by Greg King
It was at Lodz that Roman made many of the friends who would later follow him to the west and occupy important places in his life and career. This group included Krzystof Komeda, a talented jazz musician and the man who later composed the scores for several of Roman’s films; Jerzy Kosinksi, the writer; and Voytek Frykowski, fated to be one of the victims at the Cielo Drive murders in 1969.
Voytek and Roman seemingly had little in common. Voytek’s father was reportedly the largest black marketeer in all of Poland, a successful business in post-war Poland which provided his family with all allowable comforts under Soviet rule, and many illegal pleasures to boot.3 Voytek was not a film student, but rather attended the neighboring polytechnic, where he studied chemistry.4 Yet he fancied himself as a great artist and far preferred the company of the film school students to the crowd at the academy he himself attended.
Roman was drawn to Voytek’s absurd sense of humor and considerable finances. Frykowski, according to his friend, “was good-natured, softhearted to the point of sentimentality, and utterly loyal.”5
Polanski later referred to his friend as a man of “small talent but immense charm,” and Frykowski certainly enjoyed a reputation as a ladies’ man.6 Handsome, tall and something of a trouble-maker at the polytechnic, Voytek was one of the few students who actually owned a car. He graduated with a degree in chemical engineering, but, after meeting Roman, he began to dabble in the arts. Roman welcomed him and his money—which made it possible for him to experiment with his own independent filmmaking—into his intimate circle.7
In 1955 Polanski began his first short film, The Bicycle. In the end, he abandoned it in favour of a two minute short called The Crime, a bizarre and violent view of an apparently unmotivated murder in which one man stabs a sleeping man and then disappears. It was a short glimpse of what was to come—what critic Barbara Leaming has called “key Polanskian obsessions: voyeurism and violence.”8 It is arguable that Polanski’s taste for the violent stemmed from his own childhood experiences, where he, as helpless voyeur, was forced to watch the destruction of his family. His mother had been “weak,” failing to survive the concentration camp, and Polanski seems to have transferred this perceived frailty to all women he thereafter encountered, often treating them contemptuously as little more than objects. Thereafter, too, Polanski would endlessly repeat romantic triangles in his films, a re-play of his relationship with his mother and father, and of the troubled re-marriage of his father, from which Roman sensed himself excluded.
A number of other films followed The Crime, including an evocative short entitled When Angels Fall. Polanski began to work under the authority of KAMERA, the state film production company in Warsaw. Working at KAMERA, Polanski met the beautiful Barbara Kwiatkowska, a rising young actress. Basia, as she was called, was soon to become famous in France as Barbara Lass. In 1959, Roman and Basia were married.9
Polanski continued to experiment with films, releasing Two Men and a Wardrobe, a short concerning the adventures of a pair of men and their struggles to move a heavy armoire. The film was shown in the west and won Polanski some notice, taking third place in the Brussels Film Festival. His next film, Mammals, starred Voytek Frykowski and dealt with two men fighting over possession of a sled. After much pleading, Polanski was finally given permission to undertake his first feature film, Knife in the Water, a motion picture which was to enhance his already growing reputation in the west.
Knife in the Water was a careful, menacing film of rising tension between a trio played out upon a sailboat. A husband and wife pick up a passing young man in their boat and a dangerous game of psychological cat and mouse, controlled by the wife and pitting one man against the other, begins. During an argument, the husband pushes the young man—who has insisted all along that he cannot swim—overboard; when he fails to surface, the husband dives into the water to search for him but to no avail. When he returns to the boat, the wife accuses him of deliberately murdering the boy, and tells him to swim ashore to notify the police that an accident has occurred. As soon as the husband disappears, however, the young man now suddenly reappears; he has been hiding behind a nearby buoy, having lied about his swimming ability. He boards the boat and makes love to the wife; when the husband returns to the boat, the young man has again disappeared, but his wife, clearly enjoying her husband’s uncomfortable position, gleefully informs him of what has just happened aboard the vessel. The husband is thus offered a choice: either he believes that he himself is a murderer, and lives with the guilt of that act for the rest of his life; or that his wife is a willing adulteress. The film ends with a shot of the husband and wife sitting in a car at a crossroads, unable to decide which way to go.10
The film was widely praised and received much international attention. It showed at the New York Film Festival in 1963, after having won the Critics’ Prize at the Venice Film Festival earlier that year.11 It was also nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign film, and Polanski was invited to attend the ceremony in Los Angeles.12
Within a few years, Roman had achieved fame, money and a job as a director. At the same time, his private life left something to be desired. His marriage to Basia had fallen apart within a year (she was having an affair with actor Karl Heinz Boehm), and the pair were divorced before Roman achieved his fame in the west. Polanski realized that there was little opportunity in Poland for him, and the country began to represent oppression and the nightmares of his past. With his new wealth and growing reputation, Polanski fled to Paris.
