 Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
Director: Roman Polanski
Year Of Release: 1974
Plot: Private Investigator Jake Gittes is brought in to investigate a potential case of adultery. However while poking around, he discovers he wasn’t hired by the real wife of man suspected of sleeping around. Then, when the person he’s following ends up dead, Gittes is thrown into a dangerous world of deceit, murder and corruption, which is all somehow connected to LA’s water supply. |
Chinatown is a superb movie. More than anything else it’s responsible for creating the popular conception of what film noir is. It’s more noir than most of the classic movies of the 40s and 50s, almost as if it’s distilling those films down to the essential noir-ish elements. It also contains some brilliant moments from the nose slitting to Faye Dunaway’s classic “mother, daughter, mother, daughter” slapping around.
I also love the way it’s based on historical events, as huge amounts of corruption and deceit did surround the creation of LA’s water system. As the city grew, the fact it was in the desert meant massive amounts of money were at stake in getting water from the places where it fell, into the city. As suggested in the film, huge areas of farmland in central California were more or less starved of water to feed the growing metropolis. Chinatown set off a wave of noir-ish stories partially based on real life, from many of James Ellroy’s books to Who Framed Roger Rabbit (before you disbelieve that statement, the toons might not be real, but the demolition of the city’s public transport system by car manufacturers is).
However, what I really want to talk about today is Chinatown’s director, Roman Polanski. He’s been in the news a lot in recent months after being arrested in Switzerland on an international arrest warrant. He’s now waiting to hear whether his appeal against extradition to the US will succeed, and also engaging in plenty of legal wrangling in the States to try and ensure that if he does go back he doesn’t have to spend much time in jail.
While there’s been much talk about the fact the US wants him to face charges dating from the late-70s of unlawful sexual activity with a minor, it’s not always been clear exactly what he’s alleged to have done or how serious it is, so I thought it might be worth briefly detailing the events that Polanski’s still dealing with over 30 years later.
Having moved to the US in the late 60s and made Rosemary’s Baby, it’s generally accepted that Roman Polanski slightly went off the rails following the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson family in 1969. For example, many suggest his violent, chaotic and bloody take on Macbeth in 1971 was a result of his reaction to his wife’s death. However with 1974’s Chinatown he seemed back on form.
Then, in 1977, events took place which have dogged him ever since. It is important to say that much of the following is what’s alleged to have happened, rather than what definitely did – although the fact he had sex with an underage girl isn’t in dispute, as he even wrote about it in his autobiography. On March 10th, 1977, the then 43-year-old Polanski was at the home of Chinatown star Jack Nicholson (who wasn’t there are at the time, and nor was his live-in girlfriend, Anjelica Huston), doing some photography work with a 13-year-old model for the French edition of Vogue.
Polanski had photographed the model before, and she later testified she didn’t want to do the second session as at the first shoot he’d asked to photograph her topless. As alleged in the later criminal case against the director, towards the end of the shoot Polanski is said to have plied the girl with a mix of champagne and Quaaludes, and then pressured her to go into the bedroom and lie down. The model said in police interviews that despite her repeated requests for him to stop, he performed oral sex, intercourse and sodomy on her. It should be noted that in an interview many years later the model said that while not consensual, Polanski wasn’t cruel or mean, and he didn’t hurt her, and that she just let him get it over with. That said, she has never suggested what he did was anything but wrong.
Polanski has always denied the sex was non-consensual, saying that he did not drug her, that she wasn’t unresponsive to his advances, and didn’t react negatively at the time (a later rape kit showed no sign of forced penetration). However, whatever her response, a 13-year-old cannot consent to sex with an adult in California, and Polanski couldn’t argue he didn’t know she was underage.
After the girl went to the police, they arrested the director and a grand jury charged him with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under fourteen, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor.
These serious charges could have seen Polanski locked up for decades, however the girl wished to retain her anonymity and so her lawyer arranged a plea bargain. Five of the initial six charges would be dismissed and Polanski would plead guilty to the lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. The director agreed to the deal, and pled guilty.
Part of the plea deal was that before sentencing Polanski would report to state prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. He did this and was released after 42 days. The expectation was that because of the deal, this evaluation period would be the only prison time he would have to serve, with all parties, including the girl’s lawyer, arguing against send Roman back to jail.
However this is the part where things get tricky and the actual events are less clear. What’s definite is that before sentencing could take place, Polanski bought a one-way ticket to England and fled the States in March 1978, with no intention to return. He immediately went on to Paris, where he held citizenship (although born in Poland, he’d also held French citizenship since shortly after the end of the Second World War). While Britain would most likely have sent him back to the US – which is why he’s never returned here, even when suing people in British courts – the French treaty with the US allows them to refuse to extradite their own citizens to America. Since then he’s stayed and worked in countries from which he was unlikely to extradited, such as France, Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland.
