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Polanski Judge Wise to Resist Whitewashing

Director's bias skews media narrative

By Matt Cantor, Newser Staff

Posted Feb 19, 2009 10:25 AM CST

(Newser) – The judge who refused to throw out Roman Polanski's rape conviction Tuesday—unless he agreed to come back to the country to challenge it in person—was right to resist the whitewashing of Polanski's crime, writes Bill Wyman in Salon. The movement to rehabilitate the acclaimed director was based on last year’s documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which casts Polanski as a tragic, Byronic figure and the judge as a self-promoting womanizer who committed judicial errors.

Director Marina Zenovich, “like many other chroniclers to the stars, seems to have been blinded by her contact with Polanski.” She could as easily have shown him as a “child-sex predator who drugged a 13-year-old girl; ignoring her protests, had sex with her; and then anally raped her.” The widely praised film stays “detached” from the victim as it “subtly undermines her”; it omits the worst in Polanski and the best in the judge, Wyman writes.

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Director Marina Zenovich poses during a photocall for the movie at the 34th American Film Festival in Deauville, Normandy, France, Sunday. Sept. 7, 2008. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

In this Monday, Sept. 29, 2008 photo Polish director Roman Polanski is seen in Oberhausen, western Germany. (AP Photo/Roberto Pfeil)

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The trailer for 'Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.' (moviespartdeux)

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'Wanted and Desired' seems to have inserted into the public consciousness the idea that Polanski, an irrepressible European, had been naughty during a colorful time, and that he has been toyed with by a monstrous legal system. - Bill Wyman

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Polanski Judge Wise to Resist Whitewashing