Roman Polanski Filmography

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

Synopsis: The events of 1977 and 1978 permanently marred director Roman Polanski's life. Accused of unlawful sexual assault on minor Samantha Geimer during his stay at actor Jack Nicholson's house in March of 1977, Polanski wound up in the midst of controversial judicial proceedings that many read as Read More

Quiet Chaos

Actors: Nanni Moretti, Valeria Golino, Isabella Ferrari, Alessandro Gassman, Blu Yoshimi

Synopsis: With Quiet Chaos (Caos calma), acclaimed Italian helmer Nanni Moretti steps away from his standard directorial role to essay the lead and co-author the script in a gentle psychological drama directed by Antonello Grimaldi. Moretti stars as Pietro, a film executive whose life takes an irreversible Read More

Rush Hour 3

Actors: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Hiroyuki Sanada, Youki Kudoh, Max von Sydow

Synopsis: In this third installment of the popular action comedy franchise, LAPD Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) and Chief Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) book a flight for Europe and prepare to clean up the streets of Paris after discovering that Chinese triads have extended their criminal influence to Read More

To Each His Own Cinema

Crew: Director

Synopsis: At the time of its production, To Each His Own Cinema represented the latest arrival in a tidal wave of internationally oriented omnibus films, with no official relation between them but all produced within a few years of one another. Few could claim a roster of talent comparable to this one Read More

Oliver Twist

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark, Jamie Foreman, Harry Eden, Leanne Rowe

Synopsis: Director Roman Polanski gives one of Charles Dickens' best-loved stories a new and dynamic interpretation in this period drama. Oliver Twist (Barney Clark) is a young orphan in Victorian England who has been sent to a dank workhouse run by the miserly Mr. Bumble (Jeremy Swift) when it is learned Read More

A Shadowed Gaze

Actors: Willy Holt, Roman Polanski

Zemsta

Actors: Janusz Gajos, Andrzej Seweryn, Agata Buzek, Rafal Krolikowski, Roman Polanski

Synopsis: One of the most important figures in the Polish cinema, director Andrzej Wadja, teams up with the nation's most famous filmmaking expatriate, Roman Polanski, in this light comedy based on a perennially popular stage farce by Aleksandr Fredo. Czesnik (Janusz Gajos) and Rejent (Andrzej Seweryn) are Read More

The Pianist

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox

Synopsis: Filmmaker Roman Polanski, who as a boy growing up in Poland watched while the Nazis devastated his country during World War II, directed this downbeat drama based on the true story of a privileged musician who spent five years struggling against the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody Read More

Light Keeps Me Company

Actors: Woody Allen, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Richard Attenborough

Synopsis: This moving, finely-wrought portrayal of legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist was directed by his son Carl-Gustav Nykvist -- a noted filmmaker himself. Spanning from long forgotten kiddie flick in 1945 to Woody Allen's Celebrity (1997), Nykvist's career came to an abrupt end when he was Read More

The Ninth Gate

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Johnny Depp, Frank Langella, Lena Olin, Emmanuelle Seigner, Barbara Jefford

Synopsis: An authority on rare books is drawn into a confrontation with the forces of darkness in this thriller directed by Roman Polanski. Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is a rare book broker who makes his living tracking down valuable items for rich bibliophiles. Corso is hired by Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) Read More

Intimate Portrait: Mia Farrow

Synopsis: This Lifetime Intimate Portrait tells Mia Farrow's life story with the help of interviews with Ms. Farrow herself, her children, ex-husband Andre Previn, and longtime friends and colleagues including Carly Simon, Nancy Sinatra, Natasha Richardson, and Roman Polanski. Born in 1945, the third of Read More

Gli Angeli

Crew: Director

Actors: Vasco Rossi

Synopsis: Roman Polanski's short film is based on the most suggestive tracks taken from Vasco Rossi's album {^Nessun Pericolo... Per Te}. The idea at the core of the film is the singer's flight into space. Rossi floats in space, surrounded by symbolic objects, until he finally meets the angel. ~ Yuri Read More

Death and the Maiden

Crew: Director

Actors: Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Stuart Wilson

Synopsis: Ariel Dorfman's acclaimed play of the same name serves as the basis for Roman Polanski's drama, which depicts a politically and psychological complex battle of wills amongst three characters in an unnamed South American country. The trio in question is made up of Paulina Sigourney Weaver, her Read More

A Pure Formality

Actors: Gérard Depardieu, Roman Polanski, Sergio Rubini, Nicola di Pinto, Paolo Lombardi

