SOURCE: Polanski, Roman, and David Thompson. “‘I Make Films for Adults.’” Sight and Sound 5, no. 4 (April 1995): 6-11.

[In the following interview, Polanski discusses his body of work, cinematic techniques, and the process of adapting Death and the Maiden from stage to screen.]

There are three characters—two of them a married couple, the other an outsider—in an isolated dwelling by the sea: it could be Cul-de-Sac, the 1966 film Roman Polanski has often cited as his best, when the setting was the castle on Holy Island, the unlikely couple Donald Pleasence and a coquettish Françoise Dorléac and the outsider Lionel Stander, growling like a Hollywood gangster in a B-movie plot. But it is also the dramatic situation in Polanski's adaptation of Ariel Dorfman's much-vaunted recent play about the legacy of political torture, Death and the Maiden. Now the setting is a South American country just after the fall of a dictatorship (a thinly-disguised Chile), and the house a remote bungalow on the edge of a cliff subject to a storm-induced powercut. A tense confrontation takes place between Gerardo, a high ranking government official, his wife Paulina, formerly the victim of torture under the dictatorship, and a stranger, Dr Roberto Miranda, who has given the husband a lift home and may or may not be the man who raped the wife when she was incarcerated, blindfolded, and subjected to horrific burns and electric shocks. This is hardly the stuff of humour, though Mike Nichols apparently directed it as an absurdist comedy on Broadway. But Polanski is not above injecting the odd unnerving moment [in Death and the Maiden] when Paulina's outrageous behaviour—gagging and threatening with a gun an outwardly beneficent stranger because she recognises his voice—becomes too much for her anxiously liberal husband. But if the tone of the proceedings is necessarily more serious and more intense than might be expected from his earlier films, it should be remembered that the best of Polanski's work has always featured surprises, and unsettling shifts in tone.

In adapting Dorfman (working with the playwright himself and also Rafael Yglesias, the writer of Fearless) Polanski has pruned much of the original's earnest speechifying to focus in on the visceral impact of the situation. The single basic location is the same, but the time structure has been tightened and the suspense increased: the director's familiar attention to detail in sound and composition keeps the tension at a high level. He has even added a familiar Polanski trademark, a telephone conversation (in this case to establish the outsider's alibi as a doctor at work in Barcelona at the time of the alleged tortures) that explores all the exasperating problems of establishing contact with persons unseen. But then he has always shown an acute understanding of a world in which bureaucrats cannot be believed, reasonable requests of human behaviour easily slip into threatening gestures, and nothing and nobody is wholly innocent. He may have always denied such suggestions himself, but his own experiences—as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Poland, as the husband of a Manson murder victim, as the subject of an unresolved sex scandal—surely offer considerable insight into lives dominated by suffering and vengeance.

Thanks to his casting, Polanski has benefited from a persuasively febrile performance by Sigourney Weaver as Paulina, while Stuart Wilson gives unobtrusive dignity to the role of Gerardo, a character who could easily disappear amidst the fireworks. As the ambiguous Miranda, Ben Kingsley is suitably unknowable, slipping disquietingly from bore to boor as his trial at gun point drains him of patience (what's more, his bald pate and occasional air of weary dementia evoke something of Pleasence's performance in Cul-de-Sac). Death and the Maiden—like Bitter Moon, shot by the estimable Tonino delli Colli—was mainly filmed on a sound stage in Paris but tellingly uses one exterior (in Spain) where a perilous cliff edge is the setting for the possible resolution to the drama. And the whole is framed by a concert attended by the protagonists, where Schubert's ‘Death and the Maiden’ string quartet is played, the music which once accompanied the sessions of Paulina and her mystery torturer. It may be Polanski's least showy film, but by drawing out the play's strengths as drama and potential as cinema, he shows his artistic grip has not slackened.

To ask Polanski to explain his art anew is another matter. Early on in a lavishly illustrated French volume entitled Polanski par Polanski, he stated his position very clearly: “Don't ask me why I make ‘these’ films. I am just a director.” He later adds: “I've never given a good interview in my life, and I've given hundreds.” Readers of his autobiography will know well his determinedly dispassionate tone of speech. Perhaps it's all part of steeling himself against the many vicissitudes that life has already dealt him. Perhaps it's also, quite genuinely, a case of the director really not having to think like a critic, and preferring to retain an innocence with regard to the “whys” of his profession.

[Thompson]: How did you become involved in making the film version of Death and the Maiden?

