Posted on 09/28/2009 2:10:43 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
With the possible exception of the O.J. Simpson trial, it would be hard to think of a tabloid-ready celebrity scandal from the past 30 years that provokes a more purely, intensely, overheated-ly emotional response than the Roman Polanski rape case of 1977. (He fled the country early in 1978.) It’s a safe bet that a lot of people, upon reading the headline that Polanski had been arrested in Zurich, with the possibility of extradition to the U.S. to stand trial on that charge, greeted the news with more or less the following sentiment: “Good! It’s about time that the authorities caught up with him. He can’t dodge the consequences of his crime forever. In a just world, there is no statute of limitations on what Roman Polanski did.”
About two years ago, I would have felt more or less the same way. But then, early in 2008, I saw the revelatory documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which takes on the full and fascinatingly complex legal and moral drama of the case. Not just the emotions, but the facts. Not just the issue of whether Polanski committed an unspeakable crime (something that the film never disputes), but how it all played out, within the U.S. legal system, at the time.
Here’s what I wrote about the film when it first played at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival:
“We all think we know what happened when the celebrated and infamous demon-imp film director took a one-way ticket out of Los Angeles, skipping the country early in 1978 just as he was about to face sentencing for the crime of ‘unlawful sexual intercourse’ with a 13-year-old girl. But Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Marina Zenovich’s startling and grippingly told anatomization of the case, will make you realize that you barely know the half of it. At first, I feared that the movie was going to tiptoe around the issue of Polanski’s guilt. But no, it never denies that he committed a heinous crime. Yet by showing how a media feeding frenzy shaped the story, oozing like slime into the wheels of justice, and by going deep behind the closed doors of the hearings and negotiations (presided over by a judge on such a star trip he made Lance Ito look like Solomon), the movie creates an indictment of a legal system that was corrupted and warped by the celebrity culture — that is, by the very entitlement it was trying so hard to rein in. Polanski, that troubled and charming creep-genius, emerges, if you can believe it, as both guilty as sin and a victim. It’s that ambivalence that makes Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired a documentary of rare fascination and power.”
If you’re interested in this case — interested, that is, in what really happened — then by all means seek out of a copy of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. You’ll be glad you did as this story now plays out with a voyeuristic and slightly queasy déjà vu.
Just one more degenerate trying to place the blame on the court system rather than the perp.
Well that pretty much renders everything else irrelevant claptrap. Doesn't it?
He admitted it, he had a plea deal, and the judge wanted to screw him over...
Yes, he was a sleaze for doing it- but the court system screwed up big time too
Life without parole, for the forcible anal rape of a 13 year old girl.
Doesn’t the statute of limitations play in this crime? I thought most rape charges were thrown out after some years.
...Just like an irresponsible child, the Liberal reviewer puts the blame on the system rather than the perpetrator where it belongs.
The man did not even learn from his previous crime.
Gis original crime was getting a 13 year old drunk, giving her sedatives sodomizing her eve when she protested.
When charged, he pleaded guilty but was later appalled at the prospect of going to jail for a long time. So what did he do ? He escaped the USA.
And what sort of remorse did he show for it ? NONE.
He again had a relationship with a 15 year old. She later sued Polanski and received millions in exchange for her advocating his case be dismissed.
The man is a pervert and makes movies that actually portray it ( e.g. CHINATOWN portrays a victim of incest ).
Judges have the authority to toss plea deals. While not done often, it is done.
And I'd say that in the case of the forcible sodomization of a 13 year old girl the Judge was totally justified.
He pled guilty. Convictions don’t have a statue of limitations.
No. No. No.
He is an artist. Even more important, he is a liberal artist.
So what if he drugged, raped and forcibly sodomized a 13 year old girl? What a liberal artist does in his private life is his own business.
You are being way too judgmental.
He is not being arrested for the rape. He plead guilty to that crime decades ago. He is being arrested as a fugitive from justice since he fled the country between the time of his conviction and the time of his sentencing. There is not statute of limitations on a fugitive. He owes time in prison.
I’ve seen the movie. I wasn’t happy with the way things shook out re the courts, but if Polanski had been a 45-year-old truck driver instead of a famed movie director, there wouldn’t even have been a “back room” deal to begin with, but rather a grow old in prison fade to black.
I don’t even think Polanski was vilified by the movie community for what he did. He was honored at the Oscars a few years ago, if I recall correctly.
He plead guilty. He is a fugative felon, not an unconvicted perp who has slid by the time limit for prosecution.
I wonder if the difference is that he had already pleaded guilty, rather than jumping bail while still awaiting a trial to decide guilt or innocence? He was only awaiting sentencing, if I understand correctly.
skipping the country early in 1978 just as he was about to face sentencing for the crime of ‘unlawful sexual intercourse’ with a 13-year-old girl.
Can't be said often enough on this case in particular.
It is not a plea deal until the judge signs off on it.
I think I recall the same. I never saw a group of people more willing to dismiss perversion, unless it’s black activists who support convicted cop-killers.
Sundance Film Festival
Yuck.
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