In Paris Polanski developed close professional ties with several other artists involved in the motion picture industry. One friend was Gerard Brach, a screenwriter with whom he eventually scripted both Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac. Another ex-patriate who moved in Polanski’s orbit was Gene Gutowski, a Polish-American producer who had several important contacts in the business.
Gutowski was ten years older than Polanski, a handsome, well-dressed and soft-spoken man who enjoyed sculpting in his spare time.13 In the mid-1950s, he had come to London to work as an independent film producer.14 After a failed first marriage, he met and wed American model Judy Wilson in 1963, and the pair settled into a comfortable house near Montpellier Square. Gutowski was important to Roman, both for his business ability and also for his fluency in English, a language with which Polanski was still struggling. Together, Polanski and Gutowski formed Cadre Films, a small production company which they hoped would attract big name backers on the basis of Roman’s success with Knife in the Water.
Eventually, Polanski and Gutowski, through Cadre Films, signed a deal with The Compton Group, a large production company based in England. The Compton Group was eager to finance a horror movie, and Polanski and Gerard Brach completed a script in just over two weeks.15 The film was Repulsion.
If Knife in the Water shot Polanski to fame, Repulsion cemented his place as a director of international repute. The central character, Carole, was based on a young woman Polanski and Brach had known in Paris, who seemed to be both fascinated and repulsed with any sexual contact.16 In the film, Carole was played by beautiful French actress Catherine Deneuve. Carole was a beautiful but lonely manicurist living in a London flat with her sister. When her sister brings home a married lover, the sounds of the pair’s love-making set off within Carole a violent reaction. Her sister and her lover go away on holiday, leaving Carole alone in the flat, as she is gradually overcome with paranoia and hallucinations. During one such attack, she kills a visiting beau by beating him over the head with a candlestick and then dumping his body into the bathtub. She further attacks and kills the landlord after he makes sexual advances toward her. When Carole’s sister and her lover return, they find the apartment in complete shambles, two bodies in the bathtub, and Carole laying comatose beneath her sister’s bed, hopelessly insane. Repulsion opened in London in 1965, having been given a dreaded X-rating due to the sexual content and the explicit violence.17 Nevertheless, the film proved to be both a financial and a critical success. At the Berl
in Film Festival, it was the Second Place Award winner. The success allowed Polanski to swing directly into his next project with The Compton Group, Cul-de-Sac.
Like Knife in the Water, Cul-de-Sac is a tale of claustrophobic sexual tensions, this time between an older man and his much younger wife who live in an isolated castle. Into their sheltered existence come two wounded criminals, one of whom dies shortly after arriving at the castle. The other criminal, played by Lionel Standers, sets the husband and wife against each other, playing psychological games to amuse himself while waiting to be rescued by the boss of his gang. In the end, the husband, played by Donald Pleasance, is driven to his breaking point and shoots the gangster, just as his wife tries to escape from the island and her husband. And, like Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac served to enhance Polanski’s already considerable reputation as a director of intelligent, bizarre films whose style was matched with substance.
Polanski’s reputation soared following the release of Repulsion, and he eagerly indulged in the pleasures which his success brought him. Settling in London, he was taken under the wing of Victor Lownes, and could often be found at the Playboy Club, surrounded by a bevy of attractive models. Polanski learned to enjoy the finer things of life: cuisine, vintage wines, fast cars and fashionable clothes.
