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Why can we tolerate Polanski's fictions, but not his realities? (Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
This is a tale of censorship. In 2019, Roman Polanski’s film about the Dreyfus Affair, An Officer and a Spy, was nominated for 12 César awards and won the Grand Jury prize at Venice. But, due to #MeToo, it was never released in America, Australia or Britain, where distributors feared boycotts and social media mobs. This week, the UK Jewish Film Festival dared to screen it in London, and they were right. It needs an audience.
The de facto ban is hypocrisy, because on some subjects Polanski will be heard. Chinatown is about child abuse, which is the very thing Polanski did: in 1977 he pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl in America and has lived as a fugitive in Europe since, dogged by accusations of predation. Chinatown was 50 this year, and there are public screenings in its honour. But An Officer and a Spy cannot be shown when it is urgently needed. This makes no sense. If you are prepared to allow Polanski’s work to exist — and filmmaking is a collaborative effort — why not show the truth of the Dreyfus case? If you are for censorship, censor all his work. Or none of it.
Its story is this: in 1894, the French army knew there was a German spy in their midst. They scapegoated Alfred Dreyfus (Louis Garrel), the only Jew on the general staff; when they realised the case was weak, they falsified evidence against him. “The idea of the Jew, took hold of them, seized them, dominated them,” wrote the historian Joseph Reinach. “My only crime,” Dreyfus said, “was being born a Jew.” He was convicted, and, at the official degradation ceremony, his sword was broken and the crowd shouted, “Death to Judas, death to the Jews!” He was imprisoned in French Guiana on Devil’s Island — how apt — and as Polanski pulls the camera back from the island to the ocean, Dreyfus’s isolation — his Jewishness — is explicit.
France was the first European country to give equal rights to Jews, and this was the revenge. It was also an epigraph to the Holocaust, in which many French people colluded. Eventually, due to the diligence of Georges Picquart (Jean Dujardin), a fellow officer and repentant antisemite, and the activism of the novelist Émile Zola, Dreyfus was pardoned, then exonerated. This is an old European story, ever revived: a Christian nation divines itself through the prism of the Jew.
Polanski does not place Dreyfus at the centre of his film: he is the man things are done to, in cinema and life. But at least he does justice to the antisemitism that destroyed him. “How does he look?” Picquart is asked of Dreyfus’s degradation. “Like a Jewish tailor weeping over his lost gold.” “What was the mood like afterwards?” “As if a healthy body had been purged of something pestilential so that life could resume.”
The Variety critic described The Dreyfus Affair as “fabled” and “legendary”. Subconsciously, at least, he could not accept that Dreyfus was real. The IndieWire critic could not bring himself to review the film: rather he reviewed Polanski and called it “a film-length tantrum” from “cinema’s most-storied rapist… as nakedly autobiographical as anything Polanski has ever made”.
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Subscribehe didnt have ‘unlawful intercourse’ he raped and sodomised a 13 year old girl after getting her high on hard drugs. he should have been extradited and jailed for a very very long time. sod his work and the libtard obsession with this talentless pervert.
Being a rapist certainly doesn’t make him “talentless”. Maybe try to separate those two things in your mind.
Unlawful sexual Intercourse is having sex with someone under age. Rape is without consent. So stop frothing at the mouth and learn a few things in the process.
A child is, by definition and in law, unable to give consent.
Just look up the definitions and what you said, you idiot. You said he didn’t have “unlawful intercourse”, which of course is exactly what he did.
I believe this platform requires courtesy, something not too difficult for those who can write.
Aren’t you just wonderful?
You only do your argument harm with needless invective.
I said nothing about the term ‘unlawful intercourse’ one way or the other.
True, I confused the ones i was addressing. I apologise.
Warmly accepted.
Stop insulting people on here and go back to listening to your Gary Glitter vinyls
You just avoid every single point made above!
Perhaps Polanski’s mistake was to inflict his criminal lusts on the opposite sex?
