majewski, Henryk Kluba and Roman Polanski, but the most significant contributions to this movement, Haltof suggests, came from Jerzy Skolimowski and, a few years later, Krzysztof Zanussi. Haltof cites Skolimowski's 'new generation trilogy' (Rysopis [Identification Marks: None, 1965], Walkower [Walkover, 1965] and Bariera [The Barrier, 1966]) (125–126), as well as Zanussi's 'Bergmanian' television films Face to Face (1968) and Pass Mark (1968), and his features Struktura Krysztalu (The Structure of Crystals, 1969) and Iluminacja (Illumination, 1973) as examples of films that demonstrate the transition towards evermore personalised cinema (Haltof, 2002: 127–128). Polanski's Knife in the Water, for which Skolimowski is also credited as a screenwriter, is a film that should be considered as a work of this post-Polish School movement. However, jaded by his experience with the Polish censors, Polanski would leave this 'third generation' to continue his career outside Poland. It would not be until The Pianist (2002) that Polanski would return to Poland to make a film, and so he is rightfully considered to be a minor-player in the history of Polish national cinema.

The Gomulka government's censorship policies of the late 1950s and early 1960s had major impact on the cinema of the time; hence, it is worth briefly examining Knife in the Water's own struggle with the authorities in order to gain a better appreciation of the situation Polanski left behind when he opted to continue his career outside the Polish system. A word of caution is perhaps warranted here, as much of the account of Polanski's encounter with the Polish censors I present below is based on Polanski's own testimony, as described in his 1984 autobiography. As Coates (2005) warns, during this time in Polish history, there was both a 'mythical censor' and a 'real one'; he points out that many artists have a 'propensity to recall the more colourful incidents and to colour those that are recalled, his or her primary intention to divert the audience' (75). That said, Coates also concedes that the 'real' censors, namely the government's Script Assessment Committee, the Central Committee and the Politburo, did indeed monitor film projects closely with an eye towards 'nudging' works towards the party line. Coates even directly cites the 'blighting' of Polanski by the First Secretary Gomulka (Coates, 2005: 75–76), who was displeased with Knife in the Water, considering it to be irrelevant to Polish society (Polanski, 1984: 170).

Haltof (2002: 102) describes the multiple layers of censoring bodies through which a film project would have to pass, starting with 'The Committee for the Evaluation of Scripts', and then on to the supervision by authorities of the filming process itself and beyond. The key concern was a growing 'Westernisation' of Polish cinema (102), and so the Communist Party sought to regain the levels of control the authorities exerted before the rise of Gomulka and the 'Polish October' of 1956. There are many accounts of how Polish film-makers were harshly dealt with by the authorities, many of which are far worse than that described by Polanski. Many films of the Polish School were 'punished' by the authorities for their 'lack of compliance to the Polish line' (103), such as Nikt nie wola (Nobody is Calling, Kazimierz Kutz, 1960) and Koniec nocy (The End of Night, Julian Dziedzina, Pawel Komorowski, Walentyna Maruszewska, 1957), which saw their distribution severely limited, and Aleksander Ford's Eighth Day of the Week (1958), which was banned (102–103). Based on examples such as these, it is reasonable to conclude that Polanski's own description of his dealings with the censors is probably not overly 'coloured' by personal animosity.

The script for Knife in the Water had originally been rejected by the Polish Ministry of Culture on the grounds that it 'lacked social commitment' (Polanski, 1984: 144). Unable to get funding in Poland, Polanski sought backing in France, where he had recently co-directed The Fat and Lean with Jean-Pierre Rousseau (who was added as 'co-director' to avoid funding complications due to Polanski's non-residential status in France). Encouraged by the French producer Rousseau to make a French-language adaptation of the script, Polanski transferred Knife's story to a French setting. In the end, the promise of French funding fell through and Polanski once again pitched the project to the Polish authorities, having 'tinkered with a few scenes' and having added 'some snippets of dialogue designed to impart a trifle more "social commitment"' (Polanski, 1984: 161) to appease the ministry. In this new form, it was finally approved for production.

Knife in the Water's search for funding is telling in that it reveals that the idea itself was not conceived as a specifically Polish story; in fact, what Polish elements the final film does possess are there by way of compromise in order to get funding from the Polish state. The 'social commitment' Polanski refers to can be identified in those lines of dialogue wherein the boy and Andrzej discuss politics. Significantly, Andrzej's politics seem somewhat at odds with his material wealth, and although the (apparent) conflict is complex, Andrzej is presented as abusive and arrogant, and of the three characters it is he who is positioned as the most unlikeable; he is the closest thing to an 'antagonist' the film offers.

The film's most discussed, and perhaps telling, compromises involved Krystyna and Andrzej's car. Andrzej, a representation of the Polish nomenklatura, originally drove a Mercedes, but Polanski was 'encouraged' to reshoot using a Peugeot 403 to avoid provoking this emerging (and ideologically inconsistent) class of Warsaw elites, well known for driving around town in their Mercs. The compromise extended only to the exterior shots; Polanski claims that he 'reluctantly left the interiors as they were' (Polanski, 1984: 165), but this continuity mismatch would result in a subtle provocation in its own right, suggesting the true nature of the car to those knowledgeable enough (i.e. the nomenklatura themselves) to be able to catch the 'error'.

Although set in Poland and indeed including several Polish references, Knife in the Water's relevance transcends its Mazurian setting through its use of visual style as the agent of communication and Polanski's observations on the dynamics of gender, marital and generational power relations. The film often draws attention towards the physicality of the characters, the camera lingering on all three bodies, highlighting both gender and age differences. We are positioned as voyeurs, connected to no individual character in particular, but nevertheless limited to the collective narrative reach of the triad. The camera inevitably draws our gaze towards not only Krystyna's body (as might be expected), but the men's bodies as well, each man positioned as an icon of visual appeal for his respective generation. Embedded in the film is also a subtle attack on the idea of a prescriptive sense of nationhood, as the bitter conflict between these men, combined with the introduction of taboo homoerotic imagery, serves to undo what Ostrowska identifies as the prevalent Polish notion of 'a male brotherhood tasked to defend the nation' (2006: 69).

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Polanski and Perception by Davide Caputo. Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction

1. 'Locating' Polanski
2. Establishing a Conceptual Framework
3. Schizophrenia and the City
4. Repulsion
5. Rosemary's Baby
6. The Tenant
7. Approaching Investigations
8. Chinatown
9. A Tale of Two Doctors: Frantic and Death and the Maiden
10. The Ninth Gate
11. The Ghost: A Bridge Between Trilogies
12. Concluding Remarks

Roman Polanski Filmography
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Polanski and Perception breathes fresh air into the academic corpus on Polanski’s cinema and presents an engaging discussion of a significantly underrepresented aspect of this director’s filmmaking: the faculty of visual perception. . . . Caputo’s book is successful in its endeavor to explicate the influence of Gregory’s indirect/active perception on Polanski’s filmmaking. It is a novel and informative approach to his cinema delving into many unexplored areas in the director’s depiction of individuals’ perception. It indeed has made a valuable contribution to the existing body of studies done on the cinema of this world-renowned director.

Projections