Synopsis: The sweet sentimental gauze of director Giuseppe Tornatore's international hit Cinema Paradiso (1988) is nowhere to be found in this dark, Kafkaesque crime thriller that takes place, stage play-style, mostly in the confines of one room. Gerard Depardieu stars as Onoff, a famed author who has Read More

Dead Tired

Actors: Michel Blanc, Carole Bouquet, Philippe Noiret, Josiane Balasko, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Synopsis: A burned out actor begins to question his sanity in this French comedy that stars the writer/director Michel Blanc in a dual role. In the first role Blanc plays himself as an exhausted actor. He has been doing too much TV and too many movies. Odd things begin to happen and Blanc becomes convinced Read More

Back in the USSR

Actors: Frank Whaley, Natalya Negoda, Roman Polanski, Andrew Divoff, Dey Young

Synopsis: In this first American film to be shot entirely in Moscow, young vacationing American Archer Sloan (Frank Whaley) gets involved in the theft of a rare religious icon. The "hot-potatoed" icon lands in Sloan's possession and one of the underworld bad guys involved in the theft is murdered. Sloan Read More

Bitter Moon

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Peter Coyote, Emmanuelle Seigner, Hugh Grant, Kristin Scott Thomas, Victor Banerjee

Synopsis: A perverse, dark-humored comedy drama, Bitter Moon crosses the line into intentional camp more often than not in its tale of a kinky cripple Oscar (Peter Coyote) and his beautiful wife Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner). Oscar ensnares a proper British man, Nigel (Hugh Grant) on an ocean-liner and makes Read More

L'Envers du Decor

Actors: Nastassja Kinski, Harrison Ford, Roman Polanski, Milos Forman, Nagisa Oshima

Synopsis: The modest, highly praised, award-winning cinematic production designer Pierre Guffroy is the subject of this reportedly somewhat uneven documentary. Among the notable directors he worked for were Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, Milos Forman, Jean Cocteau and Roman Polanski; not only that, but he Read More

Frantic

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Harrison Ford, Emmanuelle Seigner, Betty Buckley, John Mahoney, Jimmie Ray Weeks

Synopsis: Following the disastrous Pirates (1986), director Roman Polanski got back on creative track with this finely-wrought thriller that, while failing to impress at the box office, was nevertheless his most critically well-received film of the decade. Harrison Ford stars as Richard Walker, an American Read More

Pirates

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Walter Matthau, Damien Thomas, Richard Pearson, Cris Campion, Charlotte Lewis

Synopsis: Although the title evokes a swashbuckling adventure, Roman Polanski's Pirates tuns out to be a seagoing tale with a bit of a difference. Captain Red (Walter Matthau) runs a hardy pirate ship with the able assistance of Frog, a dashing young French sailor (Cris Campion). One day Capt. Red is Read More

Tess

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Nastassja Kinski, Leigh Lawson, Peter Firth, John Collin, David Markham

Synopsis: In Roman Polanski's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Nastassja Kinski plays Tess, a poor British peasant girl sent to live with her distant and wealthy relatives, the D'Urbervilles. Though Tess' father had hoped that the girl would be permitted a portion of the D'Urberville Read More

The Tenant

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Jo Van Fleet, Bernard Fresson, Shelley Winters

Synopsis: Director Roman Polanski casts himself in the lead of the psychological thriller The Tenant. Trelkovsky (Polanski) rents an apartment in a spooky old residential building, where his neighbors -- mostly old recluses -- eye him with suspicious contempt. Upon discovering that the apartment's previous Read More

Chinatown

Crew: Director

Actors: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman

Synopsis: "You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't," warns water baron Noah Cross (John Huston), when smooth cop-turned-private eye J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) starts nosing around Cross's water diversion scheme. That proves to be the ominous lesson of Chinatown, Roman Polanski Read More

Blood for Dracula

Actors: Joe Dallesandro, Udo Kier, Vittorio De Sica, Maxime McKendry, Arno Juerging

Synopsis: The second of two horror films shot in a single production term and bearing the name of pop-art icon Andy Warhol (whose participation pretty much ended with the use of his name), this film is slightly superior to its higher-profile predecessor, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein. Direction is credited to Warhol Read More

Che?