The beau monde is, it seems, far more forgiving of criminal deviancy if only it is conducted within the established pederastic perameters – that is with underage boys, not girls – as in the case of Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Andre Gide, Benjamin Britten, W H Auden etc. etc.
Wilde’s long and notorious career of child abuse is even mystified and dignified with the name of ‘the love that dare not speak its name’.
There’s nothing mysterious about the line “the love that dare not speak its name”. Nor is Wildes acts “dignified” by it.
The line is from a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas referring to one of two youths who both say they are love, but the happy one declares the sad youth should be called “Shame”. When that youth is asked why he is sad he says “I am the love that dare not speak it’s name.”
This has nothing to do with child abuse at all.
I’m sorry but you are mistaken.
The “love that dare not speak is name”, as it is understood by posterity, was defined by Wilde (a notorious child rapist) in in his evidence at trial as that “great affection of an elder for a younger man […] such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy”.
Now we know who try to know our Classics (as Wilde did) know that what he is really referring to here is not youthful same-sex attraction but specifically Pederasty. And that ‘great affection” (now called child sexual abuse on the statue book) can be found described or alluded to in many of Platos dialogues but perhaps most chiefly in the Phaedrus and the Symposium.
The romance Wilde specifically had in mind, that between Pausanius and Agathon, found in Plato’s Symposium represents a classic Greek Pederastic relationship between an older, more powerful man and a boy-child.
In our day, as it was in Wildes, that is child abuse.
Andre Gide documented in great detail the manifestations of such ‘love’ in his journal of his visit to North Africa with Wilde and Douglas
“Wilde took a key out of his pocket and showed me into a tiny apartment of two rooms…The youths followed him, each of them wrapped in a burnous that hid his face. Then the guide left us and Wilde sent me into the further room with little Mohammed and shut himself up in the other with the [other boy].”
as it is understood by posterity,
Lets try to keep to facts. I am not mistaken. Unless you can show the line is not from the poem by Douglas.
We in no wise disagree, friend.
I quite readily and enthusiastically concur that It is indeed from the poem by Douglas. I must be charitable and assume you are unaware that the ‘love’ referred to is patently and explicitly the love of a grown man for a boy.
I merely point the unititiated to the fact that Wilde kindly elucidated its meaning for the layman at his trial.
Douglas accompanied Wilde and Gide on their Algerian child-rape debauch. He ’employed’ a pre-teen child prostitue named Ali who he once personally whipped for presuming to ‘service’ another adult.
Douglas also told Gide on their trip that he intended to ‘seduce’ Wilde’s nine-year-old son, Cyril, as soon as he got the opportunity. Wilde apparently had no objections.
These men are now held up as icons of ‘Queer’ culture. More people should be aware of this.
The episode is well authenticated but strangely not well known.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/just-wilde-about-the-boys-1263513.html
And now we’re so far away from the article and the point it makes as to be ridiculous.
I should add, which you conveniently altered, that the poem is about the love between a grown man and a young man, not a boy.
The term used in the poem is not ‘young man’ but ‘youth‘ which means, in the context, pre-mature. ‘True’ same sex, different age attraction as contrasted with ‘false’ opposite sex, same-age attraction.
This, in its context and combined with Wilde’s definitions and Douglas own later pederastic history (which he admitted and repented of before death) leaves no doubt, to me, as what the poem is about.
That’s true, ‘youth’ was used in the poem and Wilde used ‘young man’ in his defence. So tricky territory here; the definition of youth, where it begins? Everyone’s playing with words. However to return to the beginning the line from the poem is generally considered to be a euphemism for homosexual love, not necessarily paedophilia. But this is a big subject and, I think, too involved for a comments section.
The article was about double standards, anti-semitism and hypocrisy rather than child abuse. However some of your comments are without without foundation. Historically of course exactly the opposite applied to your suggestion – homosexual men were persecuted whatever the age of their partner. Oscar Wilde notoriously so although now of course he is treated as more of a hero. Interestingly the legislation amendment under which he was prosecuted was introduced mostly to protect young girls. There is no evidence that Benjamin Britten had sexual relations with any of his younger male friends. Byron was bisexual – in modern terms. Many of the homosexual men who were later prosecuted for underage sex were doing so with under-21 year olds, which was the previous age of consent, 5 years above that applying to girls.
