Roman Polanski Will Not Face Extradition On Rape Charge
Poland’s Supreme Court will not extradite film director Roman Polanski to the United States, where he would face prosecution for rape charges lodged against him in 1977. Polanski fled the United States in 1978 and has never returned, but the charges have never been dropped. If he sets foot on American soil, he will face immediate arrest. The decision was announced amid the reemergence of the controversy surrounding the infamous “butter scene” in Bernardo Bertolucci’s film Last Tango in Paris.
To all the people that love this film- you're watching a 19yr old get raped by a 48yr old man. The director planned her attack. I feel sick. https://t.co/qVDom2gYf6
— Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) December 3, 2016
Earlier this month, the republication of a 2013 interview with Bertolucci released a maelstrom of negative backlash against Bertolucci and co-star Marlon Brando, who apparently colluded to introduce an unscripted element into a rape scene in order to illicit a less rehearsed response from the then 19-year-old actress Maria Schneider.
In the interview, Bertolucci said, “I didn’t want Maria to act with rage and humiliation, I wanted her to feel the rage and humiliation. Then she hated me for all of her life.”
With Polanski’s ruling coming out in the midst of the Bertolucci controversy, many commentators are drawing parallels between the two stories.
The ruling on Polanski’s extradition came six months after the Polish chief prosecutor and justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, asked the court to send the 83-year-old director back to the United States after decades of evasion.
The New York Times quotes Ziobro as saying, “If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then I’m confident that he’d have been deported from any country to the U.S. a long time ago.”
Nonetheless, Polanski will remain free. The director was first arrested for the rape of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer at the home of the actor Jack Nicholson. According to the Independent, Nicholson’s girlfriend at the time, actress Anjelica Huston, caught them in the act but “thought nothing of it.” Geimer was supposed to be posing for a photo shoot for French Vogue, and Polanski was the photographer.
As she recounts in her memoir The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski, when she arrived at Nicholson’s house, Polanski gave her drugs and alcohol and then took her in the jacuzzi. After her mother went to the police, authorities raided Polanski’s Beverly Hills hotel room and he was charged with statutory rape. In 1978, he left the United States after pleading guilty to a count of statutory rape and in 1988 he settled a six-figure civil suit with Geimer, as reported in the Guardian.
Revelations about Polanski and Bertolucci, along with Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, and others, have raised questions about rape culture in Hollywood and how to protect young actors and actresses. Melissa Silverstein, writing for the Guardian, explains that these incidences are indicative of a deeper and more insidious problem.
“Rape is used as a device in TV and films with such regularity that we are almost immune to it.”
Following her encounter with Polanski, Geimer recounts that she became addicted to drugs and attempted suicide. This mirrors the experience of Maria Schneider. In a 2007 interview, four years before her death, she said this to the Daily Mail.
“I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci.”
Following the filming of Last Tango in Paris, Schneider, like Geimer, struggled with drug addiction and depression and attempted suicide. However, despite the trauma, Geimer only wants to let go of the past.
In October of 2015, after the original motion of extradition was stricken down, she told NBC News, “I’m sure he’s a nice man and I know he has a family and I think he deserves closure and to be allowed to put this behind him. He said he did it, he pled guilty, he went to jail. I don’t know what people want from him.”
[Featured Image by Adam Nurkiewicz/Getty Images]
