THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH - Review by Greg Klymkiw - The Bard of Avon gets a delectable Roman Polanski bloodbath via this gorgeous Criterion Collection Blu-Ray!

Macbeth (1971)
Dir. Roman Polanski
Scr. Kenneth Tynan & Polanski

Stars: Jon Finch, Francesca Annis

MY MOM, MRS. RAPPAPORT, MACBETH and ME
a personal memoir & review by Greg Klymkiw

My late mother taught me to read by the age of 5. She did it with comic books. Not just ANY comic books, mind you, but via the wonderful Classics Illustrated series which adapted great literature in comic book form. At the end of every issue were the words: "Now that you've read the comic, read the original."

When Mom signed up a couple of years later for the Doubleday Book-of-the-Month Club - not for her, but for me - one of the "free" (of four) introductory titles she selected was "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare". (The other three were Pierre Boulle's "Monkey Planet", AKA "Planet of the Apes", "The Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson" and "The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe".) Being a sick puppy even at the tender age of 7, I chose to read "Macbeth" first. Of all the Shakespeare plays represented in those comics, it was the one story that ferociously consumed me. As a child, I was Regan in "The Exorcist" and the devil himself was the Thane of Cawdor.

My sweet, darling mother painstakingly read the play with me, both of us taking turns reading aloud to each other and often alternating roles. Through this process we oft-referred to the Classics Illustrated adaptation and Mom even bought a "Coles Notes" book (AKA "Cliff's Notes") to address stuff she herself didn't "get", just so she could make sure I did.

At the ripe old age of 14 I first saw Roman Polanski's film version of The Tragedy of Macbeth which my Mom took me to see when it opened first-run in Winnipeg at the Park Theatre on November 30, 1973, a good two years after it opened in the United States. As a kid, I'd been chomping at the bit to see it. Released in many markets as simply, Macbeth, I was well aware of the picture's existence as I'd started reading the show business trade bible "Variety" at the age of 10 and now, oh happy day, the movie was finally playing in our midwestern Winter City.

There were a whole whack of cool films playing in the 'Peg that weekend. It was the opening day of two amazing drive-in double features. In the west end of the city, A.I.P.'s The Little Cigars Mob featuring Angel Tompkins robbing banks with a gang of armed midgets and the jaw-dropping Ray Milland-Rosie Grier=grafted-together horror-comedy The Thing With Two Heads (both of which Dad took me to see on the Saturday night) and in the north end, Gimme Shelter and Monterey Pop were unspooling, but neither parent would take me to see those movies since the only music they enjoyed were Ukrainian Liturgies, Ukrainian Folk Songs, Nana Mouskouri, Mantovani and the Percy Fsith Orchestra. (The closest they ever got to Heavy Metal was Harry Belafonte.) That weekend in Winnipeg was ALSO opening night of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye with Elliot Gould, but as I'd already ear-marked it to see alone during my usual Saturday afternoon movie forays downtown, I asked Mom if she could drive me all the way to the south-end Friday night and take me to watch the movie I'd so desperately wanted to see. She agreed.

Let's place this in perspective, folks. My Mother, a nice, polite, North End Winnipeg Ukrainian girl drove her son across town to sit with him and watch The Tragedy of Macbeth, Roman Polanski's blood-soaked, ultra-violent adaptation with, I might add, Lady Macbeth parading about in the nude whilst delivering her madness monologue. I don't know a lot of Moms who would do this for their progeny, but MY MOM DID!!!

By my teen years, I had occasion to read "Macbeth" again - this time within the context of a North End Winnipeg public school English class under the divine tutelage of Mrs. Elaine Rappaport. She was the best English teacher I ever had until my post-secondary years, and even then, she held her own with the best of them. The wife of noted Rabbi Sidney Rappaport from the Rosh Pina Synagogue in Winnipeg (he passed away in 2009), she was one classy, snappy, sharp-witted lady.

That said, and not wishing to toot my own horn, but she soon found herself face-to-face with the Macbeth-like madness lodged within the heart and soul of a teenage movie freak. After the astoundingly brave act of showing a bunch of kids a 16mm print of Polanski's film, I immediately dove in on the picture's violence, linking it to the despair and guilt Polanski must have been feeling over the murder of his beloved wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the Manson Clan. Years later I discovered that every Tom, Dick and Harry had made this same cliched, unoriginal and condescendingly simplistic observation.

So shoot me. I was a teenager. Besides, not a bad observation for a kid.

Though she tried to take issue with my comment, I knew Mrs. Rappaport was always ahead of the curve and I suspected, even at the time, that she mildly and politely disputed my precocious assertion so she could take our discussion away from a sickening murder that many kids in those days, even in high school, had been sheltered from.

I plunged ahead, though, and began recalling the specific date and explicit DETAILS of Sharon Tate's murder, in addition to the approximate dates as to WHEN the writing of the script and subsequent PRODUCTION of the film would have occurred. I then insisted that based upon the aforementioned findings, my point could not be disputed.

I'll never forget the sparkles in Mrs. Rappaport's eyes as she then launched into a brief elaboration of my point and then moved us on ever-so gracefully (and graciously) to discuss the differences between the film and play.

One week after my Mother took her final breath of life after a long battle with stomach cancer, I was reminded of her dedication to a precocious son's desire to read and obsess over all things "Macbeth" and, of course, the movies. I'm eternally grateful to her. My love for cinema, theatre and literature was both encouraged and indeed nurtured by her. She might well have been seen by the world as "only" a mother, housewife and part-time bank teller, but even as a kid I knew how she'd studied violin at the Conservatory of Music and eventually gave up a professional life as a musician to be a loving Mother and dutiful Wife. She had the soul of an artist which she saw in me also and did everything in her power to arm me with the means to never give up on my own desires and talents as she had done in the days when many women felt forced by societal pressures to do so. In the words of the old Russian-Jewish folk song, popularized by the Welsh songstress Mary Hopkins, "Those were the days, my friend".

Indeed they were.

In fact, the thought that we'll ever again see a Shakespeare film adaptation as truly great as Polanski's (and in fairness, I tend to include and acknowledge those elements Francis Ford Coppola borrowed for Godfathers I & II), is not something I take solace in. What I do accept wholeheartedly is that Polanski's The Tragedy of Macbeth is so "modern", so forward-thinking, so ideally faithful and intelligently interpreted that we do, in fact, have a film for the ages.

Polanski so wisely centres his film firmly and fiercely within Lady Macbeth's successful exertions of influence and then secondarily, that of the witch hags Macbeth encounters on the way home after his victories in war to fling himself into the loving arms of his wife. The good Lady's wifely influence provea to be too successful. Her ambitious husband's subsequent actions of lying, cheating, stealing, traitorously conspiring and committing murder in the coldest of blood is the stuff which all our dreams are made on. (Personally, I've always been aware of my own roiling needs, rooted as they were, and still are, in a kind of selfish know-it-all "quality" so that ultimately, the only possible influence I have to exert them, comes from me and me alone.)

At the beginning of the film, we learn that Macbeth (Jon Finch) has done magnificently in battle. The manner in which Polanski sets this up is simply masterful. Who will ever forget the murky skies overlooking the bodies and blood upon the muck, the poor flailing sod being ball and chained to death and the kind of mad horror in actor Jon Finch's eyes as Macbeth's otherwise poker-face surveys the damage/victory he's wrought.

This is the horror Polanski thrusts us immediately into and it's impossible to unglue one's eyeballs from the proceedings. This tragedy of Shakespeare's is indeed a work of horror and Polanski seems to understand this better than any other filmmaker who tackled the play (including, I might add, the rich, evocative, but fatally flawed Orson Welles version). When Macbeth has been named Thane of Cawdor by King Duncan for leading a successful decimation of the enemy (and capturing the rebel leader who previously bore the title), we get the tiniest glimmer of pride - perhaps even a smidgen of happiness - in Macbeth, this newly honoured young warrior.

