A new take on an eclectic and controversial director.James Morrison's Roman Polanski offers one of the most comprehensive and critically engaged treatments ever written on Polanski's work. Tracing the filmmaker's remarkably diverse career from its beginnings to the present, the book provides commentary on all his major films in their historical, cultural, social, and artistic contexts. By locating Polanski's work within the genres of comedy and melodrama, Morrison argues that this eclectic and controversial director is not merely obsessed with the theme of repression, but that his true interest is in the concrete--what is out in the open--and in why it is so rarely seen. The range of Polanski's filmmaking challenges traditional divisions between high and low culture, as exhibited in two of his recent and very different films: The Ninth Gate, a brash pastiche of the horror genre, and The Pianist, an Academy Award-winning film about the Holocaust. In dubbing Polanski a relentless critic of modernity, Morrison concludes that his career is representative of the fissures, victories, and rehabilitations of the last fifty years of international cinema.''The dizzying ups and downs of Polanski's career, Morrison observes, are representative of the vagaries of international cinema during the past half century.''--Booklist ''A valuable addition to the already substantial field of Polanski studies. It is insightful and richly informative not only about Polanski's trailblazing, difficult-to-classify films, but also the cultural context of the past few decades.''--Times Literary Supplement''In this outstanding book, James Morrison makes a strong case for Polanski as an intriguing example of film authorship. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Foucault, Morrison examines the breaks in his career and several cinematic modes he has explored, while discovering a surprising unity in the filmmaker's preoccupations and aesthetic.''--Cynthia Erb, author of Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture
''... this is a valuable addition to the already substantial field of Polanski studies. It is insightful and richly informative not only about Polanski's trail-blazing difficult-to-classify films, but also about the cultural context of the past few decades. It steers clear of biographical intrusions and brilliantly ''organizes'' the director's work into several cultural periods, arguing that the genre means little in Polanski's daringly eclectic artistic sensibility.''--Times Literary Supplement, 8 Feb 2008