I’m a gay man and I’m very grateful for the liberties that are liberal society has made available for me, especially the ability to form a legal partnership with my partner. I’m certainly not paranoid, but it’s perfectly possible to believe that prejudice is buried to some extent rather than eliminated, as your comment seems to indicate! Homosexually-oriented men are probably no less, but also no more, likely to be attracted to underage people, and it is a small minority who are in either case. Another uncomfortable fact for our society and its ages of consent is that people become sexually mature at a much earlier age – and of course in many traditional societies would have been married off by 14. Which doesn’t make the traditional societies right and modern western ones wrong, but it does indicate the complexities of attraction and even love.
Well put.
Thank you for taking the trouble to respond. We are all susceptible of an appeal to the easy tribunal of Prejudice, no doubt, even as we intepret the world through the lens of our own experience.
However, I can not grant the relative permissibility of the actions of the individuals we have both mentioned – Byron, Britten or Wilde – or indeed Polanski. To me their actions clearly cross the threshold into criminality unacceptable in a civilised society.
It is more truly for the benefit of decent same-sex attracted men and women that clear blue water should be put between them and figures like WIlde.
Vile people produce great art. If the same parameters were applied to the work of Picasso as to Polanski’s his works would also be out of bounds. The Tate Modern’s Picasso retrospective, Love, Fame, Tragedy was really an exhibition of portraits of abuse that in my view violated its subject all over again. Marie-Therese Walter was objectified as nothing more than a “muse,” with Picasso’s abuse of her and other women, including teenagers, completely airbrushed out. Picasso, though, unlike Polanski, is beyond judgement and too big to be cancelled. Neither was he Jewish – and that’s where it gets complicated. In both cases, though, the choice of whether to engage with the creator should be ours, and in the case of Polanski we’ve been denied that in a curiously selective way. We can see his old films but not the latest “Jewy” one. The question I think Tanya Gold asks is whether this seeming “hypocrisy” cloaks tacit antisemitism. Certainly few who originally saw Chinatown would have known or cared that its director was a Jew. An Officer And a Spy, though, is a Jew film by a Jew. Perhaps the distributors decided not to put the film out for fear of pushback. After all, a bunch of authors led by Sally Rooney recently signed up to a cultural boycott of Israeli authors. Targeting the Jewish state in this way was most definitely anti-semitic, as the virtue-signalling authors had no problems with any other country in the world, including regimes such as Iran, China, Russia etc. Polanski’s past acts, for which he has been convicted in absence, are repugnant, but no more so than those of Picasso. On balance I think the decision not to distribute Polanski’s latest prize-winning film, but leave his past work in public view, is, at the very least, problematic. Commercially there’s probably little upside in a Jew film by a Jew, even though the Dreyfus case speaks of wider issues. There’s also the fear that any cinemas screening it might be vandalised and daubed in red paint. Bowing to that fear is weak but understandable, as just recently the Phoenix cinema in East Finchley was attacked and vandalised for screening a film about the terrible Nova festival massacre. It is at the very least morally ambiguous to cancel the latest work of a convicted sex-offender but still circulate his previous work. There is however no moral ambiguity in the #MeToo crowd who were mute over the October 7 atrocities yet would protest the screening of this film as part of the intersectional pro-Palestine omni-cause coalition. It would be interesting to see if Picasso’s work would all of a sudden become objectionable, protestable and cancellable if he were suddenly revealed to be Jewish.
Ironic then, that Polanski now resides in Poland, the only European country that said it would’nt extradite him the US.
Genuinely curious how this author feels about the films of Leni Refienstahl and the philosophy of Martin Heidegger…?