Fate has other plans for him though. Encountering a gaggle of horrendous hags - witches of the most odious order - Macbeth hears and is infected with their prophecy that he will be King. Though he attempts to eschew thoughts of such glory, he won't have a chance against the most powerful witch of all, the extremely mortal, but bewitchingly concupiscent, mind-alteringly ravishing Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis).

Polanski's first triumph was in casting these two actors. Finch, many of whom will remember as the strangely unlikeable loser protagonist Richard Blaney in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, is such an astonishing Macbeth I suspect I'll never be able to imagine the face of the character with any other visage. Finch so brilliantly captures the various shades of Macbeth's intensity as it percolates slowly whilst his alluringly magnetic Lady places thoughts of being King in his mind - almost taunting, shaming him into desiring as quick an ascension to the throne as possible - one in which only murder can pave the way to.

Annis, of course, is the ultimate Lady Macbeth. She is not only stunning in every camera-loves-her respect, but she delivers her desires with the deftness of a fox and increasingly with viper-like stings which soon latch unshakeably onto Macbeth's manly psyche.

If murder be the only way, so be it.

Polanski continues to focus upon their relationship throughout until the narrative shifts into Shakespeare's astonishingly wrought parallel descents into derangement of the most fevered order. As Macbeth becomes more tyrannical, Lady Macbeth begins to slip into madness. They both lose their souls - in fact, Polanski emphasizes that it's their deep love, their bottomless pit of passion which is the unholy instrument which undoes both of them. Lady Macbeth's madness causes her to erupt into guilt so appallingly, deeply, debilitatingly and destructively molten whilst the crown-thieving maniac Macbeth fills his dwindling spiritual reserves as his soul pours out paranoia which is as catastrophic in its decimation of his humanity as the guilt is so ruinous to his lady.

When I first saw The Tragedy of Macbeth as a kid, I still remembering how I chuckled out loud, receiving odd stares from both my Mother and audience members. I soon kept my guffaw-bursts in check, but later revealed to my mother in the drive home after the screening that every single time Macbeth looked upon a potential enemy (i.e. murder victim), it reminded me of those fantasy sequences in the Fleischer Popeye cartoons when a starving Wimpy would look at virtually any living thing and imagine them to be a pig, a cow, a chicken - anything he could slaughter and eat. Seeing the movie again on the Criterion Blu-Ray I got the same thoughts. I'm convinced that Polanski intentionally staged, shot and cut Finch's glares at his eventual victims - not in homage to the Fleischer cartoons, but certainly with the same mad, darkly hilarious undercurrent which Fleischer imbued his own films with.

Not only are we tantalized with one blood spattering grotesquerie after another, but Polanski wisely has Lady Macbeth wander buck naked throughout the castle as she delivers her madness monologue. Let's not make the mistake here of downplaying Polanski's genius as a showman - he's the ultimate showman. He dazzles us with both prurience and a veritable rampage of brutality. Shakespeare was a showman, too. Let's not forget that. If anything, Polanski's delectably and suitably exploitative indulgences allow us one HELL OF A GOOD SHOW whilst at the same time, shove our faces in the sheer horror of Macbeth and his Lady's respective madness.

Seeing The Tragedy of Macbeth during one of the most emotionally draining periods of my life was exactly what the doctor ordered. Running parallel to this sentient drainage in my own life were also feelings of sentiment and nostalgia - I couldn't help but do the math as I faced so much of what I loved in a place that reminded me how these things of beauty were either gone or about to go and would soon be relegated, and in fact were actually being consigned to the hallowed place of memory.

The Tragedy of Macbeth as deftly rendered by Polanski did what any great work of art should do. Here I was, watching a work written over 400 years ago and interpreted in a version from over forty years ago and it touched me on a very personal level.

I thought, with the indelible sharpness of crystal that SOME women, like my Mother and English teacher, inspire the sun, moon and stars of the mind, while others, as scribed by Shakespeare, inspired pure NAKED ambition.

Luckily the ambition inspired by the two great women in MY early life was fully clothed.

THE FILM CORNER RATING for Film and Blu-Ray: ***** 5-Stars

The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of The Tragedy of Macbeth is yet another example for me of the genuine art of creating home entertainment for as rich an experience as possible. The 4K transfer was personally approved by director Roman Polanski and as such, both sound and picture are as mind blowing as one could imagine.

The extra features are a pure goldmine of information, insight and education. An all-new one hour documentary entitled Toil and Trouble: Making “Macbeth” includes wonderful contemporary interviews with Roman Polanski which provide a marvellous retrospective glimpse into his film from the position of having to discuss it over forty years after it was made. The doc is fleshed out with appearances by production executives and actors (including Annis herself).

The 1971 Frank Simon documentary Polanski Meets Macbeth delivers a historical look at the making of the film and includes footage of the cast and crew on set. It's thoroughly fascinating.

Two other extra features are so wonderful, they could have been the ONLY value added elements and I doubt anyone would have been disappointed. The first is Polanski's co-screenwriter Kenneth Tynan being interviewed by the great Dick Cavett in 1971. The piece not only allows us the privilege of meeting with the brilliant Tynan to hear his perspective on the process, but as per usual, we get yet another example of just what a great interviewer Cavett was.

Secondly, and perhaps the most vital document is Two Macbeths from the wonderful 1972 British TV series Aquarius. This is must-see viewing for anyone who loves film and theatre as we are blessed with a conversation about "Macbeth" between Polanski and the noted theater director Peter Coe.

In addition to the supply of trailers and a Terrence Rafferty essay within a lovely booklet, this Criterion Blu-Ray is yet again adorned with a stunning cover design from Sarah Habibi whose work is so consistently amazing that I almost wish she could just design every Blu-Ray and DVD cover for every movie I love.

Needless to say, this Criterion Blu-Ray is a keeper folks.

ROMAN POLANSKI: A FILM MEMOIR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Polanski's powerful personal recounting of his early years during the Holocaust and the tragedy of Sharon Tate almost overshadow this feature documentary's less-than-satisfying handling of the child rape and Polanski as a filmmaker.

Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir (2011) ***
Dir. Laurent Bouzerau
Starring: Roman Polanski, Andrew Braunsberg

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Laurent Bouzerau might be one of the best directors you've never heard of. He's directed, produced and edited over 150 documentaries - all good, a few great. He is the pioneer of extra feature documentaries that we all take for granted on our DVDs and Blu-Rays. As a laserdisc geek, I remember always being blown away by the Criterion Collection laserdiscs and their fantastic extra features. It was here where I first saw Bouzerau's credit - he was not only responsible for making the documentaries, he was even the producer of some great Criterion laserdiscs.

Where he really shone, in my opinion, were his formidably exhaustive "Making Of" documentaries for Universal Pictures - again, on laserdisc (where his Jaws and 1941 docs were feature length masterworks of the form). Years later on DVD, I was also impressed with his magnificent Hitchcock documentaries. also for Universal.

Bouzerau is a pioneer, a genuine filmmaker and the real thing. When I found out he was the director of Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir, I dove into the film with complete and utter abandon. Imagine then, my disappointment, when it became obvious that Producer Andrew Braunsberg didn't just turn over the reigns to Bouzerau completely and instead, seems to have used him as a camera jockey.

The film, as it stands, is a conversation between Polanski and Braunsberg. The latter has been a friend and producer to the famous child rapist and auteur for many years and while Bouzerau shoots the proceedings with simple, effective competence, one wonders how much he really had to do with the film. I only need compare this picture to Bouzerau's previous work where his voice and passion for cinema are so clear to make the assumption that Braunsberg has used this great talent to merely point and shoot.

Bouzerau was surely, in one way or another, involved in numerous aspects of the movie that clearly DO work, but the disappointment comes in realizing just how great it could have been if he'd been given carte blanche to apply his own unique voice to the picture (as was clearly apparent on so much of his earlier work). Even though all his home entertainment documentaries were client-based, the fact that they clearly have so many individual touches to them suggests that he was working at the peak of his powers.

It doesn't always feel that way here.

