Polanski's Nightmares: An Introduction

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 “All nightmares come true, all hidden fears are real” Roman Polanski.

Nightmares and hidden fears  do abound in Polanski's films. The graphic above shows some of them. They  include (From Left to Right) : 
  1. Horror movie monsters and hands out to get you in Rosemary's Baby (1968) and above in Repulsion (1965).
  2. Fear of disablement and physical pain as in Bitter Moon (1992) and Chinatown (1974).
  3. Infidelity and death (especially murder) in most films, above in Bitter Moon (1992). 
  4. Intrusion of privacy in all his films and above in What? (1972).
  5. Helplessness in the face of war or tragic consequence of illogical government or authorities decisions as in The Pianist (2002)
  6. Blood as in The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971) [shortly after the murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate and friends August 1969]. 
  7. Water and Death by Drowning as in Knife in the Water (1962) and above in Cul-de-Sac (1966).
  8. Parties and peaceful couples being torn apart by mindless strangers in Rosemary's Baby (1968), Carnage (2011) and Rozbijemy zabawę (1959) [Long before the Manson massacre mentioned above and badly translated into English as Break up the Dance. Zabawa in Polish is fun, a revelry, a game etc]
  9. Sexual dominance, violence and bondage in Cul-de-Sac (1966), Bitter Moon (1992), What? (1972) and Venus in Fur (2013) amongst others.
  10. Being spied on, followed, chased, caught and punished in Chinatown (1974), What? (1972).
  11. A frantic but hopeless escape in Chinatown (1974), What? (1972), The Ghost Writer (2010) and obviously Frantic (1988).

  12. Chance meetings where uninvited stranger/s walk into and take over people's lives. 
  13. The Knife or Razor Blade: This key prop is the title to Nóż w Wodzie.  Knife in the Water (1962), and its nightmarish qualities are explored in Morderstwo (1957) English Title A Murder, Repulsion (1965), Chinatown (1974), the harpoon in What? and the untouchable dagger in The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971).

I have this admiration for Polanski's films and this curiosity about what makes him tick. If his films are about nightmares coming true and hidden fears becoming real, then Polanski had a wealth of experience to wean from. Polanski’s parents moved to Poland three years after his birth in 1933. When Germany invaded in 1939, his family was forced into the Krakow ghetto. His father was sent to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, which he survived, and his mother to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. At nine, Polanski escaped the ghetto and travelled the countryside under the guise of being Catholic. Staying with strangers wherever he could, Polanski was occasionally abused but was generally sheltered from the Nazi storm. Among those who helped him were the Buchała family, who lived on a farm in the village of Wysoka. At the time, the punishment for hiding Jews from the German occupiers could be the murder of a whole family. Roman Polanski “I needed all the fantasy I could muster, simply to survive.”  

If what the teller says is true and not the tale then it makes sense for Polanski's films to revolve around a surreal, fable-like quality and a focus on the absence of meaning in the universe. Adrian Martin hones in on a cinema inspired by playwrights such as Beckett, lonesco and Pinter. Polanski joins these pioneers of the Theater of the Absurd in sharing the belief that the world is illogical and that rational explanations and solutions to man's problems are fruitless. Polanski's characters are indeed confronted with what Camus called "the benign indifference of the universe" as Rosemary is left all alone in a hopeless fight for her baby in Rosemary's Baby or Evelyn Mulwray shot in cold blood by the very police that should have protected her, notwithstanding Jake Gittes' futile efforts to save her. Indeed, these subjects are treated as they would be in the Theatre of the Absurd, with comic moments that are not so comic, better known as black comedy. This mix of an absurd scene and black comedy was evident right from the very student films in Polanski. As two men walk out of the sea carrying a wardrobe and try to place it in absurd and non-sensical places, there is a brutal fight and yet it is comic in its tragedy. Ssaki, (Mammals in English) (1962), features two guys and a sledge, where each guy tries to get the other to pull him while he sits comfortably on the sledge. Reeking of Charles Chaplin slapstick, absurdity and black humour, the men turn to violent means, even pretend or actually harm themselves in the process. Even in When The Angels Fall (1959) which is a really sad tale of a woman's loss, there is time for a drunk man's antics in the gents' toilets and even a suggestion of a gay affair. Polanski's characters are all impotent, comic / tragic figures whose efforts at becoming are rendered futile and wrapped in absurd circumstances. Like an Alice in Wonderland, Nancy is the uninvited guest in What? who wanders half naked in a luxurious house because someone has stolen her clothes, going through the same scene in circles. Together with all Polanski characters she is abused and humiliated, unable to speak, understand or cope with the language of her hosts.

Absurdity was a fact of life in the socialist republics of Eastern Europe, from the end of World War II until the revolutions that began to transform the region in 1989. Perhaps it was a form of a needed escapism. 
'. . . the absurdism that dominated the late 1950s corresponds not only to Polanski’s situation at a particular historical conjuncture but to the irretrievability of a surrealist moment . . .  in the face of . . . fascism’s malign liberation of a collective unconscious. . . . the individual’s inner landscape . . . is more lunar than volcanic: the dead place of boredom that breeds fantasies of (and then actual) torture as relief. Read more at : Landscapes of the Mind: The Cinema of Roman Polanski (Adrian Martin)  

Roman Polanski: “For as far back as I can remember, the line between fantasy and reality has been hopelessly blurred. I have taken most of a lifetime to grasp that this is the key to my very existence”. In fact it would take him as long as 2002 to muster facing the grim realities of the war he had experienced by filming The Pianist (2002). This very fact however, leads one to understand that through all the absurdity and even escapism, Polanski's films are always at war with characters that try to assert themselves, critical of  their “feverish and futile rhetoric” of political ideology and sceptical of any religious conviction. Only a “faith in the absurd”. These are characters who are pre-destined for something unreachable, like someone on a journey to nowhere. 

Polanski films should be reviewed under the themes of 
  • Surreality and a Fable-like World
  • Escapism
  • Absurdity
  • An illogical / dysfunctional world
  • Black Humour and Comedy
  • Absence of Meaning and therefore of ending.
  • Pre-Destination with No Destination







Watch this analysis on Polanski on YouTube


Read about the Absurd in Cul-De-Sac


Filmography

Uśmiech zębiczny (1957) English Title A Toothy Smile
Rozbijemy zabawę (1957) English Title We will break up a party
Morderstwo (1957) English Title A Murder
Dwaj ludzie z szafą. (1958) English Title Two Men and a Wardrobe  
Gdy spadają anioły (1959) English Title When Angels Fall
Lampa. (1959)
Le Gros et le Maigre (1961) English Title The Fat and The Lean
Ssaki (1962) English Title Mammals
Knife in the Water (1962)
Repulsion (1965)
Cul-de-Sac (1966)
The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
A Day at the Beach (1970)
The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971)
Weekend of a Champion (1972) - Documentary co-directed by Roman Polanski and Frank Simon
What? (1972)
Chinatown (1974)
The Tenant (1976)
Tess (1979)
Pirates (1986)
Frantic (1988)
Bitter Moon (1992)
Death and the Maiden (1994)
The Ninth Gate (1999)
The Pianist (2002)
Oliver Twist (2005)
To Each His Own Cinema (segment "Cinéma Erotique") (2007)
The Ghost Writer (2010)
Carnage (2011)
Venus in Fur (2013)
Based on a True Story (2017)




 

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