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Hugh Griffith, Sydne Rome

Synopsis: One of Roman Polanski's lesser-known films, Diary of Forbidden Dreams (also known as What?) stars Sydne Rome as an attractive young hitchhiker who, as the film opens, accepts a ride from three men in a car, who later attempt to rape her. She escapes their clutches and makes her way to a mansion Read More

Weekend of a Champion

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jackie Stewart, Roman Polanski

Synopsis: Sports-car racing has had many big-name filmmaker aficionados. This documentary following the public and private life of race-car driver Jackie Stewart is by director Roman Polanski, a longtime friend. It shows him preparing for a race in Monte Carlo. The film focuses on the man himself, rather Read More

Macbeth

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Terence Bayler, Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw, Nicholas Selby, John Stride, Vic Abbott, Stephen Chase

Synopsis: Perhaps William Shakespeare meant to have Lady Macbeth perform her sleepwalking scene in the nude -- it was this X-rated scene and the film's much-publicized spurts of violence, rather than the brilliant performances of Jon Finch as Macbeth and Francesca Annis as his Lady, that lured crowds to Roman Polanski Read More

A Day at the Beach

Crew: Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Mark Burns, Peter Sellers

Synopsis: Roman Polanski wrote the screenplay for this decidedly offbeat drama. Bernie (Mark Burns) plays a rootless wanderer with a fondness for alcohol and no clear goals in life. Bernie stumbles into a seaside resort community with Winnie (Beatrice Edney), a young girl in leg braces, in tow. As Bernie Read More

Cinema Different 3

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jean-Baptiste Thierree, Bernadette Lafont, Bulle Ogier

Synopsis: This three part film begins with "Trap", a neurotic sadist sets traps all over his house and invites two female burglars to visit. In the macabre "Marie and the Priest", a priest kills a woman he has impregnated and removes the fetus before baptizing then killing it. The horrifying story is based Read More

The Magic Christian

Actors: Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, Isabel Jeans, Christopher Lee, Caroline Blakiston, Raquel Welch

Synopsis: This zany British comedy finds a homeless hobo (Ringo Starr) being adopted by the world's richest man, Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers). Setting sail on the luxury liner The Magic Christian, Sir Grand tests the limit of human avarice. With money to motivate the greedy, Laurence Harvey combines his Read More

Ciao Federico! Fellini Directs Satyricon

Synopsis: In Federico Fellini's last theatrical film Intervista, he appears on camera as the subject of a fabricated filmed documentary. This took place for real back in 1969, and the result was the entertaining (if not too enlightening) 55-minute Ciao Federico! Fellini Directs Satyricon. We watch as Read More

Rosemary's Baby

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans

Synopsis: In Roman Polanski's first American film, adapted from Ira Levin's horror bestseller, a young wife comes to believe that her offspring is not of this world. Waifish Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her struggling actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), move into the Bramford, an old New York City Read More

La Fille D'En Face

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Bernard Verley, Marika Green

Synopsis: A young student visits the home of a friend who has all the good looks, women and luck. Every day, through binoculars from his friend's window, he sees a young girl in front of her home. Although attractive, the woman's face has been badly scarred. He finds out her phone number and the two engage Read More

The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me but Your Teeth Are in My Neck

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Roman Polanski, Jack MacGowran, Alfie Bass, Jessie Robbins, Sharon Tate

Synopsis: A pair of bumbling vampire-hunters attempts to destroy an undead nobleman and his cronies and rescue a buxom maiden in actor/director Roman Polanski's playful update of the venerable vampire genre. Bat expert and vampire obsessive Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran) barely survives his journey Read More

Cul-de-Sac

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Donald Pleasence, Françoise Dorléac, Lionel Stander, Jack MacGowran, William Franklyn

Synopsis: The fact that there isn't a single likeable character in Cul de Sac does not diminish its artistic value in the least. Ageing, furtively kinky Donald Pleasence is married to sexy young Francoise Dorleac. The couple's hermitlike tranquility is shattered when wounded gangsters Jack MacGowan and Lionel Stander Read More

Repulsion

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Patrick Wymark, Yvonne Furneaux

Synopsis: The first English-language film of director Roman Polanski is a psychological thriller in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and his own later film Rosemary's Baby (1968). Catherine Deneuve stars as Carol Ledoux, a Belgian manicurist living with her sister, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), in a Read More

Les Plus Belles Escroqueries Du Monde

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jean-Pierre Cassel, Francis Blanche, Catherine Deneuve, Gabriella Giorgetti, Nicole Karen

Synopsis: This anthology helmed by four talented filmmakers, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Hiromichi Horikawa, and Roman Polanski, allows viewers to meet and observe four international con artists. Each story is set within a different city. "Amsterdam" follows the attempts of a seductive Dutch woman to Read More

Aimez-Vous Les Femmes?