And so, we have a conversation between two old friends. When Polanski talks about his days as a child during the Holocaust and his early years before attending the Lodz film school, he opens up in the sort of frank manner that might ONLY have been secured in conversation with a friend. I guarantee there will be no dry eyes in the house during these moving and harrowing sequences. As well, Polanski's recollections of Sharon Tate, the horrendous Manson Massacre and the aftermath is painful, honest and truly horrifying.

Yes, he is both a great artist and a human being who has suffered what no man should suffer.

He is, however, a child rapist. I feel the film lets him off lightly in this regard and his remorse seems to come far too late in his life to have much impact. Granted one feels anger that the Swiss government placed him unfairly under house arrest (during which time this film was made) and that this action on the part of Switzerland was clearly an affront to justice - both for Polanski and his victim. It was the sort of grandstanding that was occurring in the American courts when Polanski was first brought before them. All this is clear and understandable.

The rape is not.

None of this, however - in any way, shape or form - takes away from the genuinely heart wrenching section about Polanski's nightmarish early years. In fact, it offers up far more questions left unanswered about the vile acts he perpetrated upon that little girl and their relationship to his own suffering. Some might suggest this is a more effective way for the film to deal with that issue.

I think it's a cheat.

I expected Polanski to open up so much more than he does here and I suspect he could have if he'd really been pushed to the sort of limits that a friend - on film, no less - might actually be willing or able to go.

Where the film really goes off the rails is in the discussions with Polanski about his filmmaking. It's hardly in-depth and barely skims the surface that his work merits - especially within the context of a personal memoir. I personally had hoped the film could have also gone as in-depth about Polanski's cinema as Bouzerau has accomplished on his previous filmmaking documentaries. This could have been an epic cinematic memoir as opposed to one that feels incomplete. One needs only to look at the brilliant interviews Bouzerau presided over with Steven Spielberg to realize what a lost opportunity this all was.

In spite of these reservations, what's powerful about the film is SO powerful that it's finally an absolute must-see! And one hopes, that Bouzerau and Polanski can someday go head to head - ON film, ABOUT film - specifically, the stunning canon Polanski has amassed to date.

"Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir" is playing this final weekend at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. For tickets and showtime information, please visit the TJFF website HERE.

If you're interested in reading my previous writings on Roman Polanski, they are as follows:

"You Only Have Yourself To Blame" - The Claustrophobia Films of Roman Polanski
Part One: My Love Affair With The Poison Dwarf - Available HERE

"You Only Have Yourself To Blame" - The Claustrophobia Films of Roman Polanski Part Two: REPULSION and THE TENANT, Roman Polanski and the Art of Humiliation - Available HERE

ROSEMARY'S BABY - Devil Worship always involves sacrifice, but perhaps the greatest sacrifice of all is giving birth... Available HERE

CARNAGE - Roman Polanski Delivers The Goods! First Run Engagement is the Cherry on the Sundae of TIFF Bell Lightbox Retrospective of the Claustrophobia Films of Polanski Available HERE

ROSEMARY'S BABY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA FOR 2012 #1 - Criterion Collection Director Approved Blu-Ray & DVD

Abe Sapirstein Says:

"This Xmas, HAIL SATAN!

Give the gift that keeps on giving."

Here's your Greg Klymkiw Christmas Gift Suggestion #1 for 2012. Everyone you love will deserve this special treat to celebrate the birth of Jesus H. Christ, Our Lord. It's the magnificent Criterion Collection - Director Approved Blu-Ray (or, if you must, DVD) of Roman Polanski's masterpiece of utter horror, "Rosemary's Baby, brought to you with an all-new, restored digital transfer, that's been approved by director Roman Polanski, with (my favourite) an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Add the following delectables: a new doc with interviews featuring Polanski, Mia Farrow and Robert Evans; an interview with the author of the bestselling novel the movie is based on, Ira Levin; "Komeda, Komeda", a feature-length doc on the life and work of Krzysztof Komeda, who wrote the chilling score for everyone's favourite cinematic buffet of Satan; A nifty booklet featuring an essay by Ed Park; Levin’s afterword to the 2003 New American Library edition of his novel; and Levin’s rare, unpublished character sketches of the Woodhouses and floor plan of their apartment, created in preparation for the novel.

Can it possibly get any better than this to commemorate Our Lord Baby Jesus being expunged from the virgin loins of Mother Mary? You bet it doesn't. This is the gift that keeps on giving, so give it with love to those you love.

Rosemary's Baby (1968) *****
dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Maurice Evans, Sidney Blackmer, Ralph Bellamy, Charles Grodin, Elisha Cook Jr.

Review By Greg Klymkiw

We've all had neighbours, friends, family and/or mere acquaintances who - no matter how well intentioned - just suck the life right out of you. Their ubiquitous presence and meddling (disguised as a helping hand) gets to a point where you just don't want to answer the door or telephone, or in this day and age, go online. In fact, you sometimes even contemplate killing these loathsome, hematophagous hirudinean parasites. And make no mistake, they come in all shapes, sizes and persuasions. Some of them might even worship - yup, you guessed it - Satan!

I must frankly admit I've always had a soft spot for devil worship.

In the movies, that is.

The cult aspect of devil worship is what's probably the most frightening. Val Lewton's The Seventh Victim is probably the first great horror movie to deal with the evil of cults and the insidious way they target their prospective members/victims, then suck them dry. Also great fun is The Devil Rides Out, that great Hammer Horror picture directed by Terence Fisher and starring Christopher Lee as the Satanist-battling hero and Charles Gray (the expert criminologist from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Ernst Stavros Bloefeld, 007's nemesis in Diamonds Are Forever) as the perverse, evil devil worshipper who's into sacrificing any number of buxom beauties to his Lord and Master. And, of course, nobody in their right mind could ever forget Warren Oates and Peter Fonda in Jack Starret's brilliant and sadly unsung Race With The Devil wherein our heroes try to outrun Satanists in their (I kid you not!) Winnebago.

In the cinematic devil worship sweepstakes, nothing quite beats Roman Polanski's classic big-screen adaptation of Ira Levin's compulsive best-selling novel Rosemary's Baby. Produced by veteran horror director and producer William Castle, this movie was one of the biggest hits of the late 60s and has remained, for over forty years, one of the truly great horror thrillers of all time. A recent helping of the picture confirmed that it's still as terrific as it always was.

Opening under the strains of Krzysztof Komeda's score under ace cinematographer William Fraker's overhead shots of Manhattan, Rosemary's Baby immediately grips you with its off-kilter lullaby to a dead baby (as composed by Erik Satie in a REALLY foul mood) and featuring vocals more at home in an Oil of Olay commercial. The music plays over shots that make New York feel less like a bustling modern metropolis, but rather, some baroque, almost decrepit old world labyrinth of brick - adorned with turrets and rusting water towers.

The camera eventually settles above a gorgeous 19th century building and we soon focus our attention on a newlywed couple, Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse (Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes) who are about to be shown an apartment by the friendly, but slightly weasel-like caretaker (Elisha Cook Jr.). Of course Rosemary adores it, though Guy displays some trepidation over the rent - he's a struggling actor getting by on the occasional TV commercial and off-off-off-Broadway theatrical piece.

Soon they settle into their new home. A series of odd discoveries and strange noises are noted, but not fretted over too much. What there IS to fret about are their neighbours, a childless old couple, Minnie and Roman Castavet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer). They seem friendly enough, but insinuate themselves immediately upon the couple - borrowing cups of sugar, endless dinner invitations, dropping by unannounced, recommending (rather insistently) all sorts of things that are really none of their business. Though it drives Rosemary bonkers, her hubby Guy is eating it up and spending all his free time with these batty old people.

A series of tragedies occur. A young woman jumps from the top of the building. Guy loses an important audition, but within days, he finds out that the actor who got the role instead of him has gone mysteriously blind. An old family friend (Maurice Evans) suffers a massive stroke.

Then Rosemary's dreams begin - nightmares, really. An especially horrific dream occurs when Guy purportedly has sex with her when she passes out.

