Swiss No Return Polanski

I'm going to give a little background, because it seems to be the fault of my generation to possess a complete disregard for history.

Roman Polanski is a very renowned and accomplished film director. He is responsible for such works as Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, and, if you have honestly never heard of either of these, you need to stop reading this, turnoff Transformers II or whatever over-budgetted piece of crap HBO is showing, call up Netflix or hightail it to Redbox or whatever, and get your hands on some genuine, good quality, classic film making, because you're breaking my heart over here.

Anywho, Polanski's brillance as a director earned him quite a great deal of notarity within the US in the late 60's and throughout the 70's. Unfortunately, the spotlight was also cast his way in some more infamous circumstances. The first, in August of 1969, while Polanski was working in London on a new film, members of Charles Manson's "family" forced entry into Polanski's Los Angeles home and savagely murdered his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, a beautiful and famous actress at the time.

Then in March of 1977 Polanski was arrested for sexual assaulting Samantha Geimer, then 13 years of age at the time. After a year of litigation and a disagreement over the terms of a plea bargain, Polanski escaped on bail to France where he still maintained his native citizenship.

Now kind of largely because the French are such art snobs and revere brilliant artists (such as a brilliant director), they have for all of these years refused to extradite Polanski on the basis that he is technically a French citizen and nah-nah-nuh-boo-boo America. And, so, for these 30+ years Polanski has been in France doing the movie making thing. In fact, in 2002 he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director for his work on the Pianist. You may also notice in Rush Hour III at the very end; he is the rather short French police officer who appears in the final scene with the fountaion to nab the bad guy and save the day.

BUT, in September of last year, Polanski, while traveling to the Zurich Film Festival to accept a Life Time Achievement Award, was nabbed by Swiss authorities. And for a time it looked like we would be able to bring him back for prosecution. However, now the Swiss are starting to change their minds about whether to give him back or not.

Part of the reason has to due with a 2008 documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, produced by HBO and directed by Marina Zenovich, which explores the years of Polanski's career leading up to the incident and the controversy surrounding the trial. The film brings to light some unethical, or at the very least, questionable actions on the part of the judge and other matters that seem to muddle the circumstances of the case. As a result of this information, the Swiss believe they would be sending Polanski to a biased litigation when really the issue appears to be somewhat more complicated.

As it stands now, it looks like Polanski may return to his life in France.