Roman Polanski is one of the great maverick figures of world cinema, with a long career starting in Poland with his short films of the 1950s and running through to the present with Oliver Twist. His personal life has been controversial and often tragic. Yet the notoriety of celebrity has made us overlook the true importance of his films in cinema history. This collection is a critical re-assessment of that role, long overdue. It highlights the bold and dazzling diversity of his work as well as recurrent themes and obsessions that have had such a powerful impact upon audiences throughout the world. Films discussed include Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Chinatown (1974), Death and the Maiden (1994) and The Pianist (2002).

John Orr is Professor Emeritus in the School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Contemporary Cinema (1998), The Art and Politics of Film (2000) and Hitchcock and Twentieth Century Cinema (Wallflower Press, 2005). Elzbieta Ostrowska teaches film at the University of Alberta (Canada) and is co-editor of Gender in Film and the Media (2000). Together they are co-editors of The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda: The Art of Irony and Defiance (Wallflower Press, 2003)

July 2006
224 pages
978-1-904764-75-5 (pbk) £16.99
978-1-904764-76-2 (hbk) £45.00

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chapter samples

foreword by Mark Cousins

reviews

'An anthology that casts light not only on the darkness of vision but also on the disparate persectives with which the films of Polanski have been associated. Distinctive voices map out the cinema of a truly transnational director from a variety of approaches: auteur theory, genre, psychoanalysis, feminism, as well as national cinema and trauma studies.... a timely and essential work in understanding Polanski's contribution to why cinema was invented'
Luisa Rivi, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

'This thorough, engaging and accessible volume casts critical light on a director who resists easy interpretation. These essays approach Polanski from a wide variety of perspectives, and suggest provocative connections between seemingly disparate works; the writers point to the larger issues at the heart of his oeuvre: perception, space, desire, national identity, memory and the fluid reinterpretation of genre. These nuanced readings of individual films work to simultaneously situate Polanski within a broader theoretical context'
Amy Herzog, Queen's College, CUNY

'Essential reading for anyone interested in the brilliant and often disturbing work of this enigmatic film-maker'
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