[Polanski]: I was going to direct the play myself in Paris, and then I decided against it, since I was also going to make the film, and I was afraid I might get sick and tired of it before I stepped onto the studio floor. I never saw any of the productions, not even on tape. I was simply sent the play by the producers [Thom Mount and Bonnie Timmermann], and then I read it. So it was all very prosaic! They were interested in me filming it.

Did you immediately have an idea of how you would adapt it for the screen?

I didn't know exactly what to do, but I had a clear idea that something was amiss with the end of the play. I felt there was no third act, and I knew that would have to be fixed.

In the play, we only hear one confession by Roberto. You have split it into two: one abortive version conducted for a video camera, and then his final and possibly true confession on the cliff edge. Why did you do it in this way?

The first on tape is phoney, as Paulina says. So it is followed by a real confession. In the play, he never gives a real confession; it just sort of stops suddenly, and then comes the epilogue, which is a very theatrical device, very déjà vu, of a mirror coming down reflecting the audience. Then we see the husband and wife and the doctor in the first row at the concert noticing each other. It just makes us aware of the fact they have to brush elbows in the future, which is an important element, but does not satisfy the viewer as far as the plot development is concerned. It doesn't give an answer to a whodunnit, which the play seems to be for its first three quarters.

The setting for that final confession on the cliff edge is very effective. There's a particularly unsettling camera move—apparently from Roberto's point of view—over the edge, at the end of the scene.

The idea for the setting came from discussions at the script stage. The final shot looking over the cliff came to me at the location. It was actually a shot to be used somewhere else, when Gerardo was holding him over the edge. In the editing, I felt it would be better at the end.

Many people I have spoken to think that this very dramatic confession makes him appear guilty.

In the play, he's definitely guilty, I think. It gives an answer, but then somehow it doesn't manage to give an answer. It's ambiguous, and it seems to me to a certain extent to be a cop-out. But I think we managed to make it more satisfying. We can accept the version that he is lying to the last moment, because a man who is fighting for his life could very easily come up with a convincing confession. When you're standing on the edge of a cliff, all kind of hidden talents may surface! We shot a number of slightly different readings, five or six.

This appears to be the first time in your career in which you've made a film with a specific political context.

It's depends what you mean by political. In my mind, “political” relates to a concrete regime, and names, of a country at least, let alone the people. In Death and the Maiden I never mention any political leader or a concrete dictatorship that's fallen. I'm talking about an unspecified country in South America. And it's more universal than that, because this sort of situation occurs all around the globe, where former victims are faced with their former oppressors or torturers. They have to live through these kind of encounters and deal with them.

You've often said that when you were at the Lodz film school, you were bored by the constant reference to politics in cinema.

In discussions, I was much more concerned with aesthetics. I understood that form is much more important than content. But I remember when Zbigniew Cybulski, who was a close friend, brought us a bunch of badly-made, out-of-focus and grainy porno movies, we were all a great audience for this despite the fact they were terrible. So after all the content is important … [laughs] But at that time, the form mattered to me more than anything, and still does even now.

On stage, Death and the Maiden takes place over a night and a day. You have reduced the time scale considerably.

I compressed it into one night. I like the three unities of action, place and time. In particular time. This type of form, the huis clos [the drama in the single enclosed room], must come from the nostalgia I continue to have for one of the first films that impressed me, Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947). It starts, I believe, in the morning with the characters plotting in the apartment, and it ends I think by night or early morning. And there's this clock constantly in shot. It's a wonderful picture, and I think I'm here today because of it, and Olivier's Hamlet.

Both these films achieve a great deal through the use of black and white cinematography. Would you ever return to using it yourself?

I think making films in black and white today is a form of stylisation. I have nothing against it, but there should be a real reason for it. I think Schindler's List was very well done in black and white, because our memories of the period are associated with black and white, in particular through newsreels.

Another two films you have often said were a great influence on you are Citizen Kane and Rashomon. Since both deal with the problem of discovering a truth through multiple viewpoints, could they be said to have influenced your interest in Death and the Maiden?

Yes, they do have some bearing on Death because they deal with the aspect that I find the most interesting in this play, which is the relativity of truth. To have the same story told, or the same event related by various people, or various parties, these different point of views which don't concord, that always fascinated me. And this is as close to it as I could get. I hope I will have another crack at it sometime, somewhere, really doing a film with the event seen through different eyes, as in Rashomon. I think it's a fantastic idea that only a movie can express; no other medium is better for this type of treatment than film.