After so many years of deprivation and struggle, he could finally enjoy the fruits of his hard labors. “At that time,” Roman later declared, “I was really swinging. All I wanted to do was fuck a girl and move on.… I just liked fucking around.”18 His air of self-assurance irritated many he encountered; one acquaintance described him as “the original five-foot Pole you wouldn’t touch anyone with.”19
“Roman,” says a friend, “was very successful with his conquests, and he certainly didn’t lack for female company. But I later spoke with several of his girlfriends who told me that sex with Roman wasn’t as satisfying as they might have imagined. He wasn’t very well-endowed, and I think that surprised a lot of girls, because he came on so strong.”20
Just after the release of Repulsion, but before the final editing process of Cul-de-Sac, Polanski met Martin Ransohoff and his partner John Calley at the Dorchester Hotel in London. Ransohoff was impressed with Repulsion and asked to view a rough cut of Polanski’s still unfinished Cul-de-Sac. He liked it so much that he purchased the film for American distribution. Polanski later called Ransohoff, a “terrible Hollywood producer … a creep who makes badly done things … all kinds of shit.” Although he later claimed that Ransohoff “seduced me with his artist-like attitude,” he was genuinely impressed with both the producer and with Filmways.21 Ransohoff’s track record alone demonstrated his success and, unlike The Compton Group, Filmways had enough financial clout to pull all of the right strings in Hollywood.
After the deal for Cul-de-Sac was signed, Gene Gutowski approached one of Ransohoff’s associates in London and asked about the possibility of picking up some funding for Polanski’s next project. Polanski himself told Ransohoff about a vampire film he had been working on in collaboration with Gerard Brach. Ransohoff was interested and spent several further meetings discussing the idea with the Polish director. Finally, Polanski signed a contract with Filmways to arrange financing of the film through MGM Studios.22 Polanski, in his enthusiasm at having finally attracted the attention of a major Hollywood producer, allowed Ransohoff to dictate the terms, which included final American cut on the upcoming project. It was a move he would later regret.23
Polanski had already decided whom he wished to cast in his new film. Indeed, several of the roles had been specifically written with certain actors in mind. For the main role of Professor Abronsius, the director wanted to cast Jack MacGowan, who had been featured in Cul-de-Sac. Polanski himself would play Alfred, the Professor’s young assistant. For the role of the innkeeper’s daughter and the film’s eventual romantic interest Sarah, Polanski wished to cast American actress Jill St. John, with whom he had been briefly linked in the press.24
Ransohoff, however, had other ideas. He wanted Sharon Tate cast in the role of Sarah. Polanski knew little of Sharon except for their shared luncheon hosted by Victor Lownes. “I thought she was quite pretty,” he later recalled, “but I was not at that time very impressed.”25 After several discussions with Ransohoff, who was adamant on casting Sharon in some role in the project, Polanski finally agreed to meet her again to discuss the film and her acting experience.
Sharon and Roman met over dinner in a quiet restaurant. The evening went badly. Throughout the meal, Sharon, clearly nervous, tried to make polite conversation and impress the director, but Roman remained largely silent, nodding his head and answering her questions with a begrudging “Yes” or “No.” At Ransohoff’s insistence, she made a second dinner appointment, which went no better. By the end of the evening, she was convinced Polanski was a “weirdo.” Walking through Eaton Square afterward, Polanski suddenly turned to Sharon and tried to hug her; instead, both lost their balance and ended up falling into the street. Without a word, Sharon got up and quickly fled to her own flat. “That’s the craziest nut I ever saw!” she told Ransohoff. “I’ll never work for him!”26
But Ransohoff insisted and, with great reluctance, Sharon once again joined Polanski for dinner. This time, however, he warmed to her. If on the previous occasions he had silently scrutinized her appearance and projection, Polanski now was full of questions. In spite of his initially unfavorable first impression, Polanski decided that he had been wrong to dismiss Sharon as just another brainless Hollywood starlet. She answered all of Roman’s queries, telling him of her life up to the filming of Eye of the Devil; of her acting aspirations; and of her frustration over her parents’ fears for her safety.27
