Crime and punishment
Taki
One of the first stories I wrote in these here pages was about Roman Polanski, the Oscar-winning director in 2002 of The Pianist. In 1969 Roman had become a saint of sorts after the brutal murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate and four of her friends by the Manson gang. In 1971, Polanski had discovered Gstaad and was taken in by the jet-set as if he were a long-lost son. It didn’t last long. There was a spot of bother with the granddaughter of the president of the Eagle club, and rumours of pot-smoking with Gstaad ‘undesirables’, which in those innocent days meant hippie types. Rich hippie types, I might add.
The winter Polanski first came to town was a good one for me. I had lotsa girlfriends as my first wife had left me and I had not as yet been imprisoned by my second one. I was living in the Châlet Trois Urse, the three bears, and giving parties galore. I was also training very hard, as karate had suddenly become very popular in Europe and I was competing in as many tournaments as I was going to parties. One night, while training in my room during a party — I used to hang a string from the ceiling with a small weight at the end and kick and punch it for an hour or so — this small man entered and in a high-handed manner told me to keep kicking. I was taken aback because I had never met Roman before, but I was also annoyed at his arrogance in coming to my room and telling me what to do. Well, you can guess the rest. I told him to get out, he began making karate moves and noises every time we ran into each other after that. I lost my temper after losing a girl to him and ended up tapping him on the nose. End of story, but not quite. Polanski is a proud Pole who, like many short men, needs to have the last word. He called up a friend in Los Angeles by the name of Bruce Lee and flew him over in order to teach that Greek bully a sharp lesson. It’s a long story about which I’ve written more times than I care to admit, but Bruce Lee and I ended up becoming buddies and training together. One year later Lee had become the hottest thing in movies, and two years after that he was dead from a brain aneurysm. End of chapter.
Then Roman got into hot water in El Lay. He pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, and fled the country after Judge Laurence Rittenband vowed to stay on the bench until Polanski was brought back to be sentenced. In other words, the judge was out to get him. Now there are those who think the book should be thrown at anyone sleeping with a 13year-old, and I am among them. But, and it’s a big but, what happens if the girl passes for 18, or whatever the age of consent is in California? Polanski had a penchant for young girls — who doesn’t? — and the early Seventies were rock’n’roll, drugs and easy sex out there. He made a terrible mistake and should have done the time, but he chose to flee instead.
Now a new film about the case is about to hit the screen, and was acquired by the BBC in Britain. It is bound to start the 30year-old controversy all over again. The maker of the film, Marina Zenovich, had a small part in The Pianist, which shows she is not exactly riding the fence. Polanski has many friends in Hollywood and they have all come out in his favour. Simultaneously, Judge Rittenband’s reputation — he died in 1993 — has gone south. The trouble is the judge was a hell of a man. He graduated from high school at 15 and went to Harvard, graduating Phi Beta Kappa because he was unable to take the bar exam on account of being too young. At the age of 54 he had two girlfriends, one of them 20 years old. This is seen as a minus against the judge, a sign of hypocrisy. It is nothing of the kind. At 54, a man should go out with a 20-year-old. (I just met Alice Rothschild, when her uncle Hugo Guinness brought her for dinner. I am 70, she is 22. Her legs make Betty Grable’s look like the pins of Toulouse-Lautrec. She’s a beauty of unparalleled charm, and read history at Oxford. I’d love to marry her and it’s normal if I do.) No, the point is not the judge, nor his inclination to punish Roman, but the Jean Valjean syndrome. Polanski committed a crime, whether he was aware of it or not, then fled punishment for that crime. Thirty years later, does our compassionate society pursue him or not? I say not. He’s paid the price all these years, he is a useful member of society and there are worse things out there we should be going after.
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