Some of your films, such as Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, rely heavily on one protagonist's point of view. Do you feel a special identification with any of the characters in Death and the Maiden?

Death and the Maiden was not suited to a subjective narrative. There are three characters, and you have to alternate as far as your identification goes. Therefore you mustn't tell the story from the point of view of Paulina, for example. Yet most of the time we're closer to her than anyone else. But if you look at the structure of the play, it has a very funny plan, like a musical form. First Paulina solo, then three duets—Paulina with husband, husband with doctor, doctor with Paulina—and then you have them all three together, the tutti. So you need some symmetry also in the way you film it, and therefore I avoided being too much behind or over Paulina's shoulder. I had to be over everybody's shoulder.

Just after Paulina has been tripped by Roberto, there's a particularly strong camera movement as she holds the gun to his face that serves to define their relationship.

The camera starts over her shoulder on him, because I wanted this feeling of her dominating him, and ends up looking up at her. It's more expressive than what has gone before because this time I have a reason for it, as the action becomes more violent.

Before that, when she ties him up, you use some very telling close-ups of their physical intimacy.

Well, that came simply from rehearsal. I watched how she did it, and it seemed to me the most effective way to film it.

A number of people have suggested to me that when she uses her panties to gag him, the idea must have come from you, yet it's in the play! On the other hand, the storm and the blackout—which might appear to be ‘theatrical’ devices—are not.

These ideas came up at script level. We needed some intensity, and a reason for the isolation. I wanted to feel the world outside, through the changes in weather and time. We're near the sea so we have to feel that. I thought the storm was a good way to begin this type of atmosphere.

The word “atmosphere” comes up a lot in discussions of film-making.

It's the most important thing for me in cinema. Without it, it's all dialogue or movement.

The setting of the play seems almost tailor-made, for you, in that so many of your films—Knife in the Water and Cul-de-Sac, for example—deal with characters in an enclosed space surrounded by wide open space.

I use all these devices so that you feel this isolation. I like to use all the devices that are at my disposal in a movie to get away from the stage. Cinema gives you the chance of making a play into something that is real, and not stagy, so that it's like life. You have a fourth wall in cinema, which you don't have on stage. You have the weather around you, the night or the sun, you can step out of the door even if you don't want to “open it up” as they say.

Presumably by working mainly on a sound stage, you have had much greater control over your conception of the film than when you shoot on location.

By the time I start photography, I have worked on the script so much and for so long that I have the entire vision of the film in my head, but when I'm confronted with the reality it undergoes an immediate change. Often you have to modify it. For example, on Bitter Moon, the final scene in the script had the concept of a rising sun over Istanbul. I didn't just put “rising sun” arbitrarily in the script, and I was convinced we would have it when we reached Istanbul. But it was all misty and rainy, so I had to figure out a way of adjusting things, because it completely changed the atmosphere of the scene.

Bitter Moon had a very divided reception. Were you deliberately seeking a certain “shock” factor after the films immediately preceding it?

I wasn't making it to shock. Maybe I had a little bit of this desire when I was young. Young people are of course rebellious and they like shocking others, and they have to act through what the French call s'imposer, which means to establish themselves and force themselves upon their surroundings. I don't have any of those needs now, and even when I was beginning, the main thing for me was to tell the story, and if the story required violent images or nudity, I would use them for telling it.

Unlike the novel it was based on, Bitter Moon was particularly striking for the clash of nationalities among the characters—especially the very British young couple.

I wanted them to be very British. Originally, I thought the man would be a schoolmaster, and it was when I started discussing the role with Hugh Grant that he suggested it would be better if he was a fellow from the city, an English yuppie. I remember when I was shooting in England once, an electrician shouted to his colleague, “Hey mate, don't run, be British.” That wasn't exactly the type I was thinking of, the character was a bit higher in class, but still “British”. One who doesn't run.

Bitter Moon had as its concern power games between characters, as in a way does Death and the Maiden. Is this what makes a “Polanski” film for you?

When I make a horror picture, they say it's typical Polanski. When I make a film which shows any form of violence, they tell me it's typical Polanski. I truly don't analyse these things. I'm not even interested to do so. I make films I feel like making at a given time in the same way you feel like ordering a steak one day and spaghetti another. The reason behind it, I don't know; it's an accumulation of experience and your mood in that period of your life, and of course the other elements, such as the whole question of whether a film can be financed.

You made relatively few films in the 80s. Why?