Switzerland was also one of these countries and he even owns a chalet there (where he’s currently under house arrest). However this changed last September when he was arrested as Zurich Airport while travelling to attend a film festival. The US authorities had learned of Polanski’s planned movements and faxed the Swiss Justice Ministry to tip them off and ask them to hold him. The States has been actively looking to bring Roman back to America since 2005, when they issued an international arrest warrant, and started to track his movements with the hope of getting a friendly country to arrest him and send him back (they always wanted him back, but only started to actively search for him again more recently).
However, why did Polanski flee the US in 1978, when he’d already pled guilty and was just awaiting sentencing? As suggested, the actual events are disputed, but what is clear is that despite the plea bargain and Polanski’s belief when he took it that he wouldn’t have to spend any more time in jail than the psychiatric evaluation period, he became certain that when it came to sentencing, the judge was going to jail him for far longer than had been agreed. As a result he decided to flee the jurisdiction.
The allegation is that the judge had decided to reject the plea deal. Technically, this is within their purview. Although prosecution and defence can agree a deal between themselves, a judge isn’t legally bound to accept it if they think it’s unduly lenient or if it breaks other rules. However, in Polanski’s case, it’s been claimed that the judge engaged in illegal activities, including secret meetings with the prosecution where he was coached to give a harsher sentence. The judge is also said to have met and talked to various other people he shouldn’t have, who pressured him to reject the plea deal (largely because it was such a high profile case and many didn’t want Polanski to be sent home with nothing more than a slap on the wrist). Polanski has claimed one of the reasons he fled was because he felt like 'a mouse with which an abominable cat was making sport,' due to the judge’s desire to bring him down.
Many of these allegations were detailed in the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired. In that film retired Deputy District Attorney David Wells who was one of the prosecutors in the case, said he’d talked to the judge about how he could renege on the plea deal. If true, this would have been illegal. Well’s claims have since been one of the main planks of Polanski’s arguments about judicial malfeasance, however Wells later claimed he lied in the documentary, as he was told it wouldn’t be shown in the US and he thought it made a better story if he said he’d talked to the judge.
Although it’s not 100% clear whether Roman was aware of all this before he fled for Europe, there’s general agreement that the allegations of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct may be valid and need further investigation. Much of the current legal activity surrounds these claims, as if proved it’s like the charges against Polanski would have to be dropped (despite the fact he’s already pled guilty). His lawyers also want to clear up what sort of sentence Polanski might receive, as this may affect whether he has to be extradited at all.
Switzerland’s laws say they only send people to America for crimes where they’ll serve six months or more in jail. That’s certainly a possibility for Polanski (although unlikely), and so his lawyers are trying to get the Californian courts to give some clarification. The US courts are currently unwilling to say exactly what will happen or to sentence him in-absentia (which Polanski requested), as US law bars people who’ve fled justice from seeking relief from the courts unless they turn up in person. A complicating factor is that as fleeing justice is a crime in itself, unless the initial charges are dropped, he could have that added on top and face even longer in jail.
It’s certainly noticeable that while many stood up to defend Polanski when he was first arrested last September, most of those voices have now fallen quiet. What he did in 1977 was wrong and fleeing the jurisdiction wasn’t a great way to handle it, even if there was misconduct in the case. In fact, the allegations of judicial malfeasance and questions about the US legal system have been used almost as way to try and get people to ignore that at the centre of the case is a 43-year-old man having sex with a 13-year old, and then trying to escape justice.
It’s difficult to imagine many other people who were charged with that, being defended in the way Polanski has, no matter how long ago it was. He may be sorry (although at the time, he didn't seem that apologetic), and even his victim wishes the whole thing could just be sorted out quickly so that everyone can get on with their lives (she’s argued against more jail time), but he’s still facing serious charges. Yes, there might have been misconduct, and that’s wrong, but the actual charges themselves shouldn’t be forgotten. Roman Polanski may have made great movies before and after the 1977 incident, but that doesn’t give him a free pass to evade justice, whether he deserves to be locked up again or not.
It should be known relatively soon whether Switzerland will extradite him, and whether he will have to spend time locked up in a US jail.
TIM ISAAC
PREVIOUS: Children Of Men - Or, why genuinely risk-taking studio films like Children Of Men are so rare
NEXT: Chocky Trilogy - Or, does anyone else suffer from Chocky-o-phobia (and who the hell makes kid’s sci-fi about a schizoid breakdown anyway?)
CLICK HERE to see the index of 909 films and TV shows the Movie-A-Day Project will be covering
CLICK HERE to find out more about the idea behind The Movie-A-Day Project
CLICK HERE to follow Movie_A_Day on Twitter