And then she gets pregnant. All should be well. Guy has been offered the role he initially lost. His star begins to rise. The Castavets, with Guy's eager approval insist Rosemary switch doctors and send her to their old friend Abe Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy), one of the most respected family doctors in the country.

Rosemary, however, is not happy. They've drifted away from every friend who was their contemporary. They are spending endless social evenings with the Castavets, Sapirstein and a whole bunch of old people. Worst of all, Rosemary is getting weaker and sicker with each passing day. Instead of gaining weight, she becomes anorexically skinny. The baby inside of her feels dead. Dr. Sapirstein keeps insisting nothing's wrong and she's forced to ingest a putrid herbal drink that Minnie Castavet prepares under the doctor's orders.

Oh, and then, there's the chanting. Every night. From the apartment of the Castavets.

Clues and research yield to the inevitability that everyone in Rosemary's life is a Satanist and that her baby is being groomed - not for life, but for sacrifice.

Or so Rosemary believes.

Sacrifice would be a blessing.

What's in store for her baby is a lot worse.

As Polanski has almost become the final word in thrillers infused with paranoia, Rosemary's Baby oozes creepy portent and when things get serious, the movie is unbearably scary. Polanski delivers a measured, slowly mounting sense of dread. When the terror shifts into fuel-injected overdrive, few thrillers can only hope to be even a fraction of this picture in terms of pure, unadulterated horror.

Every performance in this movie is a gem. Mia Farrow is suitably gamine and vulnerable, but where she really shines are those moments when WE know she's not crazy, but everyone (other than the Satanists) think she's completely bonkers. Cassavetes as her hubby, oozes slime - almost from the beginning, really. Where he really knocks the ball out of the park are those moments when he displays revulsion at the mere thought of having to touch his wife after she's pregnant. He's almost more frightening than the true evil all around her. Coming close to stealing the movie, however, is former golden age comedy star Ralph Bellamy as the kindly (on the surface) Abe Sapirstein. As the movie progresses, he seldom lets down his guise as the helpful family doctor - he plays it so straight that we begin to suspect he's deeply in cahoots with the Satanists. Some of his advice to Rosemary is so ludicrous in light of what WE see happening to her and what she herself feels, that he becomes the most malevolent of all the movie's antagonists. Bellamy's performance is so astonishing that it might be hard to trust any kindly old G.P. who's coming at you with a hypodermic.

(Oh, and as a sidenote: ABE SAPIRSTEIN!!! Is this not a GREAT character name? All the character names novelist Ira Levin conjured are brilliant, but "Abe Sapirstein" takes the cake big time!)

Rosemary's Baby is as close to perfection as any movie can come - every detail, every dramatic beat, every shudder-inducing moment and every knock-you-on-your-ass horror set piece is proof-positive of Polanski's genius. His work in Rosemary's Baby reminds me of that great speech Violet Venable gives in Tennessee Williams's "Suddenly Last Summer" when she describes her trip to the Encantadas and focuses on the "hatching of the great sea turtles and their race to the sea" and how the "flesh-eating birds ...hovered and swooped to attack" until finally, they turn over the newborn sea turtles in order to "attack their soft undersides, tearing their undersides open and rending and eating their flesh."

This is Polanski in a nutshell. He's the consummate filmmaker and as such, is a predator - rending and eating the flesh of his characters AND the audience.

In Rosemary's Baby, he takes the commonplace and slowly, creepily and nastily drags both his heroine and the audience through a bed of glowing hot coals. It's often the quiet that's so unsettling. When the quiet yields - ever so rarely, but effectively, to shrill, shrieking and almost unspeakable horror - you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you're under the spell of a master.

Hail Cinema!

Hail Polanski!

Hail Satan!

CARNAGE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Roman Polanski Delivers The Goods! First Run Engagement is the Cherry on the Sundae of TIFF Bell Lightbox Retrospective of the Claustrophobia Films of Polanski

Carnage (2011) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz

****

By Greg Klymkiw

I had to see Carnage again to experience everything I missed the first time. It's the funniest movie of the year, so be prepared to laugh so hard that you too will need to see it a second time. Then, you'll probably want to see it a third time - just because it's so terrific.

The movie is also blessed with the distinction of being one of the best stage-to-screen adaptations ever committed to film. Based on Yasmina Reza's award-winning play "God of Carnage", the author could not have asked for a better director than the great Roman Polanski to guide its four characters through a mud-swamped, mustard-gas-infused battlefield of nasty sniping - not in Beirut, mind you, but within the upscale luxury of a lovely New York apartment.

So much of Reza's ferocious knee-slapping dialogue is worthy of that which pulsates through Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf". Though overall the play/movie as a whole is not as dangerously devastating as Albee's classic four-hander, (nothing ever could/would be) Carnage is, as a movie, so much more honest and brilliant than, say, the fake nastiness of such overrated crap as Alan Ball's screenplay for American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes. With American Beauty and his loathsome screen adaptation of Revolutionary Road, the marginally talented Mendes specializes, it seems, in rendering drama that purports to expose all the raw nerve endings of human existence, but does so for those who only pretend they like the lower depths of domestic bile puked up on a platter - but really don't.

Carnage, on the other hand, expunges its smorgasbord of bilious goods with Polanski's trademark aplomb and sheer delicious, vicious glee. (There's even a great moment in the movie that comes close to the shock and hilarity of the now-famous Trelkovsky-in-the-park sequence in The Tenant.) This picture is possibly even more claustrophobic than all of Polanski's previous "apartment" pictures combined - though it's brilliantly bookended with (and scored by the wonderful Alexander Desplat) by two phenomenal exterior sequences. Other than those, though, we're smack dab in the living room, kitchen and hallway of an apartment.

Two relatively affluent 40-something couples meet over coffee and cobbler to discuss, in a civilized manner, the fisticuffs which broke out between their respective pre-teen sons. The conversation zig-zags between several topics, all related in some fashion to the initial offending action. However, once the coffee and cobbler is abandoned in favour of a bottle of scotch, the relative restraint gives way to a no-holds-barred, rock-em-sock-em, to-the-death cage match of verbal assaults and, much to everyone's surprise, an uncorking of everything that's wrong with both marriages.

The hosts of this afternoon meeting of minds are clearly the odd couple of the two. Michael (John C. Reilly) is a borderline boor who runs a successful wholesale firm that specializes in fixtures. His wife Penelope (Jodie Foster) is a pinched prig with a penchant for fine art catalogues and coffee table books and labours in her not-so successful career as an author (her latest book is about the suffering of Darfur). The guests of the host couple seem, on the surface, a perfect fit. Alan (Christoph Waltz) is a sleazy lawyer who represents dubious pharmaceutical companies and Nancy (Kate Winslet) is a chicly-attired trophy wife.

As the afternoon progresses, battle lines are drawn, re-drawn and the balance of power shifts ever so deftly from one side to the other. In no time, the blades come out. The eviscerations are at first levelled from hosts to guests and vice-versa, but when each respective husband and wife begin on each other, the nasty accusations and finger pointing become far more revelatory than any of the characters bargained for that day.

When Michael, the seemingly happy-go-lucky schlub opines, "We're born alone and we die alone," he quickly adds, "Does anyone want a little scotch?" Offering booze to quell a tense situation, is frankly akin to aiming a thermonuclear device at the Hoover Dam.

The cast is uniformly fine. Reilly plays on his goofy, hangdog appeal but brings a heretofore unexplored malevolence to his bag of thespian tricks. Jodie Foster delivers another trademark slender thread performance, but reveals a terrific sense of humour. Kate Winslet beguiles us with her full-figured beauty, but eventually lets rip with her fair share of verbal daggers. Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) proves again why he is one of the best actors working today - he careens from cutthroat to pathetically needy and everything in between.

Some critics who should know better (my familiar refrain), have admired the movie grudgingly, but toss it off as a "filmed play". Nothing could be further from the truth. Polanski is a master of enclosed spaces (Repulsion, The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby, etc.). His deft camera placement and movement is pure cinema. More importantly, he adheres to what ultimately makes the best big-screen adaptations of theatre - he refuses, by and large, to "open-up" the action.