I was so traumatised by the experience of Tess I just didn't want to make films anymore. It was such an enormous effort to make and so difficult to finish that I started asking myself whether it was worth it or not. After completing the film, there was a year of fighting to get it distributed—in England the Rank Organisation said it would be “over my dead body”, that nobody wanted to see a two-and-a-half-hour costume drama. Finally when it was clear that the film was a success, with excellent reviews, I thought, what if the film had been a total failure? So I decided to do theatre and other things, and for eight years didn't make a movie.

You came back with Pirates which was neither a commercial nor critical success. What went wrong?

Pirates was an old project that I had wanted to do ten years before, and it was a mistake to fight for the film, because I had to make too many compromises—I had to chop the script, and to cast it a way I didn't want to. And after slaving away for 25 or 28 weeks shooting Pirates in the Mediterranean and Tunisia with a multinational crew who couldn't understand one another and not enough money and all kinds of natural difficulties such as bad weather—or even good weather when I didn't need it—then of course I felt like making a simple film without complicated sets and costumes, preferably without costumes and sets at all! Anything on which I could keep a view of the entire piece and not just little moments, because Pirates was shot without any continuity, and every shot was like tearing a fish out of a shark's mouth. I didn't want to go through a similar experience, so I made Frantic.

Frantic was made for Warner Bros. Was there much studio interference—the casting for example?

As far as Harrison Ford was concerned, he was my proposition. But I did find the studios had changed since I left Hollywood and that they now interfere much more. They believe they also have creative ideas and they desperately want a commercial success and think they know how to have one. They wanted me to change the ending, and I did have to reshoot certain things. I could have dug my heels in and said no, but the film has to be released, you have to have their co-operation and enthusiasm behind it, so I had to give up on certain issues.

Did making a more obviously commercial film strengthen your position?

After Frantic I got a little more brazen and I tried to make a film that was more complex, from one of my beloved books, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. I spent a lot of time writing the script, and then I realised it was difficult to finance, so I decided to have a go at something easy again, and together with the producer Alain Sarde we came upon the novel Bitter Moon. I didn't have much money so we worked hard and were under tremendous pressure, but I did what I wanted and nobody interfered with the result. Also I managed to contain it within a year and a half; when I was beginning, you could do a film in a year, now you're lucky if you make one in two years.

In your planning of a film do you use storyboards at all?

When I was at film school, and even for a short period after, I used to use storyboards. Since I'd studied art, it was easy for me to draw, and this was a simple way for me to present to others what I wanted to see, rather than explain it with words. Soon I realised this was not the right approach, like tailoring a perfect suit and looking for a person to fit it. I prefer to find a person first and then make a suit for him. So I stopped doing these storyboards, and I understood that my inspiration came from actors, letting them rehearse and seeing that instinctively they find the right places, the right attitudes, the right readings and the right body language. And when it's not right, one sees it immediately because it looks false. So I try to help so it looks more real, and only then do I start thinking of filming it, deciding when and how I'm going to place the camera.

And how do you decide upon that? Part of your style seems to be fondness for wide-angle lenses and a fluid intimate camera.

I'm trying to show on the screen what I see, it's as simple as that. I'm trying only to repeat with the camera as closely as possible what I have seen with my own eyes during the rehearsal of a set-up. Therefore I use the appropriate angle. The angle is determined by the distance from which I watch the person. The face seen from the other side of the room is not the same face which is seen across a table. Unfortunately, I've met very few people who understand this method. There is a general policy accepted in the world of cinema and photography that the angle changes the perspective, and that a wide angle distorts. A wide angle distorts only inasmuch as you put the three-dimensional world onto the two dimensional screen. Looking at you across this table, if I continue to widen the angle, I start seeing what's behind your ears. It's like a ball, and if you project it inside another ball, it would not be distorted—as with Omnimax, in which the image is projected on a concave surface. At the edges, a wide angle will cause the lines to curve, but the centre will not be distorted—or only if you come very close to a subject. At a distance of two metres, your face would not be distorted. So it's not the angle that changes the perspective, but the distance.

In a number of your films, such as Repulsion or The Tenant, you use the effect of a wide angle lens in close to convey the growing madness of the characters, with the world drawing in on them.

When you make a close-up of a person, to determine the size you have two options. Close with a wide angle, or far away with a narrow angle or a long focal length. The result is not the same. I choose to use wide angles whenever I want to be aware of the walls around, where I want it to be more three-dimensional. They give a greater sense of a location, and a greater depth of focus.

Would you ever use two cameras on a scene?

