THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
Anything remotely related to Roman Polanski, world-renowned filmmaker, becomes tricky to handle. Author of a rape of a teenage girl in 1977, fleeing the United States where the judge in charge of his case had reversed his own decision after the director had served his sentence, he ended up being considered, starting with his victim, as he clears the charges against him. Other accusations of sexual violence recently brought against him, relating to mostly old facts, have made him a symbol of sexual predation for around ten years, to the point that he has become today. complicated, despite the success of his previous film, I accusein 2019, to continue its activity.
The Palace was nevertheless produced in Italy by Luca Barbareschi, then selected for the Venice Film Festival in 2023. But no French distributor volunteered, both undoubtedly because the film was made there globally exhaust and that the #metoo movement has, in the meantime, considerably strengthened in France. Against this surprisingly stood Sébastien Tiveyrat, founder, in 2003, of the company Swashbuckler Films, dedicated to repertory cinema, and distributor, as such, of more than two hundred jewels of Hollywood heritage.
Typological catalog effect
The reason why he embarked on the distribution of a contemporary film is, to all appearances, a pure auteurist principle. A lifelong admirer of Roman Polanski, scandalized by the idea that his film could not be seen in France, he bought The Palace eyes closed and explicit World his decision in these terms: “I don’t have to comment on the Polanski affair. I believe that there is, today, a cabal underway against the artist. A certain mixture of hypocrisy and discrimination. We are not far from Fury [1936], of [Fritz] Lang, or The Hill of the Gallows [1959], of [Delmer] Daves. The film was also released wherever it was due to be released in the world, except in France, where the director resides, and in the United States, where he resided. Look for the mistake… I seized this magnificent opportunity and, for the moment, 82 independent cinemas, that is to say not subject to paranoia or any diktat of a few, have programmed the film in thinking of only two things: cinema and their spectators. »
Unfortunately, it is not certain that cinema will emerge from this pochade, written by Roman Polanski with his friend Jerzy Skolimowski, another immense filmmaker of the Polish New Wave. As if these two venerable creators (Polanski is in his nineties, Skolimowski in his eighties) had come together to get a good slice of it late in life, writing this worldly satire that they probably wanted in the spirit of Billy Wilder. We are far from it.
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