Roman Polanski: Film's dark prince

Roman Polanski: Film's dark prince

Roman Polanski is a legend in Europe

BBC News Online profiles legendary director Roman Polanski, whose World War II film The Pianist won him the best director Oscar despite being considered an outsider for the prize.

He has also won best film and best director at the Baftas this year.

The story of Roman Polanski's life has been as tortuous and full of incident and tragedy as one of his dark films.

His Palme D'Or for The Pianist, a story of a virtuoso's escape from a Warsaw ghetto, marks the end of a journey for a director who reportedly turned down a chance to direct Schindler's List because of the painful memories.

Polanski survived the Nazi atrocities committed in the Krakow ghetto, but lost his mother in a concentration camp gas chamber.

The Paris-born director went on to study at the prestigious Polish State Film College in Lodz and first came to international prominence with his feature debut Knife in the Water in 1962.

A claustrophobic thriller set on a weekend yacht trip, the film angered communist officials but won the critics' prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Polanski moved to Hollywood and scored a major box office success with Rosemary's Baby.

Starring Mia Farrow as a woman who dreams she has been impregnated by the devil, the tense, uneasy 1968 film heavily-influenced the horror genre with its psychological tone.

Adrien Brody, the lead in The Pianist, is also grabbing award nominations

Tragedy overwhelmed Polanski the following year, when his heavily pregnant wife Sharon Tate was brutally murdered, along with four others, by killers acting on the orders of radical cult leader Charles Manson.

Oppressive Macbeth

Dubbed the crime that "killed" the spirit of the 1960s by some, the murders were part of Manson's deranged efforts to start a race war in America.

The traumatised Polanski made his return to film with an oppressive and gloomy version of William Shakespeare's Macbeth in 1971.

But the pinnacle in his Hollywood career came with Chinatown in 1974.

Jack Nicholson played JJ Gittes, a detective in the Philip Marlowe mould, in a California-set thriller shot through with the darker aspects of predecessors like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep.

Chinatown won an Oscar for best original screenplay, and was nominated in 11 other categories in the 1974 Oscars.

Three years later, Polanski was charged with unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson's house.

Facing a possible jail sentence if convicted, Polanski chose to jump bail and flee to Europe.

Mixed projects

From then on he was unable to return to the US for fear of arrest and imprisonment, and even avoided making films in the UK because of the danger of extradition.

He was also reported to have started a relationship with actress Nastassja Kinski when she was 15.

Kinski had appeared in his Oscar-nominated 1979 film Tess.

Charles Manson led the cult that killed Polanski's wife Sharon Tate

During his time in Europe, he has mixed arthouse projects like 1992's Bitter Moon featuring Hugh Grant and 1994's Death and the Maiden, with Hollywood-friendly films.

He made the Harrison Ford-vehicle Frantic in 1988, and in 1999 the supernatural thriller Ninth Gate, which featured Johnny Depp.

Polanski's decision to direct The Pianist caused much debate, as the story of musician Wladyslaw Szpilman paralleled Polanski's own wartime experiences.

It did not take long for the harrowing film to start gaining acclaim.

Globes nomination

The Pianist won the prestigious Palme D'Or award at Cannes last year and heralded the return of Polanski as a brilliant film-maker.

The film, which stars best actor Oscar-winner Adrien Brody as Szpilman, has emerged as one of the critical hits of 2002.

In December it secured a Golden Globe nomination for best dramatic film.

It then received four awards at the 37th annual National Society of Film Critics awards in January, including best film and best director.

Now it has won six Cesars and the Baftas for best film and best director.

It heralds something of a return to the fold for this controversial director.