I think there is only one good angle. I only use two cameras out of necessity, such as in Death and the Maiden when the car goes over the cliff, as I only had one chance to shoot the scene! Also for the scene when Paulina drags Roberto out of the house, and those on the cliff edge, I had very little time to shoot because of the weather, so I set up three cameras in advance not to waste time between takes.

This method suggests you don't do a lot of coverage to give yourself a variety of options.

Of course I don't shoot just what you finally see in the film. I am covering myself by making the takes long, and even doing close-ups, as I can never be exactly sure of how it will work in the editing. But my former editor Sam O'Steen used to say he could easily assemble the scenes without me, because my way of shooting made it clear which shots to use.

An actor recently complained to me that too many directors today only watch their video monitor, and spend very little time directing them on the set.

I didn't use a monitor until Frantic. The monitor is useful as far as the framing is concerned, and it helps to show whether the actors are in the right position, but it's a dangerous toy, because you can't see the detail you will later see on the screen, the emotions that the actors are conveying through their eyes. Therefore I keep fighting the desire of looking after the composition rather than looking after the performance.

On set, you certainly spend a lot of time over the detail of the performances, and watch them very closely.

Well, of course you must be there for the actors. I know that from my own experience as an actor. I could feel in the theatre if there was someone with malevolent feelings towards me in the audience, and it affected my performance. On the other hand, if I knew someone sympathetic to me was sitting there, I would act for them, and my performance would be better.

Some actors have said they were surprised by how much you gave them in the way of line readings and gestures.

I think that is what a director should be doing, and it certainly always used to be the way. There are some actors to whom you can show what you want from them, and I use it very often because it's a short cut, it's faster than giving a verbal explanation. Other actors require a more delicate approach, just a suggestion of what you are after. As far as the actors on Death and the Maiden were concerned, this film was the smoothest time I've had.

Was Sigourney Weaver your first choice for Paulina?

Yes, she was the first choice, and the problem at first was working out a combination of actors according to when she was available. She was interested in the part, and I was happy that someone like her who was personally engaged in the concerns of this subject be involved. Of course she wasn't the obvious choice, she's so physically strong compared to, say, Juliet Stevenson, who played the part on stage in London. But I liked that; sometimes not choosing the obvious person works well, and of course we also had to have a name that was known.

Despite the fact that you began film-making at the time of the Nouvelle Vague, you always seemed to have worked to a very precise script.

The script is essential. Film-making is too complicated to leave things for improvisation, that's just for amateurs. How can you improvise when you need specific props for a scene, or you have to work on a specific location? When I go on the floor of the studio, I have no time to think of what's wrong or right. It has to be already down there so when I'm lost I can pick up the script, open it and look at it like a book of instructions.

But isn't it true that you did not have an ending for Chinatown until very late in the day?

I had neither the ending nor the love scene when we started shooting. Robert Towne never wanted the main characters to go to bed, and he didn't want her to die in the end. We had a hard time agreeing on that ending. Working on this script was so difficult and gruelling that we started shooting before the script was redrafted. In the first two drafts, the culprit Noah Cross was caught. In the second draft, he was even killed inside a huge fish, which was a sign! But beginning shooting in this way was only possible because Robert Evans was producer of the film and at the same time head of the studio, so he could give us the green light. Finally he said, “Come on Roman, we have to have an ending!” There were very few scenes left to shoot. It all became very dodgy. I had always worried about there being no scene in Chinatown to justify the title, and since Chinatown in Los Angeles no longer exists, I got Richard Sylbert to build this set for me. I asked Jack [Nicholson] to help come up with some lines—he's very good at that—and so we shot it with her death.

I read that when you were writing What? with Gérard Brach, you listened to Schubert's ‘Death and the Maiden’ over 30 times! Is it sheer coincidence that this music has turned up in two of your films?

No connection. Except that I regret having used it on What?. I think it would have been a better film if we'd have more joyful music. It's beautiful music, but tremendously melancholy.

It was recently suggested that your next project might be an adaptation of Les Miserables.

It's one of the projects I'm discussing right now, but the press moved faster than the people involved. Certainly after Death and the Maiden, I would like to make a bigger picture.

There was also an announcement that you might be making an animated erotic thriller, based on the work of the cult Italian comic-strip artist, Milo Manara.

I've always been interested in animation, but I've never been able to do it. So when they asked me to so to speak ‘direct’ an animation film, I was very interested. I'd be supervising the whole process from the script to the final mix, except you have no actors! Manara makes very erotic and funny comic strips. It's an adult animation. Well, as you may have noticed, I make films for adults!