Word: polanski
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Chinatown (1974) d. Roman Polanski (Oscar nominee; best actor, NY Film Critics...
...peasant dress, with locks tumbling down her back, she was the essence of pouty innocence in Roman Polanski's Tess. Well, take another look, because in Francis Coppola's upcoming musical One from the Heart, set in the Las Vegas world of neon nights, Actress Nastassia Kinski, 20, plays a circus performer with the wily ways of a seductress twice her age. Heart is being billed as "a fantasy about love, jealousy and sex." From the look of things, Nastassia fills the bill...
Even worse, the passions which drove noir seem almost charming today. When Roman Polanski made the mock-noir Chinatown, he had to slice open Nicholson's nostril to get the same effect that was once accomplished by showing a couple of thugs lurking outside the window. Leave it to the Reader's Digest to mourn our passing national innocence--but the real problem is we've lost our faith in passion. Murder and passion seem almost antithetical at the present, and adultery--well, adultery is for adolescents...
Peter Firth plays Tess' pious husband and Leigh Lawson the sly rogue who seduces her. Under Polanski's direction, both characters are shallow and tiresome. Firth and Lawson, both competent actors, struggle to give compelling performances--but with Sarde's strings rising behind them as they utter lines like "Is there no hope for me? I'm dying for you my darling," they fight a losing battle...
Naturally, Fate wins his hand. But so what? After three hours, Polanski's experiment in gentility is over. As Thomas Hardy turns in his grave, we fervently hope that Polanski returns to the cynicism, the terror, and the grotesquery of the Twentieth century that he translates so well into...