Conflating art with the sins of its creator is a difficult one, and I have no definitive answer myself. Eric Gill was also a monster but we still use his fonts and view his sculptures. We are still watching the movies made by Miramax. Let’s face it, the US has just elected as its president a self-confessed, and legally confirmed, sexual predator. Polanski obviously hasn’t come to terms with his own sins otherwise he would have gone back to the US and faced the music – and probably got off rather more lightly than most people think that he should have (it beggars belief that the incident for which he was caught was an isolated one).
On a note in the piece which grated with me, Ms Gold says that the Poles were ‘nothing of the kind’ as ‘rescuers’ of the Jews. Well they were at least something of the kind – there were many, many Poles who helped Jews during the German occupation (that’s not to deny the opposite of course).
Polanski obviously hasn’t come to terms with his own sins
That’s not something you can know.
Geimer, the young girl, has said, “What happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me … I was fine, I’m still fine.” She said she “was not a child at 13.” “ … she feels more wounded by what she calls the “victim industry”: the lawyers, judges and journalists …” Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2023
She has since said she forgives Polanski. Maybe you could climb down from your sanctimonious position and learn something from Geimer herself.
Just because the victim ha forgiven Polanski for being a nonce doesn’t mean the rest of society also has to do so, especially as he has never been punished for his actions
The point is that his film has been banned because of his past. Geimer forgives him but we insist on banning one of his films, interestingly about anti-semitism. My comment was about the idea that he didn’t come to terms with his own sins, and how you cannot know that but Geimer might.
Antisemitism is fast becoming the new race card, a handy excuse to try and shut down the conversation when people are appalled by the actions of somebody who happens to be Jewish.
Cinemas aren’t choosing to not show his films because he’s a Jew, they’re choosing not to show them because he’s a paedo. By that logic any radio or disco that no longer plays songs by Gary Glitter is racist against white people.
Just because the victim forgives him doesn’t make his actions (and cowardice for running away rather than face his punishment) any less abhorrent.
This is one reason why I have an uncomfortable relationship with conservatism, your dumb, animal like reaction to things going on around you. The film currently targeted is about the Dreyfus Affair, the article goes into this. His other films aren’t being targeted the same way, so why this one?
I don’t recall his more recent film being shown anywhere either, is that also due to antisemitism?
If the Jewish council places more importance on his religion than his paedophilia then that’s up to them, I personally think they’re wrong to do so. He’s free to make his films (although he should be banged up), everybody else is free to boycott the nonce if they wish
I don’t recall his more recent film being shown anywhere either.
What a dumb statement. How could you possibly know that?
If the Jewish council places more importance on his religion than his paedophilia then that’s up to them
Another dumb statement. They don’t place more importance on “his religion” but on a focus on the contemporary rise of anti-semitism, against an idea with a murderous history. For you it’s better to punish Polanski than inform the world about the dark side of history. That’s why I suggest you, among others, are idiots.
I make no judgement on whether his films are any good. My point is that if companies don’t want to show them due to him being a disgusting paedophile then that’s a perfectly valid action to take, especially as he’s never faced punishment for his abuse of the child
Personally I think it is absolutely ludicrous to ban films or other works of art because of the sins or crimes of the artist. Let’s take down all those Caravaggios for a start, someone else who seemed to get away with it. This reaction seems to be something along the lines of the “Hitler couldn’t be vegetarian or like animals” school of moral argument. I also tend to think that the degree with which this is applied tends to be rather selective.
Do you concenive it possible that the “dumb, animal like reaction” which you so heartily reject could perhaps be the pangs of natural conscience?
I see no reason that Polanskis films should be banned. I consider his filmic rendering of Macbeth to be essential and unsurpassed.
But, equally, I see no reason to go on to defend his personal behaviour?
You seem strangely to be ‘playing-the-man-not-the-ball’, as we say in England, but only from the other direction.
Who’s defending his behaviour?
I believe you are, unless I mistake you.