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Sophie Daumier, Guy Bedos, Gregoire Aslan, Edwige Feuillère

Synopsis: While visiting a vegetarian restaurant, a young writer finds a corpse in the restroom. When he returns with the police, the body is gone. The writer is left with the unlucky fellow's hat -- which leads a certain beautiful woman to believe that his identity is the same as the dead man's. Not only Read More

Ssaki

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Henryk Kluba, Michal Zolnierkiewicz

Synopsis: Ssaki (Mammals) is a ten-minute short film by Roman Polanski. It features two men and a sled in the snow. Theorists connect the themes of this film with the political duplicity in his 1961 short The Fat and the Lean. Ssaki features music by frequent collaborator Krzysztof Komeda. ~ Andrea Read More

Knife in the Water

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz

Synopsis: Noz w Wodzie was not only Polanski's first feature-length film, but it also marked the first screen appearance of Polish actor Zygmunt Malanowicz who played a young student. In fact, the only experienced thespian in the featured trio is Leon Niemczyk as Andrzej, the self-important, somewhat Read More

The Fat and the Lean

Crew: Director

Actors: Roman Polanski, André Katelbach

Synopsis: The 15-minute black-and-white short The Fat and the Lean was directed by Roman Polanski in 1961 shortly after he finished film school in Poland. The official credits have been obscured throughout history due to the fact that the film was shot in France and Polanski was not a French citizen. For Read More

Do Widzenia, Do Jutra

Actors: Zbigniew Cybulski, Jacek Fedorowicz

Synopsis: In this routine story within a story from Poland, Jacek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is the head of a troupe of thespians and so he is responsible for getting together the material for them to act out on the stage. One day he meets Marguerite (Teresa Tuszynska), the charming and sophisticated daughter of a Read More

Lotna

Synopsis: Two years after winning the Special Jury Prize for Kanal at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, renowned Polish director Andrzej Wajda directed this allegorical World War II drama. The film follows the winding paths of Lotna, a snow-white mare, as she wanders through Poland during it's fight against Read More

Gdy Spadaja Anioly...

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Roman Polanski made Gdy Spadaja Anioly ( When Angels Fall) as his final project at the State Film School in Lodz, Poland. This short film follows concerns an old woman who works as a bathroom attendant. Filmed in black-and-white, she is shown performing her work duties and sitting in a chair in Read More

Lampa

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: The Lamp is a short black-and-white film made by Roman Polanski in his final year at the State Film School in Lodz, Poland. A dollmaker makes repairs under the light of an oil lamp. Broken doll parts are scattered throughout the workshop. The lamp breaks and the workshop goes up in flames. Read More

Dwaj Ludzie z Szafy

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Dwaj Ludzie z Szafy (Two Men and a Wardrobe) is the first short film by Roman Polanski to be screened publicly. It won festival acclaim in Oberhausen, Brussels, and San Francisco. Two men emerge from the sea carrying a large wooden wardrobe. They carry it throughout the city, but they get kicked Read More

Koniec Nocy

Morderstwo

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Morderstwo (Murder) is Roman Polanski's first short film made at the State Film School in Lodz, Poland. The scene consists of a large man in a dark coat entering a bedroom, killing the man lying in the bed with a straight razor, and leaving the room. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide Read More

Usmiech Zebiczny

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Usmiech Zebiczny (Teeth Smile) is Roman Polanski's second short film at the State Film School in Lodz, Poland. A man is descending a staircase and he stops at a window to stare at a topless woman washing in front of a bathroom sink. She doesn't see him because she has a towel on her face. The man Read More

Rozbijemo Zabawe

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Rozbijemo Zabawe (Break up the Dance) is an eight-minute short film by Roman Polanski, his first to feature a soundtrack. Young people arrive at a social dance where a jazz band is playing. A group of thugs hang out by the gated entrance, but they don't have tickets to get in. They climb the fence Read More

A Generation

Actors: Tadeusz Lomnicki, Urszula Modrzinska, Tadeusz Janczar

Synopsis: A Generation is the first of Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda's "underground trilogy"-and also Wajda's first-ever feature film. Originally titled Pokolenie, the film dissects the impact that World War II had on the youth of Poland. Tadevsz Lomnicki plays an impressionable young Warsaw resident who Read More