CITTA VIOLENTA

Between mass murder at Benedict Canyon and Oscars all round for Chinatown, two Polanski films pointed towards exorcism and catharsis. First, a Macbeth plied with Playboy cash and psychic violence, treated (correctly) as a visceral, wounded, animal response to the ritual annihilation of his wife and unborn child at the expense of Shakespearean text. A gruelling December in North Wales bore a fine and brutal film that, perhaps inevitably, got critically garroted; the following move, therefore, looked like a winner. Stuffing Carlo Ponti $$$s into sacks, Polanski ditched Snowdonian shacks for a luxurious Amalfi villa, gathering together friends and benefactors for a cryptic sex romp in the sun. With an entourage that fanned out along the immediate coast -- sucking up typical trans-Atlantic trash (Franco Zeffirelli, Andy Warhol, Warren Beatty, etc.) -- he decided to have fun.

What was happening here? A clotted response to still unassimilable tragedy, something out of whack with normal catastrophe, even for this Artful Dodger of the Warsaw ghetto -- the tough psyche, already hardwired for epic loss, disintegrating finally and then re-calibrating in searing spring sunshine on the Mediterranean shore. Here he is moving on: dealing with the body: sexual rites and games, rather than ritual carnage. That is: he was making a new kind of film -- an arty Sterne-esque Sexploiter with no sex -- and it almost worked.

But there’s too much evidence of a uniquely developed nihilism, something more serious -- more seriously frivolous -- than anything seen since Cul-de-Sac. A deadened (dead end) jauntiness, crippled hedonism: open appetites and deep pockets for all the toxic perks and taut bodies the ‘70s Euro-aristocracy could collect together in one place. A desperate indulgence of despair, self indulgence as despair, or despair as licence for anything dared or desired: these formulations lead to stagnation. The film was, in the end, both as entertaining and as tedious as Salo or SS Girls. (And morality began to warp and buckle in this febrile, anarchic atmosphere: Polanski would soon be a world class connoisseur of teenage flesh.)

Even the pool is polluted. These people can turn rocks to dust just by looking at them. Get away!

What? dropped to universal disdain and/or indifference in 1972, except in Italy, where queues formed outside cinemas (for Italian audiences already geared to giallo and Joe D’amato it was easily digestible fair, and, after all, with Ponti and Amalfi and Marcello Mastroianni on board, this was an honorary Italian affair).

Sydne Rome, en route to Paris Vogue covers and Playboy centrefolds, was the calm centre of this dirty, dull, druggy vaudeville; a sane siren in a scene fully fuelled by who knows exactly what calibre of emotional damage? Now older, face lifted, Sydne tells us that “the atmosphere was like being on a summer holiday in Italy!” -- oblivious, apparently, to the psychological fallout surrounding her. A fantastic, pneumatic, lush and peachy Ohio blonde, she presented a striking contrast: sexually healthy, mentally robust, armed with astrology and Berkley liberation, effortlessly deflecting serious strains of debauched ill health.

Marcello Mastroianni, somewhat slumming it here, happily sunk in. The Valentino of Neorealism proved willing to degrade himself, get a bit scuzzy -- only with a legitimate Auteur, of course, and a multinational millionaire paying expenses. Returning to Italy during a rare fallow period and within the sphere of Polanski’s now poisonous aura, Mastroianni acted the suave and seedy and syphilitic ex-pimp with a terrifying joy and conviction. Donned in leopard skin -- “Tame me!…With the whip, you fool!” -- as Synde Rome, half her clothes ripped off, looked on in alarm and then, fuelled with fresh sexual innocence, picked up the whip. At that moment, the whole sordid enterprise reached apotheosis, a sort of soiled glory. And that, in a way, was enough: a sealed deal.

What? (Roman Polanski, 1972)