You argue that his actions in the past do not strictly, in point of fact, make him a paedophile or a child-rapist and that those same actions can and have been absolved by the retrospective pardon of his victim, without the need to face a public tribunal.
That is a fairly coherent line of defence, as I perceive it.
I begin to wonder why you feel the need to make it, since we are both agreed that his moral failings have no necessary bearing on his art.
There are certain comments made here about this issue that I find to be sheer nonsense and, as I’ve said, just dumb animal responses, made because they feel justified because Polanski is so wrong and so they feel safe in their sanctimonious positions. And, in fact, it’s like they didn’t even read the article but only saw “Polanski”, “child abuse”, “unlawful sexual intercourse” and “13-year-old girl“ which set them off like barking dogs.
My criticism of that has appeared as a defence of Polanski. I argued that his actions do not make him a paedophile because they do not. Facts matter. I did not say that his actions are absolved by his victim’s pardon. I suggested that if she can move on then we can do the same with a movie he made. And my actual point is that the nature of this movie is more important than out thirst for punishment. I would add that the world of movies would be the poorer without Polanski,
I agree with you on this one subject. However I am not sure Billy Bob would define himself as a conservative. In any case “conservatism” is not a set of doctrines and requiring everyone signing up to believe in exactly the same thing on every issue abroad politico-philosophical tendency of being cautious about radical changes society and especially those which are “rationally” designed. “I’m a conservative”, “no you’re not”, “yes I am”!!
Yes, probably not the best choice of words. Difficult to identify this mentality. Let me just call him an ox then.
By the way, he’s not a paedophile. A paedophile is someone who sexually abuses pre-pubescent children. And therefore neither is he a “kiddy fiddler”. I’m sure you’d want to know that because accuracy and truth are so important to you.
A paedophile is domebody who is sexually attracted to or engages in sexual activity with children, at least according to any dictionary I’ve ever seen.
Unless you consider a 13 year old to be an adult (which I don’t, and neither does the law) then he is a disgusting nonce
No you are incorrect as the article made clear. Some of Polanski’s films ARE shown but this one happens not to be. I can’t prove that there is an undercurrent of anti-semitism, but it is suspicious in the current climate.
The double standards applied to Jews in general and Israel in particular are very obvious for anybody who wants to see. Sure, we can criticise Jewish people and institutions but if we are stunningly silent on criticizing the much larger crimes of others it is suspicious to say the least. David Baddiel, who is very progressive in his politics, has written very well on this.
For me now it’s all a bit “boy who cried wolf”
When every criticism of Israel’s conduct is dismissed as being motivated by antisemitism, or it’s claimed cinemas not wanting to show films by a man is due to his religion rather than the fact he drugged and sodomised a 13 year old (with rumours of similar behaviour towards other underage girls) then it becomes no better than the woke trying to shut down any conversation they don’t like by screaming racism.
For what it’s worth no other Jewish director has problems getting their films shown
Only a ‘sanctimonious man’ can say that a girl of 13 can have the emotional reserve and self awareness to know, it is morally unethical (and a question of power) to subject a girl so young to a sexual relationship. It is natural for most women to fall in love from early age; we begin with dolls and often transfer our fantasies to an older person. She was probably in love with Polanski, but he, as an older person, ought to have had the wisdom to refrain himself. And Yes I don’t believe he has acknowledged his ‘sins’ otherwise he would have had the courage to return and face the courts. One cannot come to terms with anything if one has not looked at it in the mirror. We all have a shadow, but it gets lets dark when we can look at it. Having said that, I do think he is a good director, though talent is not a redeeming feature in this case.
I am not absolving him of his actions. Of course he took advantage. But if she can move on then why can’t the others who want his work banned or degraded. This is low level thinking of the mob.
What I’m pushing back at are the emotional and ignorant comments regarding the article. Yes, he avoided facing the court, but that means nothing in terms of acknowledging his crime. It’s to the woman he has done this, We don’t know what it is that took place, but something took place between them that had nothing to with enmity. It would be a sad day, even criminal, if all work of someone who committed a crime over the course of history was banned and destroyed. But that’s what the mob with pitchforks want.