The conversation eventually turned, through small talk, to the Hollywood drug scene. Sharon admitted that she enjoyed smoking pot when the atmosphere was right, and that Jay had introduced her to LSD, which was at the time still legal in England. “She said she liked it, and that it helped her a lot,” Roman recalled.28 Polanski, in turn, described his three LSD experiences, which had ended disastrously when he crumbled in fits of paranoia. Sharon convinced Roman that he should try another LSD trip that same evening; on their way back to his flat at 95 Eaton Place Mews, Polanski stopped by a friend, actor Iain Quarrier’s, house and picked up a cube of sugar laced with acid, for him and Sharon to split between them.29
Polanski was in the process of moving in, and his flat was sparsely furnished. As the electricity had not yet been connected, Roman lit a few candles. Sharon and him took the LSD and began to talk. She told Roman of her relationship with Jay and admitted that she felt guilty being at Polanski’s flat at all.30 All the while, she nervously chewed on the tips of her nails. He later recalled: “We spent all night talking, and it was very pleasant.”31
Roman briefly disappeared; wearing a Frankenstein mask, he crept up behind her and shouted. Sharon was so unnerved at this scare that she sobbed for nearly an hour.32 “I told you I couldn’t take it,” Sharon yelled, “and this is the end!” According to Roman, she was “flipping out and screaming, and I was scared to death.” She ran out of Polanski’s flat and made a dash for her own, just around the corner.33
Sharon’s reaction may have been both a combination of her hysteria at the childish prank as well as a result of the LSD. Fifteen years later, however, Polanski told a different story. In his memoirs, he declared that, instead of Sharon freaking out on acid and leaving, the pair decided to make love.34 In 1969, under police questioning, Polanski had said that he and Sharon had not become intimately involved with each other until several months after their first meeting. He even volunteered that they had spent a night together in the same bed. “I knew there was no question of making love with her. That’s the type of girl she was.”35
And, indeed, given Sharon’s cautious nature where intimacy was concerned, it seems most unlikely that she would have gone to bed with Polanski on this occasion. What feelings Sharon had for the director were still professional and ambi
valent. Perhaps more importantly, it is difficult to imagine her casually disregarding her feelings for Jay Sebring, with whom she was still romantically involved. Her lack of sexual promiscuity, coupled with her own inner strength, reserve and affection for Jay, mitigate against Polanski’s later version of events.
That Sharon left Polanski’s flat under less-than-ideal circumstances seems to be supported by her subsequent actions where the director was concerned. Sharon broke a date she had made with Polanski for the following day. Polanski rang and made a second date, which she also broke. She clearly seemed angry at the director, and unwilling to see him again.
Polanski was not accustomed to this sort of brush-off. Finally, he again rang, and asked Sharon to dine with him that evening. Sharon again refused, saying that she had to stay in to keep her voice coach happy.36 “Listen, fuck you!” he told her and hung up. He was clearly irritated, and believed she was playing games with him.37
The relationship between Sharon and Roman, not surprisingly, “reverted to a more formal” nature.38 They saw each other socially, mainly through the parties and orbit of those around Victor Lownes. But Sharon seems to have had little interest in pursuing any relationship with the director, and Polanski was still reluctant to cast her in his film.
Polanski continued to press for Jill St. John, but Ransohoff was becoming increasingly stubborn; after all, he held the purse strings for the project. Finally, according to Mike Mindlin, Ransohoff gave Polanski an ultimatum: “Either you use Sharon, or you don’t make the picture for me.”39
Polanski finally agreed to test Sharon for the new film. She reluctantly came to the studio and Polanski had her fitted with a long red wig to conceal her blonde hair, which did much in the way of convincing him that she could in fact pull off the part.40 After viewing the test, Polanski rang Ransohoff and agreed to his request to cast Sharon in his film. She was to play Sarah, the innkeeper’s daughter and the object of desire for both the film’s vampires, led by actor Ferdy Mayne as Count von Krolock, and of Alfred, the young assistant to the famous professor, a role which Polanski had reserved for himself. When the actual production commenced on the film, the on-screen romance of Sarah and Alfred was echoed offscreen by the growing relationship between Sharon and Roman.