The Spaces of the Transnational in the Cinema of Roman Polanski
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2021 207 Andrés Bartolome Leal The Spaces of the Transnational in the Cinema of Roman Polanski. Director/es Deleyto Alcalá, Celestino © Universidad de Zaragoza Servicio de Publicaciones ISSN 2254-7606 Tesis Doctoral THE SPACES OF THE TRANSNATIONAL IN THE CINEMA OF ROMAN POLANSKI. Autor Andrés Bartolome Leal Director/es Deleyto Alcalá, Celestino UNIVERSIDAD DE ZARAGOZA Escuela de Doctorado 2021 Repositorio de la Universidad de Zaragoza – Zaguan http://zaguan.unizar.es The Spaces of the Transnational in the Cinema of Roman Polanski Tesis Doctoral Realizada por Andrés Bartolomé Leal Dirigida por el Dr. Celestino Deleyto Alcalá Universidad de Zaragoza Enero 2021 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION 1 AUTHOR ON THE MOVE 4 THE NAME ABOVE THE TITLE 9 WHY POLANSKI? 16 GEOPOLITICAL CYCLE 26 MAPPING THE TERRITORY 30 1. MISE-EN-SPACE 34 OF SURFACES, TRAJECTORIES AND MAPS 36 FROM FILM THEORY TO FILM GEOGRAPHY 44 THE SPACES AND PLACES OF GLOBALIZATION 54 GEOGRAPHY IS WHAT HURTS 71 2. PARIS, JE TE DÉTESTE 73 PARIS, HOLLYWOOD 76 SCREENING THE COSMOPOLIS: FRANTIC 84 ESTABLISHING SHOTS 87 INTO THE CONCRETE JUNGLE 94 PARIS, OPEN CITY 100 VIEWS FROM ABOVE 110 SEX AND THE FRENCH CITY: BITTER MOON 113 FRAMES WITHIN 117 FLOAT ON 120 PARIS BELONGS TO THEM 125 CLOSING THE HORIZON 140 3. NEW WORLD BORDERS 144 ON THE BORDERSCAPE 147 AT THE EDGE OF THE LAND: DEATH AND THE MAIDEN 153 DEATH BY LANDSCAPE 157 OF WALLS AND WINDOWS 167 ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE 185 MOVING BODIES: THE GHOST WRITER 191 STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND 197 WRITINGS ON THE WALL 209 (DIS)CLOSURE EFFECT 231 4. EUROPA, EUROPA 235 TOWARDS A TRANSNATIONAL AESTHETIC 239 ONE HELL OF A BUSINESS: THE NINTH GATE 249 TALK OF THE DEVIL 254 VISIONS OF AMERICA 259 HAUNTING SPECTERS AND OLD-WORLD WOES 271 THE END 290 EUROPE, YEAR ZERO: THE PIANIST 296 (TRANSNATIONAL) FILMMAKING AS (TRANSNATIONAL) HISTORY-MAKING 300 REALISM AFTER AUSCHWITZ 308 IN AND OUT OF THE RUINS 325 CONCLUSION: COSMOPOLITANISM OR CARNAGE 334 WORKS CITED 344 FILMS CITED 374 Acknowledgements This thesis has been made possible by a doctoral scholarship from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (research project FFI2013-43968-P) and the kindness of everyone at the Comisión del Programa Doctorado de Estudios Ingleses of the University of Zaragoza who thought I was the right candidate for it. Very special thanks go, first of all, to my supervisor Celestino Deleyto for his insight, advice, generosity and patience all throughout the years. I know I have not always been the easiest of students (or reads). That this thesis exists and is even remotely worthwhile as a piece or research is a testament to his selflessness and dedication. I would like to extend my gratitude also to Maria del Mar Azcona for her candid support and encouragement since I first took her film class in 2007 and to all the members of our Film Studies research group. I could not have dreamed of a more welcoming and stimulating environment to develop my ideas and myself as a person. Inside and outside of the group many fellow PhD. students that now I am happy to call friends have greatly contributed intellectually and emotionally to the completion of this work. Carolina Amaral, Julia Echeverría, María Ferrández, Pablo Gómez, Roy Janoch, Ana López, Mónica Martín, Silvia Murillo, Andrea Regueira, Laura Roldán and Isabel Treviño represent in my mind the best the future of the academic world has to offer and getting to know them will forever remain one of the great rewards of this period. I would also like to thank everyone at the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas in Huesca, but very specially Claus-Peter Neumann and Alfonso Revilla, for making my stay there such a wonderful experience. A definite turning point for my investigation was my three-month research stay at the University of Roehampton in London in 2017. I am grateful to Deborah Jermyn for making the necessary arrangements for my visit and everyone at the Centre for Research in Film and Audiovisual Cultures who attended my work-in-progress seminar or simply showed interested in my research at one point or another. This said, my deepest gratitude goes to William Brown, who kindly took me under his wing as soon as I arrived in the city. As much as could be said about his intellectual brilliancy, and much could be said indeed, it pales in comparison to his magnitude as a person and I can only hope that some of it rubbed off on me. I would also like to thank the workers at the Roehampton University and BFI Libraries in London and L’Espace Chercheurs at the Cinémathèque Français in Paris for their invaluable assistance and, in the latter’s case, for kindly