Polanski's Cinematography

This page is intended to explore Polanski's Cinematography to help directors see how cinematography makes the film, how it tells the story in its own way. Here is a video that claims to show Polanski's most beautiful shots.

Multiple Planes of Action

Without going into an aesthetic arguments, cinematography is not simply about choosing a beautiful shot but about the why a scene is shot and composed in that way. What is the composition saying about the story? One may start with the statement that Polanski likes staging in depth to show multiple planes of action. Look at the graphic below which shows Polanski displaying multiple planes of action in China Town 1974

This can be really traced as a Polanski Characteristic but the question is what is this composition telling us? Jake Gittes is a detective who is being paid by Evelyn Mulwray to spy on her husband Hollis. Now Jake is only a detective. In the bottom Left scene he can only watch Hollis through his rear window. This is his view and only relationship that Jake will have with Hollis. In other words, this multiple plane is betraying Hollis' restricted view. The audience is with Jake and will know more about Jake and little about Hollis. All we learn about Hollis is through Jakes' detective work which is mainly a 3rd party true or untrue account. The multiple plane hides the truth that the audience seeks to find. This also works with the top two scenes. Evelyn is first seen from a distance parking in the drive and entering the house, as the enigmatic and unknown Chinese servant opens the door. Jake arrives and leaves the car. He will only surmise what is happening through his restricted view of the exterior windows of the house. This multiple plane makes him as outsider, just as much as the audience is. Together we are fooled into believing that Evelyn had taken her late husband's lover hostage. In the last scene at the Bottom Right, Jake is driving into the unknown. A group of men blocks the road. It is so ironic that Polanski's use of multiple planes of action turn the viewer into an outsider who cannot break into the story. The moral of the story here is that cinematic composition may be artistic but aesthetics are only a top for story telling. The choice of the composition is made on the grounds of storytelling. In this respect cinematic composition may differ from photography or paintings which may chose aesthetics over story telling.

Multiple planes of action are also used to illustrate the mise-en-scene. In Knife in the Water the hitchhiker on the road divides the couple in the foreground in the car, just as he does on the boat. The same composition is reversed as he lies down on the boat pushing the couple into the background. The hitchhiker is taking over the couple's lives, relationship and the boat. The scene from Cul-De-Sac and Repulsion also uses the multiple plane to show intruders in the doorway, another Polanski trade mark. Jake's desperate attempt at infiltrating Hollis' life makes him the intruder but he can only take snapshots whilst the audience is left with a glimpse in China Town.

Camera Movement

Cinematography is not only about composition but it is also about camera movement. The panning sequence around the room in Bitter Moon (1992) tells a story in itself. It is like a short film within the feature. Mimi has brought her dancing partner and is having sex with him in the bedroom. The camera leaves the two and wanders over to what is now Oscar's bed as a disabled person needing medical attention. The pan moves over to the door which has a view of the Eiffel Tower reflecting Oscar's choice to live in Paris, to the photos of writers that inspire him and the computer where he was writing his unfinished novel to Oscar himself, helplessly listening to his wife enjoying sex in the next room. This pan has taken us into a nostalgic drive reminding us of the macho Oscar of before, choosing to come to Paris, renting an imposing room with a view of the Eiffel tower, writing his book and dominating Mimi and this pan is like a reverse shot, a flipped mirror view of the Oscar we knew and the Oscar that is now. This brings me to Polanski's use of the reverse shot.

The Reverse Shot

Conventionally reverse shots are used to dally between two speakers as they talk or to show their reaction to something. Very often, two cameras are used focusing on each speaker and later edited in the studio to display a montage of reactions to action, answer to question. Polanski only uses reverse shots to tell a story in images. The picture above features scenes from Bitter Moon (1992). Most of this scene is a long take of Mimi as she closes in on Oscar. It starts with mimi at the furthest distance by the door surrounded by candles. It is both a sensual and satanic sort of dance. The reverse shot of Oscar is a mid-shot of him comfortable on the sofa: It is not a reaction but this is a reverse shot of a rather passive spectator. As the shot turns to Mimi both the unseen Oscar and the spectator are completely consumed by her. This reverse shot is a premonition of what is to come. Oscar as a passive lover and Mimi a demonic dominatrix is expressed through this application of the reverse shot. The next sexual scene at the breakfast table starts with Mimi's erotic stroking of her breasts with milk and the reverse shot of Oscar's reaction, but once again this is a mirror image of a later breakfast where Oscar condones Mimi for drinking her milk out of the bottle and the camera does do reverse onto Mimi as she leaves the table to pleasure him. As erotic as Bitter Moon is, as explicitly sexual and dangerously close to the pornographic it may be, Polanski sticks to the story telling of reverse shots to keep any pornographic elements strictly to the viewer's imagination. The reverse shot is used in other words to block the spectator's eyes from sex and let the viewer build the missing pieces. This is exactly the opposite conventional use of the reverse shot, where action - reaction, question-answer are desperately filmed by the director to make sure that the spectator gets the message. Polanski, instead keys in the message and uses the reverse shot to log out.

Back on the boat, Nigel is trying to woo Mimi. The reverse shot comes after Mimi tells him, that his wife is watching. It is a delayed reverse shot that is used to make us feel how Nigel and we have been caught unawares. The last time we saw Nigel's wife Fiona she was fast asleep after a bout of seasickness. The reverse shot shows us Fiona dressed to the nines, beautiful as we have never seen her before. The next reverse shot is of Mimi dancing in the crowd. Nigel is not there. Once again the reverse shot is delayed, just in time to catch Nigel next to Fiona and Oscar. We are not following action nor reaction, we are missing out on both. Now we are left with Nigel. Rather than another reverse shot on the dancing crowd, Nigel has been humiliated and he is as helpless as the crippled Oscar watching his wife walk away with Mimi. He has lost both a chance at a wild life of fantasy with mimi and his solid marriage to Fiona within a single reverse shot.

Below is a video essay entitled Polanski: A Cinema of Invasion