The tumultuous story of a director whose signature movies - dark,
bleakly funny, shot through with perversity and paranoia - reflect
the sensibility of an artist shaped by circumstances more
harrowing, unpredictable and absurd than any Hollywood
melodrama.Roman Polanski's troubles began in 1939, when the Nazis
invaded his native Poland. The family was confined to Krakow's
Jewish ghetto, and in 1943 his parents were sent to concentration
camps, leaving their ten-year-old son to fend for himself. (After
the war, reunited with his father, he learned that his pregnant
mother had been gassed at Auschwitz.) Cunning and possessed of a
ferocious drive, Polanski eventually attended film school in Lodz,
where he quickly became the star pupil and developed a reputation
for lavish spending, partying and prodigious sexual conquests. In
slyly playful prose, Sandford (McCartney, 2007, etc.) limns the
young artist as a mercurial changeling, alternately arrogant,
tender, hilarious, boorish and charming, always striving for (and
coming thrillingly close to) technical perfection in his cinematic
technique. After he emigrated to America, Rosemary's Baby and
Chinatown helped define a new era in movies and cemented their
director's status as one of the greats. Polanski's personal life
remained gothic: In 1969 his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was
horrifically murdered by the Manson Family; eight years later, the
director pled guilty to the charge of "unlawful intercourse" with a
13-year-old girl, fled the country before sentencing and has lived
in Europe since. Sandford admirably extracts all of the salient
information from the maelstrom of controversy and urban myth
surrounding Polanski's often lurid personal history, neither
damning nor exonerating him. When he won the Academy Award for Best
Director in 2002 for his Holocaust drama The Pianist (obviously, he
could not attend), the driven, 69-year-old director was in Paris,
preparing his next film.Engrossing, lucid presentation of a
uniquely complicated and productive life. (Kirkus Reviews)
Born in Paris to Polish-Jewish parents, Polanski dealt with the
terrors of his childhood - including internment in Auschwitz - by
creating an elaborate fantasy world in which he lived as a film
star. He would go on to become one of the very best and most
infamous directors in Hollywood's history - with a backlist that
includes Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, Macbeth, Chinatown, Tess,
Frantic and, more recently, the Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning The
Pianist. Yet, it is within his own personal life that the most
dramatic story unfolds - he's been at the centre of two of the most
lurid crimes ever committed in Hollywood. In August 1969 his wife
Sharon Tate, eight months pregnant, and seven of the couple's
friends were butchered by the Manson family; Polanski himself, who
was in London at the time, was the intended target. Eight years
later he was arrested by LA police on charges of drugging and
raping a 13-year old model and aspiring actress He fled the country
and has since lived in exile in Paris, where he complains of
continual harassment by the US authorities. Polanski's latest film
was the hit Oliver Twist and, Variety insists, he promises to
follow it with his long-awaited version of the Tate killings. Both
projects, dealing with child exploitation and murder, can only fuel
the controversy that surrounds him. This biography is the first
chance his fans and detractors will have to read about him in real
depth. It will reveal the brilliant invention, self-destruction,
talent, self-destruction, sex, drugs and wild excesses, with names
and stories told for the first time. Fascinating, flawed, wildy
creative, this is the full, uncut story of one of the greatest
directors of our time.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
