M ight it not have been better to go back to the sm all, intim ate pictures he once m ade? “ I w ould go back to the sim ple movies w ith no h esitatio n ,” says P olanski, “ but even sim ple m ovies a re n ’t simple an y m o re . T e c h n o lo g y h as developed; the audience dem ands m uch m ore. Y ou have to be plausible: there are no easy movies. Still, if I could find the right subject for a sm all, inexpensive picture, T would be the happiest director o f a ll.” L ast tim e P o la n sk i was in C annes, six years ago, he had been dragged there to p rom ote Tess. The press conference turned into a fiasco — a sort o f vicious contest between sensation-hungry m edia eager for the low dow n on the scandal which had m ade P olanski a sex offender in the States, and critics gunning for a director about whose com m ercial career there were, at the tim e, serious doubts. He was prepared to discuss the movie, but certainly not his private life. N or was it ju st the press he had begun to have enough of. “ I was disgusted with all the so-called creative script m eetings with the various studio executives,” he says. “ I was sick o f law yers, agents and stockbrokers. I really thought: this is not w hat I w ant to do with my life.” So, he went back to the stage, to direct the Paris pro d u ctio n o f A m a d eu s, in which he also played the role o f M ozart. In this, he found com plete satisfaction, feeling no urge to get back behind a cam era. T hen, an Israeli producer, A rnon M ilchan, offered to pick up Pirates, and P olanski c o u ld n ’t resist the tem p tatio n . H e went to Israel, checked costs and locations, but finally to no av ail: M ilc h a n couldn’t put together the necessary budget ($US30 m illion). P olanski was ju st ab out to give up a lto gether, when T unisian producer T arak Ben A m m ar m aterialized. W as this a reason to rejoice? In retrospect, P olanski isn ’t to o sure. “ W hen the galleon on which we shot the m ovie arrived in C an n es” — it was one o f the features o f this
year’s festival — “ everyone was very im pressed and expected me to share their feelings. But, frankly, what I felt was nausea! I ’d seen the dam n thing for m onths on end, from every side. I d id n ’t w ant to see this any m o re .” In any case, shooting on w ater isn ’t his cup of tea; 24 years ago, he put three people on a small b o at in P o lan d , and the result was Knife in the Water, the film which m ade his re p u ta tio n . N ow , a fte r sailing again, he says he should have know n better. “ It was very hard then, and it was m uch, m uch harder now. To m ake this film was pure hell, like signing my own death
w arrant. Everything is som ehow against you when you shoot on a boat, on w ater. To do it with costum es, special effects, fights and pistols on top o f everything is really crazy. “ Also, shooting the m ovie in T unisia with a crew alm ost as in ter national as the UN was like trying to run the Tow er o f Babel. I speak m any languages, but to get certain notions to my crew was quite often both tim e-consum ing and exhaust ing. I had to repeat m yself five or six times in different languages, and people were looking at me and laughing.” N ot to m ention the streak o f bad i
MATTHAU ON THE HIGH SEAS: cutting a dash in Pirates
CINEMA PAPERS January — 29