Posts Tagged ‘Roman Polański’
Teethful Smile
Uśmiech zębiczny 1957, black and white, 2 minsHalf a minute longer than his first completed film Murder (Morderstwo, also 1957), Teethful Smile (also known as Teeth Smile and Toothy Smile) is a more complex piece of work, though it's based on a similar concept of exploring voyeuristic impulses. Here, though, there's a voyeur onscreen as well [...]
Murder
Morderstwo Poland, 1957, black and white, 1 minSome artists find their characteristic themes and approaches some distance into their career, while others emerge seemingly fully formed. Roman Polański so unambiguously falls into the latter group that the authorship of his first batch of Łódź Film School shorts (literally the first films he [...]
Green Hair, German Sausage and Headless Chickens
Today's Mail on Sunday has an extract from Maureen Lipman's forthcoming book Past-It Notes in which she describes working with Roman Polanski on The Pianist (2003) and encountering his somewhat unorthodox methods - which, amongst other things, involved her hair turning green and her distinguished co-star Frank Finlay being smeared with sausage. [...]
Wajda’s Revenge
I'd been meaning to watch The Revenge (Zemsta, 2002) for ages - it's Andrzej Wajda's last completed feature prior to this year's Katyń - and after other plans fell through last night I gave it a go. It's a mixed bag: on the one hand, it's hugely entertaining seeing two great directors clearly letting their hair down and having a ball (Roman [...]
Polanski Gallery
Here's a link to the BFI's Polanski Gallery, with text by yours truly, assembled for an NFT retrospective back in 2005 or thereabouts. I'm hoping to write more about Polanski's early work on Kinoblog, but this will have to do for now. (and here are direct links to the pages on the early Polish shorts, and his debut feature Knife in the Water)
Innocent Sorcerers
As part of my ongoing research into the extensive back catalogue of Andrzej Wajda, the grand old man of Polish cinema, I watched the Facets/Polart DVD of his 1960 film Innocent Sorcerers (Niewinni czarodzieje) last night. It made for a fascinating contrast with his usual work. It was his fifth feature, but his first set in the (then) present, [...]