This knee-jerk attempt by filmmakers to render their work more cinematic serves - more often than not - to dilute the power of the text and thus rendering it MORE lacking in the hallmarks of cinematic storytelling. (Let's NOT forget the moronic decision on the part of director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Ernest Lehman to "open up" the otherwise GREAT film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by shifting the locale briefly to a nearby roadside bar. The sequence sticks out like a sore thumb.)

Polanski refuses to take the easy way out. He throws us into the four walls of this apartment and forces us, for eighty minutes, to engage in the superb verbal jousts which, I must assert are plenty nasty and screamingly funny. Carnage is ultimately a class act all the way and once again, Roman Polanski proves he's one of the great living filmmakers.

Oh, and guess what? It's about adults.

"Carnage" is being released by Mongrel Media and will be seen in both mainstream cinemas and at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as the cherry on the sundae of a superb mini-retrospective of Polanski's claustrophobic masterworks.

ROSEMARY'S BABY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The greatest sacrifice is giving birth...

Anticipating the release of "Carnage", Roman Polanski's nasty, insanely hilarious four-hander, The Toronto International Film Festival's TIFF Bell Lightbox presents an astonishing mini-retrospective of everyone's favourite genius child rapist that focuses upon his continued obsession with paranoia within the context of closed spaces. Films that are still left in the series include: "Rosemary's Baby" (Friday December 23 09:00 PM) and "The Ghost Writer" (Sunday December 25 04:00 PM).

Rosemary's Baby (1968) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Maurice Evans, Sidney Blackmer, Ralph Bellamy, Charles Grodin, Elisha Cook Jr.

****

By Greg Klymkiw

We've all had neighbours, friends, family and/or mere acquaintances who - no matter how well intentioned - just suck the life right out of you. Their ubiquitous presence and meddling (disguised as a helping hand) gets to a point where you just don't want to answer the door or telephone, or in this day and age, go online. In fact, you sometimes even contemplate killing these loathsome, hematophagous hirudinean parasites. And make no mistake, they come in all shapes, sizes and persuasions. Some of them might even worship - yup, you guessed it - Satan!

I must frankly admit I've always had a soft spot for devil worship.

In the movies, that is.

The cult aspect of devil worship is what's probably the most frightening. Val Lewton's The Seventh Victim is probably the first great horror movie to deal with the evil of cults and the insidious way they target their prospective members/victims, then suck them dry. Also great fun is The Devil Rides Out, that great Hammer Horror picture directed by Terence Fisher and starring Christopher Lee as the Satanist-battling hero and Charles Gray (the expert criminologist from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Ernst Stavros Bloefeld, 007's nemesis in Diamonds Are Forever) as the perverse, evil devil worshipper who's into sacrificing any number of buxom beauties to his Lord and Master. And, of course, nobody in their right mind could ever forget Warren Oates and Peter Fonda in Jack Starret's brilliant and sadly unsung Race With The Devil wherein our heroes try to outrun Satanists in their (I kid you not!) Winnebago".

In the cinematic devil worship sweepstakes, nothing quite beats Roman Polanski's classic big-screen adaptation of Ira Levin's compulsive best-selling novel Rosemary's Baby. Produced by veteran horror director and producer William Castle, this movie was one of the biggest hits of the late 60s and has remained, for over forty years, one of the truly great horror thrillers of all time. A recent helping of the picture confirmed that it's still as terrific as it always was.

Opening under the strains of Krzysztof Komeda's score under ace cinematographer William Fraker's overhead shots of Manhattan, Rosemary's Baby immediately grips you with its off-kilter lullaby to a dead baby (as composed by Erik Satie in a REALLY foul mood) and featuring vocals more at home in an Oil of Olay commercial. The music plays over shots that make New York feel less like a bustling modern metropolis, but rather, some baroque, almost decrepit old world labyrinth of brick - adorned with turrets and rusting water towers.

The camera eventually settles above a gorgeous 19th century building and we soon focus our attention on a newlywed couple, Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse (Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes) who are about to be shown an apartment by the friendly, but slightly weasel-like caretaker (Elisha Cook Jr.). Of course Rosemary adores it, though Guy displays some trepidation over the rent - he's a struggling actor getting by on the occasional TV commercial and off-off-off-Broadway theatrical piece.

Soon they settle into their new home. A series of odd discoveries and strange noises are noted, but not fretted over too much. What there IS to fret about are their neighbours, a childless old couple, Minnie and Roman Castavet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer). They seem friendly enough, but insinuate themselves immediately upon the couple - borrowing cups of sugar, endless dinner invitations, dropping by unannounced, recommending (rather insistently) all sorts of things that are really none of their business. Though it drives Rosemary bonkers, her hubby Guy is eating it up and spending all his free time with these batty old people.

A series of tragedies occur. A young woman jumps from the top of the building. Guy loses an important audition, but within days, he finds out that the actor who got the role instead of him has gone mysteriously blind. An old family friend (Sidney Blackmer) suffers a massive stroke.

Then Rosemary's dreams begin - nightmares, really. An especially horrific dream occurs when Guy has sex with her when she passes out.

And then she gets pregnant. All should be well. Guy has been offered the role he initially lost. His star begins to rise. The Castanets, with Guy's eager approval insist Rosemary switch doctors and send her to their old friend Abe Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy), one of the most respected family doctors in the country.

Rosemary, however, is not happy. They've drifted away from every friend who was their contemporary. They are spending endless social evenings with the Castanets, Sapirstein and a whole bunch of old people. Worst of all, Rosemary is getting weaker and sicker with each passing day. Instead of gaining weight, she becomes anorexically skinny. The baby inside of her feels dead. Dr. Sapirstein keeps insisting nothing's wrong and she's forced to ingest a putrid herbal drink that Minnie Castanet prepares under the doctor's orders.

Oh, and then, there's the chanting. Every night. From the apartment of the Castanets.

Clues and research yield to the inevitability that everyone in Rosemary's life is a Satanist and that her baby is being groomed - not for life, but for sacrifice.

Or so Rosemary believes.

Sacrifice would be a blessing.

What's in store for her baby is a lot worse.

As Polanski has almost become the final word in thrillers infused with paranoia, Rosemary's Baby oozes creepy portent and when things get serious, the movie is unbearably scary. Polanski delivers a measured, slowly mounting sense of dread. When the terror shifts into fuel-injected overdrive, few thrillers can only hope to be even a fraction of this picture in terms of pure, unadulterated horror.

Every performance in this movie is a gem. Mia Farrow is suitably gamine and vulnerable, but where she really shines are those moments when WE know she's not crazy, but everyone (other than the Satanists) think she's completely bonkers. Cassavetes as her hubby, oozes slime - almost from the beginning, really. Where he really knocks the ball out of the park are those moments when he displays revulsion at the mere thought of having to touch his wife after she's pregnant. He's almost more frightening than the true evil all around her. Coming close to stealing the movie, however, is former golden age comedy star Ralph Bellamy as the kindly (on the surface) Abe Sapirstein. As the movie progresses, he seldom lets down his guise as the helpful family doctor - he plays it so straight that we begin to suspect he's deeply in cahoots with the Satanists. Some of his advice to Rosemary is so ludicrous in light of what WE see happening to her and what she herself feels, that he becomes the most malevolent of all the movie's antagonists. Bellsamy's performance is so astonishing that it might be hard to trust any kindly old G.P. who's coming at you with a hypodermic.

(Oh, and as a sidenote: ABE SAPIRSTEIN!!! Is this not a GREAT character name? All the character names novelist Ira Levin conjured are brilliant, but "Abe Sapirstein" takes the cake big time!)

