The famously irascible critic Kenneth Tynan once declared Roman Polanski "the four-foot Pole you wouldn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole". Certainly his career has been dogged by controversy, but the tragedies and scandals too often distract from Polanski's cinematic achievement. The traumas experienced in the Krakow ghetto clearly influenced Polanski's preoccupation with evil. But they also inspired his appreciation of the randomness of life, as well as the sense of anxiety and sympathy for the non-conformist that is evident in virtually every film in the BFI's touring Polanski retrospective.
Driven from Poland after the reception accorded his Oscar-nominated debut feature, Knife In The Water (1958), Polanski relocated to his birthplace, France. However, he was to cross the Channel for his third and fourth features, Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-Sac (1966), with the latter's receipt of the Golden Bear at Berlin confirming his international reputation.
Having misfired with his unfunny Hammer parody, Dance of the Vampires(1967), Polanski arrived in Hollywood to again demonstrate his talent to disconcert with Rosemary's Baby (1968). However, the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate - the pain of which resonates through his bloody adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth (1971) - and his decision to jump bail after being charged with underage sex, three years after receiving an Oscar nomination for Chinatown (1974), prompted a return to Europe, where he's since been based.
Subsequently, he's found expression for his despair and distrust of society in The Tenant (1974), Death And The Maiden (1994) and The Pianist (2002), striven after a lost idyll in Tess (1979, pictured) and missed his step in attempting the commercial - Pirates (1986) and Frantic (1988) - and the eclectic: Bitter Moon (1992) and The Ninth Gate (1999). Yet Roman Polanski remains a film-maker who demands to be seen, whether his work infuriates with its seeming inconsequence or wins Palmes d'Or and Oscars.
The BFI retrospective of Polanski films is on tour until September. Visit the BFI's site for venue details.