humoring my terrible attempts at speaking French. Further, I am deeply indebted to the largely anonymous internet community that works every day to keep academic knowledge a public, common good. This thesis would not have been possible in its current form without its efforts. I would like to thank my family, very specially my brother Pablo Bartolomé for his three-decade friendship and my mother Ángeles Leal for her unremitting love, attention and belief in me. Keeping my feet on the ground have been my friends in Pamplona, who in between beers, football games, films and concerts learned to put up with my increasingly demented ramblings on the state of the world. Credit goes to Carlos González “Chester” for the beautiful cover design. I feel obliged to acknowledge also Golem cinemas, one of my favorite places to be since I was a child not just in Pamplona but anywhere and an integral part in my film and cultural education. Finally, my deepest gratefulness and love go to Laura Erroz. Anything I could say or write would fall short of expressing how I feel about her and how much her affect, support and companionship have meant for me all these years. I cannot believe how lucky I am she is part of my life. This thesis is dedicated to her. Introduction In 2017, as part of its fall program, the Cinémathèque Française of Paris organized a month-long retrospective of Roman Polanski’s work. Screenings, discussions panels and the presence of various distinguished speakers, including Polanski himself, who also commissioned a selection of classic films to be shown alongside his, were organized. Though it was certainly not the first time his films were showcased at the Cinémathèque or that he participated in some event in the institution—just the year before he had been invited to an exhibition on the history of film technique—it was the first time Polanski was the subject of a full retrospective there. The time was, however, not the most propitious for celebrations. The outpouring of accusations of sexual abuse and predatory behavior against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein only a few weeks earlier had brought the public’s attention back to Polanski’s own charges of statutory rape from the 1970s, reigniting once again the age-old debates around the relationship between art and artist. In face of mounting unrest, Costa-Gavras, president of the Cinémathèque at the time, issued a statement asserting that the retrospective would go on as planned and that doing anything else would amount to “out-and-out censorship” (Kim Willsher 2017). The day of the opening, with Polanski set to personally attend the debut of his latest film, D'après une histoire vraie (2017), a demonstration was organized outside of the building by various French feminist groups, and reports and critical pieces on the events occupied many a page in national and international newspapers in the days that followed. This thesis does not concern itself with resolving the problem of what to do with Polanski as a public figure, although it will at certain points necessarily take his status as 1 such into consideration. This determination stems primarily from my own inability to approach the issue in a way that does not merely re-enact already long-existing and widely-dissected arguments and positions. Admittedly, however, even today, three years later, the time remains as unpropitious as ever for a thesis on the cinema of Roman Polanski, which would seem to make its very writing look like something of a statement in itself. And there is a shade of truth to that impression. Though not my initial motivation in engaging with this task, part of what convinced me to stick with it was the conviction that artworks in general and films in particular are, for better or worse, always much more than their makers, and that, as soon they are conceived, made, released and exist in and as part of the world, they are and always be worthy of study and/or critique, maybe even enjoyment, regardless of what one personally thinks of those who created them. Once that is (somewhat) out of the way, let us return to Paris, five days after the protests. This was the day set for Polanski to make his second appearance at the Cinémathèque, and this time he was to deliver a masterclass, undoubtedly the highlight of the event. Remarkably enough, The Ghost Writer (2010), rarely if ever counted amongst his best or most popular works, was the film chosen for screening before the discussion with the veteran auteur. Introducing the film, Frédéric Bonnaud, organizer of the event, explained the selection on three grounds. One, the film was a great illustration of Polanski’s renowned cinematographic prowess and mastery of framing, camerawork and mise-en-scene. Two, it put contemporary, explicitly political matters front and center, not a common theme in his filmography.