Rosemary's Baby is as close to perfection as any movie can come - every detail, every dramatic beat, every shudder-inducing moment and every knock-you-on-your-ass horror set piece is proof-positive of Polanski's genius. His work in Rosemary's Baby reminds me of that great speech Violet Venable gives in Tennessee Williams's "Suddenly Last Summer" when she describes her trip to the Encantadas and focuses on the "hatching of the great sea turtles and their race to the sea" and how the "flesh-eating birds ...hovered and swooped to attack" until finally, they turn over the newborn sea turtles in order to "attack their soft undersides, tearing their undersides open and rending and eating their flesh."

This is Polanski in a nutshell. He's the consummate filmmaker and as such, is a predator - rending and eating the flesh of his characters AND the audience.

In Rosemary's Baby, he takes the commonplace and slowly, creepily and nastily drags both his heroine and the audience through a bed of glowing hot coals. It's often the quiet that's so unsettling. When the quiet yields - ever so rarely, but effectively, to shrill, shrieking and almost unspeakable horror - you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you're under the spell of a master.

Hail Cinema!

Hail Polanski!

Hail Satan!

REPULSION and THE TENANT, Roman Polanski and the Art of Humiliation - Part Two of "You Only Have Yourself To Blame" - The Claustrophobia Films of Roman Polanski - By Greg Klymkiw

Anticipating the release of "Carnage", Roman Polanski's nasty, insanely hilarious four-hander, The Toronto International Film Festival's TIFF Bell Lightbox presents an astonishing mini-retrospective of the work of everyone's favourite genius child rapist that focuses upon his continued obsession with paranoia within the context of closed spaces. Films include: "Repulsion" (Wednesday December 21 09:00 PM), "The Tenant" (Thursday December 22 09:00 PM), "Rosemary's Baby" (Friday December 23 09:00 PM) and "The Ghost Writer" (Sunday December 25 04:00 PM).

REPULSION (1965) ***1/2 THE TENANT (1976) ****
Roman Polanski and the Art of Humiliation
Part Two of "You Only Have Yourself To Blame"
The Claustrophobia Films of Roman Polanski
By Greg Klymkiw

"You only have yourself to blame."

So says the corpulent concierge (Shelley Winters) to Trelkovsky (Roman Polanski), the title character of The Tenant. His apartment has just been broken into. He is understandably distraught. He feels violated, sullied and, for the umpteenth time in his relatively new digs, he's been insulted, humiliated and finger-wagged. And now this, the final straw - a break-in - and the only solace offered to him is:

"You only have yourself to blame."

This whiny kvetch emanating from the ciggie-twixt-the-lips, hair-in-curlers and perpetually shuffling Bubbie from the depths of Hell is merely one of a seemingly infinite number of indignities on display that are, frankly, impossible NOT to laugh at. To stifle one's guffaws while watching The Tenant is pure and utter folly. Every humiliation thrown like a tureen of cold pig slop in the faces of the disenfranchised and/or downtrodden, is a veritable laugh riot. The accumulation of hilarity amidst the darkness is, finally, what contributes to those moments of horror that creep through the movie like some T.S. Eliot Prufrock-like "pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas"

Such is the genius of Roman Polanski.

The Tenant is pure, unadulterated nasty fun that keeps you alternately laughing and cringing in terror. Telling the tale of a young Parisian of Polish descent who thinks he's happened upon a perfect apartment, we follow his tale of insanity and obsession as he begins to assume his landlords and neighbours are conspiring against him to become the former tenant of his digs, a sad young woman by the name of Simone Choule who took a dive from the balcony. Strange people stand motionless in the washroom window across the courtyard. He finds a tooth buried deep in the wall behind a heavy bureau. He visits the dying woman in the hospital and armed with a bag of oranges meets cute with the ravishing Isabelle Adjani who accompanies him to a Bruce Lee martial arts movie where the two of them make out. Soon, it doesn't take long before he begins to engage in avid cross-dressing, sitting in his window and watching the neighbours humiliate another tenant they find disfavour with.

Ah, such is life in Paris. Especially if you're Roman Polanski.

Ultimately, I've always believed that many of our truly great filmmakers are those who obsessively latch onto their favourite depravities (or at least the very worst behaviour amongst the species of man) and fetishize them - the lens of the camera a mere extension of the director's eye, revealing with frankness, their own deep-seeded sickness. This is a good thing. Truth is grand entertainment, especially when mediated through a great artist who lavishes a most meticulous attention to that which most "normal" people find utterly repugnant.

Besides, when an artist fully commits to such obsessions, it's funnier than Senior Citizen Day in Paul Bartel's Death Race 2000, where the cross-country road-racers are allowed to mow down the most vulnerable of our society with their souped-up cars and thus score extra points for every hit.

A key reference point for such cinema - and in particular, that of Roman Polanski - are the lines uttered by Nell (a legless old woman living in a trash can) in Samuel Beckett's magnificent play "Endgame":

"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness."

Truer words were never spoken. They're especially apt in relation to Polanski's trilogy of claustrophobia, paranoia and humiliation within apartment dwellings - Repulsion, the sexy, creepy exploration of a woman's descent into madness, The Tenant, the aforementioned demented horror film rife with black comedy and, of course, the queen bee of all devil worship thrillers Rosemary's Baby (a film I'll be reviewing in full at Daily Film Dose).

Repulsion is the female flipside to The Tenant, but its brand of creepy feels more Henry James (a la Turn of the Screw) as opposed to the definite Dostoyevskian qualities of the latter. Following Carole, a meek, but stunningly gorgeous beauty parlour employee who rooms with her gregarious sex-starved sister (Yvonne Furneaux), the movie presents a series of scenes where Carole is objectified by several men and then, forced to spend time alone in the apartment when her sister and her married boyfriend (Ian Hendry) take off for a few days of illicit sin. Once alone, things progressively get creepier and scarier as Carole is plagued with horrific visions of hands and arms reaching out to her through the walls and several men make visits with violation on their minds. Luckily, her sister's beau has left his shaving kit behind.

One common thread stringing through Polanski's overall mise-en-scène is his sense of pace (creepy and deliberate), the manner in which his actors glide through scenes (almost in real time), how Polanski's camera eye lavishes attention upon strange little details which are revealed to be both the POV of The character AND filmmaker and certainly in the case of Repulsion, the fetishization of his central character Carole (Catherine Deneuve).

Both Repulsion and The Tenant are given miraculous boosts thanks to the men Polanski chose to cinematographically render his vision. The former features exquisite fine grain black and white photography courtesy of the magnificent Gilbert (Dr. Strangelove, A Hard Day's Night, Frenzy, The Omen) Taylor while the latter is lensed by Ingmar Bergman's chief visual collaborator, the great Sven Nykvist. Polanski also didn't skimp on composers to render astounding scores for both - the former featuring Chico Hamilton's percussive jazz stylings, the latter imbued with Phillipe Sarde's rich, baroque orchestral drones.

And both films, especially Repulsion, are imbued with wildly imaginative and more than apt soundscapes.

Repulsion is aurally driven with the quiet - a score of silence punctuated by occasional natural (and some, not-so natural) noises. One especially salient example of this in Repulsion is when we cut to a slightly skewed God's eye closeup of a decaying uncooked skinned rabbit, then we see the stringy eyes that have grown out of some neglected potatoes. As the camera moves away, Polanski cuts to a closeup side-view of said potatoes until the camera glides up and we see Carole studying them intensely. Several perspectives for the price of one. We see Polanski's fetishization of the potatoes, Carole's fixation upon them and, in turn Polanski's fixation upon Carole/Deneuve.

And, of course, accompanying the aforementioned is the endless ticking of a clock wherein time moves forward, but without a seeming end-point and certainly, no light at the end of a deep tunnel of madness and despair.

In the same sequence above, Polanski then follows Carole's every move as some odd noises draw her to a spot of solace, which, in turn is broken by a sharp unexpected action, more silence and finally, the jangling sound of the door bell ringing. Polanski follows her as she apprehensively approaches the door - the camera hovering at about shoulder level, but tilted slightly downwards. This approach, blending perspectives of the artist and his creation is what makes the whole affair potent indeed. It's also perversely funny, undeniably sexy, grotesquely creepy and scary, to boot!