Well you could say that yes he has come to terms with his sins, or actions if you prefer, and decided either that what he did was OK or that it just doesn’t matter. I have no intention of searching but I can recall no statement of contrition from him. I can understand that the girl in question is pretty brassed off by continually being reminded of what happened; and forgiveness is a virtue so good on her for trying to move on – it doesn’t in any way excuse what he did. I fail to see how you can call me sanctimonious for thinking that child rape is a sin – maybe that says more about you than I?
maybe that says more about you than I?
There you go. How tiresome and ignorant a remark. Pretty much what I expect from many here. I haven’t said it’s okay what he did. Any statement of contrition may be private. You are not entitled to hear it. You weren’t called sanctimonious “for thinking that child rape is a sin”, but for this;
Polanski obviously hasn’t come to terms with his own sins otherwise he would have gone back to the US and faced the music –
You have no idea if he’s come to terms with what he did or not. You make this comment from a great remove with very little to back it up. It’s your opinion if he’s come to terms with his sin he would return to the US and “face the music”. In fact there has been quite a bit written about the case and how he was ready to face court when he realised the judge was going to play games with his notoriety and fame.
As to your last comment, sure, but then so were some individual Germans!. Unfortunately Poland as a whole was quite strongly anti-semitic and there were many more cases of savage persecution of Jews after the end of the war and the camps. Anti-semitism was such a strong undercurrent that of course it re-emerged strongly in both Russia and potent in the Communist periods. Anti-semitism was not a note in part of any Marxist Leninist doctrine.
There remains something repulsive about an adult having sex with a child, though this episode also reveals the hypocrisy of the film industry, which is on board with the gender madness and the drag queens courting children. Is the attitude that the author describes an indictment of Polanski or of those who are engaging in what she writes about?
or of those who are engaging in what she writes about?
Isn’t it an indictment of those who insist the film not be shown?
Perhaps more worthy of cancellation than those whose only crimes are being Jewish, cis, white, etc etc.
That sentence is a bit convoluted. What are you saying?
In his prime Polanski was a genius, Chinatown perhaps his best. Though I’ve not cared much for anything he’s done since Death and the Maiden.
Been getting flogged by the dreyfus affair in USA since the mid 70s, at least. A truly great movie about French general staff scapegoating is Paths of Glory. These poor slobs were executed, not exonerated.
Interesting how some leap on the sexual aspect of the story, ignoring the anti-semitism. Did they completely miss it so focused were their prim little eyes on the more prurient aspects?
There’s nothing anti semitic about it. People are repulsed by him sh@gging a child, not his religion.
Anybody seeking to defend his noncing or trying to shut down the criticism with lazy accusations of antisemitism is sorely lacking a moral compass in my eyes
Then why aren’t his others films currently banned?
None of his films are banned, it’s simply that the various cinemas have decided not to show them because of his kiddy fiddling
it was never released in America, Australia or Britain, where distributors feared boycotts and social media mobs.
But they will release and promote other films of his. It’s possible that if a particular film of his was to be shown that there may be a similar response. But why shut down a movie that tells the historical story of a remarkable moment of condones anti-semitism, attitudes we are currently faced with today, and which can only help in the eternal fight against anti-semitism. Many of the comments here are a rabid emotional response from those who are prepared to sacrifice the message of the film because they’re outraged by the directors past. This is exactly how book banning works.
The various cinemas have decided not to show the film because of some moral position (you seem to get an undue amount of pleasure using “kiddy fiddling”, “sh@gging”, “noncing”, like rolling around in the mud) but because of the financial disincentives. Why bury an important historical story that has relevance today? What is there to gain but the sanctimonious pleasure of the mob?
How much history is preserved once polanski, or any film maker has their way with it?
Obviously that depends on the telling. But still, why bury this film?
Exactly – this is the crux of this thoughtful article.