The whole notion of laying blame upon the victim - especially when mental illness is involved - is a thematic concern that Polanski has, to varying degrees, explored in virtually all of his films. Certainly in Repulsion, Carole is a victim. We're never completely sure if she's suffered sexual assault or not, but Polanski trains his camera upon her like a constant ogling eye and we are afforded shot after shot, scene after scene of men training their sights upon her - drilling holes into her beauty with their eyes. Some of this might be imagined, some of it real, but we get the overwhelming sense that she is, at the very least, a victim of constant OBJECTIFICATION. This, frankly, is as real an assault upon her as those physical violations she (possibly) imagines and/or (possibly) experiences.

Trelkovsky in The Tenant is told outright that he only has himself to blame (which, admittedly, might even be hallucinatory), just as there are strong implications throughout Repulsion that Carole is seen by virtually every character as being responsible for her own shyness, loneliness and lack of trust (in most everybody, but especially men). Like Trelkovsky, when Carole is alone - truly and physically alone - the horror, whether imagined or actual is REAL. When Carole is visited by an intruder from the shadows of her apartment, the sexual assault that occurs is real to her. Polanski presents this horrific scene by omitting the sounds of her screams, but we feel them and are repulsed just the same.

One might, of course argue that Polanski is as responsible for objectifying victims, especially women. Catherine Deneuve as Carole is ravished by his lens. It prods and pokes at her, exploring her beauty and vulnerability to a point of abject obsession. In fact, there's a strong sense that Polanski might well be objectifying the notion of virginity and that only true purity can come from madness and repulsion towards ALL sexual activity. Outside the apartment (and this IS truly hilarious) we constantly see and hear white-frocked nuns playing basketball - their giggles and shouts of joy punctuated by an almost constantly ringing bell.

Ah, virginal Carole, if only she'd join them - perhaps it's the cloister of Jesus that will provide solace and protect her virginity.

Or maybe, she just needs to butcher a few nasty fellows.

Not unlike Trelkovsky in The Tenant who needs to prove to the world that he IS a victim, by donning a dead woman's clothes, tossing himself out the window, then dragging his battered body back up the stairs, smearing blood everywhere before taking a second plunge from the balcony.

And finally, as funny, nasty, scary, sexy and horrific as both films are, it is finally the notion of blaming a victim that is most terrifying of all. I daresay, it is work that is also very strangely moving and imbued with a humanity that many do not wish to give Polanski credit for having.

Polanski has experienced horrors, perpetrated horrors and on film, both horrors are laid bare.

He's a creep, but he IS an artist.

And a great one at that.

Besides, those who are WITHOUT sin, might wish to consider casting the first stone. They'd be hypocrites, of course, and they'd be all the more so for denying the humanity in his work and that more than likely, looking deep into a Polanski film, is frankly, like looking into a mirror.

I urge anyone who has not seen either "Repulsion" or "The Tenant" to make their first experience of both on a big screen. Thanks to TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto movie-goers will have an opportunity to see both on film. "The Tenant" is sadly only available on a barebones DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment. "Repulsion", on the other hand, is available on an exquisite Criterion Collection Blu-ray. Both will more than suffice for repeat screenings, and in a pinch, they'll do for first helpings. But no matter where you live, endeavour to see them on film, before succumbing to a virginal screenings on a home entertainment format.

Part One of my coverage of the Polanski retrospective at TIFF Bell Lightbox can be found HERE.

"You Only Have Yourself To Blame" Polanski's Claustrophobia Films - a Two Part Feature By Greg Klymkiw - Part I: My Love Affair With "The Poison Dwarf"

Some call him "THE POISON DWARF"
Others call him "ROMAN POLANSKI"

"You Only Have Yourself To Blame"
The Claustrophobia Films of Roman Polanski
Part One: My Love Affair With The Poison Dwarf

By Greg Klymkiw

The vast majority of Roman Polanksi films referred to in this series of articles are all available on a variety of labels including THE CRITERION COLLECTION and can be ordered directly through this website via the Amazon.ca Amazon.com and amazon.uk links at the bottom of this piece.

Anticipating the release of "Carnage", Roman Polanski's nasty, insanely hilarious four-hander, The Toronto International Film Festival's TIFF Bell Lightbox presents an astonishing mini-retrospective of the work of everyone's favourite genius child rapist that focuses upon his continued obsession with paranoia within the context of closed spaces. Films include: "Knife in the Water" (Saturday December 17 @ 09:00 PM), "Cul-de-sac" (Sunday December 18 09:00 PM), "Repulsion" (Wednesday December 21 09:00 PM), "The Tenant" (Thursday December 22 09:00 PM), "Rosemary's Baby" (Friday December 23 09:00 PM) and "The Ghost Writer" (Sunday December 25 04:00 PM). "Chinatown" will also be on display (Sunday December 18 03:00 PM & Tuesday December 2009:00 PM)

I have no idea what possessed me, but as a teenager in 1977 I took my mother to see Roman Polanski's The Tenant. My poor mother, BUT - lucky me! To be a kid who loved movies during the 1960s and 70s is an experience I fear can never be replicated. Those whose first real taste of cinema in, God Help Us, the 80s and onwards, will never know the joy of experiencing something like The Tenant on a big screen in its first run. It was a time of such daring and insanity - in both the mainstream and fringes - and to already be afflicted with an obsession for cinema in this good time is something I will always cherish. For most cinephiles of the generations following my own, their first taste of this, or earlier periods of film history, was most often in a home entertainment format. This is, and was of course, better than nothing, but one can never replace a big screen experience - especially within the context of a film's first run.

The aforementioned screening of The Tenant (with Mom, who was just a nice Ukrainian girl from North End Winnipeg and not aware of even the most mild depravity, let alone the full-on whack-jobbery on display) was hardly the beginning of my mad affair with Roman Polanski.

Is it possible for a gentleman in drag to menstruate?
Well, if that gentleman happens to be Roman Polanski...

My palate first acquired a taste of Polanski's gifts in the form of a heavily-censored prime-time network television premiere of Rosemary's Baby which, even in this expurgated delivery, scared the living shit out of me as a kid. My second helping of Polanski was when my Grade 8 English teacher Mrs. Rappaport (wife of famed Winnipeg Rabbi, the late Sidney Rappaport of the Rosh Pina Synagogue) showed a 16mm print of Macbeth projected onto a small classroom screen as it clackety-clacked through a Bell and Howell projector. This was, indeed, racy material to be showing in a North-end Winnipeg school what with its gloriously nude and nubile toil-and-trouble witches, Lady Macbeth sleepwalking in the nude (natch'), magnificent manly carnage, copious bloodletting and a decapitation that will live with me always as it was my first on-screen taste of such joyous activity.

Even more extraordinary was how the movie came so immediately in the wake of the brutal murder of Polanski's beloved pregnant wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the Charles Manson "family". Being a precocious little bugger, I recall bringing this up in classroom discussions with Mrs. Rappaport. This pleased her to no end. Then again, i have a vague memory of the late Rabbi coming in to do a guest lecture on the Holocaust and screening Night and Fog. Things in the North End of the 'Peg were plenty, and perhaps to some, surprisingly progressive during the 70s. I ask you: What movie lovers of any subsequent generation could discuss Polanski's Macbeth within the context of horrific events so fresh? And in junior high school, no less.

Polanski's MACBETH: Buckets of Blood. As it should be. 

And then, over a period of several years, I became a fixture at a seemingly endless parade of mini retrospectives at the Manitoba Planetarium Auditorium. Programmed by the legendary critic and trade reporter Len Klady I received my most intense immersion in the work of the perverse genius Polanski who, as a child, survived all manner of brutalities during WWII (that were horrendously detailed and re-imagined in Jerzy Kosinski's great novel "The Painted Bird"). It was here, in brand spanking new 16mm prints, that I tasted Knife in the Water, Cul-de-sac and Repulsion. These early masterworks of paranoia within claustrophobic settings were more than enough to instil the kind of adulation and love for a filmmaker's work that would be with me for my whole life. As well, there was the added context of being this weird fat pudge-o-rama who showed up to every screening until eventually the inimitable Mr. Klady offered, "Kid, you're here all the time. Why don't you rip tickets for me and I'll let you see the movies for free?"

MAJOR LEAGUE BONII!!!

Even better were several years of engaging conversation and tutelage under one of the most rapturous film aficiandos on this Good Earth.

My next heapin' helpin' o' Polanski came both at home and on the big screen. Like Rosemary's Baby, I first saw The Fearless Vampire Killers on network television in prime time. My impressions as a kid, were not all that memorable. It was probably the first time I saw a Polanski picture that just didn't do it for me. Though by this point I was already a Hammer Horror fan (thanks to sneaking off alone to a variety of Main Street Winnipeg grindhouses where I drank in any number of Christopher Lee bloodsuckers within an auditoriums rife with the pungent aroma of urine, sticky cum-plastered floors and toothless hookers giving gum jobs to old men), I failed to see any humour or thrills in this spoof of the aforementioned lurid British horror fests. (Though 20 years or so after, I watched a gorgeous laserdisc transfer, and found the entire crazed pastiche very entertaining.)

And, O! glorious 70s! Will I ever forget seeing Chinatown - FIRST RUN and on a big screen in a packed-to-the-rafters Polo Park Cinema? I saw this with Mom, too, but unlike The Tenant, she fell hook, line and sinker for the neo-noir mystery thriller.

By the time I dragged my Mom to The Tenant, I was already hooked - rapturously in love with Roman Polanski. I've tried analyzing why his pictures meant so much to me 'twixt the tender ages of about 7 to 17. Looking back on my original notes (yes, I really was that big of a geek in the 60s and 70s - from age 7, I kept detailed index cards on every movie I saw) and, in addition to recalling my initial feelings, it boils down to a few salient details.

First of all, I had (and continue to possess) a healthy penchant for genre pictures and the territory Polanski was exploring in his own thrillers worked on visceral levels (they were creepy and scary), but in ways NOBODY else could do. His eye, always so meticulous about holding on images until we saw what his protagonist and/or what Polanski himself wanted us to see, his mastery of pace - especially of the slow, gnawing, creep-crawly kind and last, but certainly not least, his genuine perversity - not just for its own sake, but as a genuinec reflection of alternate realities that so often hit home and/or felt frighteningly familiar. More importantly, on a strictly personal note, I've always had a pretty morbid (some might even suggest sick) sense of humour and between, or even during the scares, Polanski has been the prime inspiration for me to slap my knee whilst horking out huge guffaws. And certainly, as my aforementioned anecdote regarding my Macbeth experience in junior high school displays, I always had lots of cool shit to talk about beyond the usual plot and/or cool-factor exclamations my peers were afflicted with. In fact, the movies allowed me to talk to adults similarly afflicted with cinema obsession and happily, on a whole different level.

Is that a severed head outside Polanski's window?

As well, Polanski seemed to make movies unlike anyone else. Even those that were unfurled against the backdrop of extremely claustrophobic settings sent me into multi-orgasmic explosions of utter drainage. I could never keep my eyes off the screen - every beat, every sound, every gesture, every detail seemed so inextricably linked to moving the stories forward, that I am convinced I was attracted to this mastery of cinematic story telling over all else.

Polanski was, in a word, perverse. So, it would seem, was I.

In retrospect, numerous subsequent viewings of his work and knowledge of his horrific experiences living on the streets during the Nazi occupation (his own Mother died in Auschwitz) explain a great deal. Polanski brought perhaps the single most important element to the proceedings - life experience. It's not an automatic pre-requisite, but when artists bring both their soul and life experience to the fore, one is almost guaranteed to take a cinematic ride unlike those machine-tooled by the proficient, but empty camera jockeys who generate skilled entertainments, but ultimately, have nothing to say.

Seeing Polanski's work during my formative years and when the films were so immediate you could almost touch them is, a personal factor in my obsession. That said, though, they were and still are wholly original - imbued with that special something that guarantees appreciation beyond the mere ephemeral - thus ensuring that they'll live well beyond their initial release.

The generation I pity the most, of course, are all those who fell in love with the movies when utter drivel unspooled upon their movie-needy psyches and shaped a woeful generation weaned on the worst cinema history had to offer. The tastes of this sad generation were chiseled by work that was best exemplified by the title of Pauline Kael's compilation of her New Yorker reviews from this period. It was titled, "State of the Art". All of Kael's previous book titles were rooted in sexual abandon - titles like "I Lost It At The Movies", "Reeling", "When the Lights Go Down", "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" and my favourite, "Deeper Into Movies". With that title, one could almost imagine plucky Pauline, her eyes sparking devilishly, an ever-so slight smirk emblazoned upon her visage, almost matronly (yet alternately that of some come-hither, gutter-dwelling slattern), before affixing a mighty strap-on dildo to her torso and plunging it into whatever orifice we'd allow her to puncture - just so she could drill down to our collective G-spot.

The movies. Of course.

But after the 70s, we no longer "lost it" at the movies. No sex, no carnal desire, no rapturous orgasmic celebration of the greatest art form of all creation. For Kael, movies had all become an industrialized, cold, thing. No longer was blood pumping to the penis or vagina. Instead, a throbbing, jack hammering cacophony emanated from the screen and induced nausea and/or sheer boredom. And when it wasn't that, it was the mewing and/or caterwauling to pulverize our cinematic libidos into cornmeal. Cases in point: George Lucas's original Star Wars series, John Hughes's whine-fests or all the empty calories of early Bruckheimer and Simpson extravaganzas. This was no longer sex, it was, "The State of the Art".

The post-70s period was also the decade when true repertory cinema began to die and where mainstream network television and its affiliates decreased the number of classic films on its programming slates. Not only did subsequent generations of burgeoning movie lovers have to be inflicted with first run "state of the art" crap, but they had no reference points for cinema beyond Bruckheimer, Hughes and Luke Skywalker.

To coin a refrain from Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf: "Sad, sad,sad."

I still remember the theatre I first saw Polanski's crazed cross-dressing plunge into madness and xenophobia, the long-departed Northstar Cinema. This "modern" twin hardtop on Portage Avenue in downtown Winnipeg was home to a weird variety of motion picture product. In those halcyon days, both of the auditoriums were huge. One screen would often feature something that was of the blockbuster variety, while the other would show more sophisticated fare.

It's where I first saw - FIRST RUN - Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers, Lina Wertmuler's Seven Beauties and, I kid you not, Don Shebib's classic of Canadian cinema Goin' Down The Road - and in a 600-seat house that almost always managed to draw huge crowds for films that now would be lucky to get a miserable postage stamp screen in a dank, poorly attended discount-cinema-cum-arthouse populated by backpack-adorned granola-munching vegans.

Mom enjoyed seeing movies there, too. It was a fresh, new and clean complex and because of its upscale qualities, it never seemed to attract that certain "element" (my Mother's favourite word) which spoiled any outing outside of the mall in our suburban paradise. The theatre was also conveniently located round the corner from the bank she worked in, so I'd often plan to meet her downtown after work and see a movie.

And what, did I choose? A Roman Polanski movie. And not just any Roman Polanski movie, but easily one of his most creepy and perverse pictures up to that point.

Jesus, I was a weird kid.

But that's not the entire story. It's always important to consider the venues and context of seeing a picture because ultimately, if it has the potential to break free of those considerations, it almost always is the sign of a true classic. Luckily, for those who never experienced Polanski properly on a big screen (and those who have and need to do so again), The TIFF Bell Lightbox Polanski retrospective will afford a most rare opportunity. "You Only Have Yourself To Blame" The Claustrophobia Films of Roman Polanski by Greg Klymkiw continues on Monday, December 19, 2011 with Part Two - The Art of Humiliation: Repulsion and The Tenant. To access that piece now, click HERE.