Roman

Rating:
Summary: From the heart
Review: I have always admired Roman Polanski. He strikes me as a person with a very powerful presence and state of mind and that impression certainly comes through in his films.

Although published 20 years ago, Roman bared his soul to the world, telling his story in a way that you felt you lived his life right there beside him.

People who believe that those who have had lousy lives should be excused from taking responsibility for their crimes should read Roman's book. After all he's been through, he had every excuse in the world to be a lowlife, drunken, drug addict, thief, murderer, scumbag. Instead, this man took all the bad things that have happened to him in his life and turned it into something positive.

And even though he has expressed his emotions through his movies, he is still a very mysterious man whose depths no one will ever know.

That's what makes Roman so damn intriguing.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most impressive books ever read
Review: I lost my copy of this book years ago and am so glad to have it back. Anyone who admires Polanski's work will love this book. Anyone who questions Polanski's love of life, Sharon, and the World he lives in should read this book. You will understand him in a whole new light. He's amazing. Read this before any other about him. Please!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Polanski is a genius.
Review: Polanski has led one of the most interesting lives of anyone in the film industry, and it was great to read about his many misadventures, misfortunes, and mistakes, as viewed from the director's perspective. I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes the Polanski's films or has been intrigued by his sensationalized history.

Rating:
Summary: Paradoxical Roman - by Polanski
Review: The myriad and often contradictory superlatives that define Roman Polanski are evident in his 1984 autobiography. A man of immense dichotomy: by turns exquisitely sensitive and dazzlingly brilliant yet capable of staggering insensitivity and cruelty; a singularly gifted filmmaker who has sometimes betrayed that talent completely; a man blessed with the reciprocal love and devotion of three of the world's most beautiful women (most notably Sharon Tate) and yet easily capable of sexist and loutish behavior, etc. The parade of paradoxes attendant to Polanski's life make for fascinating reading, evoke extremes of admiration and disdain on the part of the reader, and ultimately remind us that the author, like life itself, is not easily defined nor pigeonholed by a pool of platitudes.

As this tome lacks the direct input of anyone other than Polanski himself, much of the director's foibles and missteps are congealed in the inevitable patina of celebrity and privilege. But that's not the whole story - by far. Polanski's appalling childhood and the Manson murders of 1969 (Polanski's pregnant wife and unborn child were murdered by disciples of the would-be messiah) undoubtedly contributed to the self-destruction that is too frequently an underlying theme in his life.

The passages in which the author pays noble tribute to Tate provide a touching - and fitting - legacy to the lovely actress whose abundant goodness - her superior heart and her abiding selflessness - are manifest in Polanski's memories. It is, ultimately, this aspect of the book that remain in the reader's memory - long after the last page has been turned. In Polanski's relationship with his late wife - we are allowed to observe the director's vulnerability, tenderness and love - qualities that are all too frequently sublimated in his own overweening arrogance, pride and machismo.

"Roman by Polanski" is a satisfying and compelling read for those of us who, though incensed by some of the director's sophomoric actions, still find a commonality with the chaotic and passionate aspects of his personality. For this reason, the loss of his filmmaking genius in America is very unfortunate indeed.

Rating:
Summary: Paradoxical Roman - by Polanski
Review: The myriad and often contradictory superlatives that define Roman Polanski are evident in his 1984 autobiography. A man of immense dichotomy: by turns exquisitely sensitive and dazzlingly brilliant yet capable of staggering insensitivity and cruelty; a singularly gifted filmmaker who has sometimes betrayed that talent completely; a man blessed with the reciprocal love and devotion of three of the world's most beautiful women (most notably Sharon Tate) and yet easily capable of sexist and loutish behavior, etc. The parade of paradoxes attendant to Polanski's life make for fascinating reading, evoke extremes of admiration and disdain on the part of the reader, and ultimately remind us that the author, like life itself, is not easily defined nor pigeonholed by a pool of platitudes.

As this tome lacks the direct input of anyone other than Polanski himself, much of the director's foibles and missteps are congealed in the inevitable patina of celebrity and privilege. But that's not the whole story - by far. Polanski's appalling childhood and the Manson murders of 1969 (Polanski's pregnant wife and unborn child were murdered by disciples of the would-be messiah) undoubtedly contributed to the self-destruction that is too frequently an underlying theme in his life.

The passages in which the author pays noble tribute to Tate provide a touching - and fitting - legacy to the lovely actress whose abundant goodness - her superior heart and her abiding selflessness - are manifest in Polanski's memories. It is, ultimately, this aspect of the book that remain in the reader's memory - long after the last page has been turned. In Polanski's relationship with his late wife - we are allowed to observe the director's vulnerability, tenderness and love - qualities that are all too frequently sublimated in his own overweening arrogance, pride and machismo.

"Roman by Polanski" is a satisfying and compelling read for those of us who, though incensed by some of the director's sophomoric actions, still find a commonality with the chaotic and passionate aspects of his personality. For this reason, the loss of his filmmaking genius in America is very unfortunate indeed.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books written about a murder.
Review: There are so many true crime books written and none of them come close as this touching and shocking account from the great director Roman Polanski. Everyone knows about the murder of his wife but not so many know how it truly affects someone. The section that got me the most was Roman discussing how much he misses Sharon whenever he packs a suitcase (she loved to pack). No matter how much we like to hear gory details about something like that case we never get to hear how it takes it's toll on loved ones. Maybe if we heard more accounts like this, this country wouldn't obsess and make a hero out of Manson and his freaks of a "family"!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting autobiography of this complex director
Review: This is a must for fans of the great director! This was written by him in 1984 as a memorial to his late wife Sharon Tate and to help get him out of the trouble he was embroiled in at the time....

From the inside flap of the dustjacket:

Includes 59 never previously published photographs of personal memorabilia and cinematic works from Roman Polanski's collection.

Cinematic genius- international playboy- tragic victim- immoralist. Which is the real Roman Polanski?

The world press has called him this and more. Now , for the first time, and "to set the record straight" , the brilliant director of such films as Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Cul de Sac, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and Tess tells his own Roman, his own story revealing- in fascinating detail that only he could ever know- the mosaic of his life.Excusing nothing, being brutally honest about his transgressions from convention, Polanski deals with everything here, giving us remarkable insight into the schemes and intrigues that lie in wait for anyone living in the high-powered world in which he does.

Among the many doors that are locked for us are those that lead back to his frightening buy not joyless childhood in Nazi- occupied Poland, both inside the ghetto and on the run; to Lodz film school in the fifties, where he worked and played with equal intensity, to Paris and his early struggles to become established as a director, to London and Hollywood in the "swinging " sixties, where he first won international acclaim. We follow him through his marriages, his love affairs, his freindships with people as diverse as hisown wide ranging intersts- filmamkers, artists, talented celebrities, bizarre unknowns. With him we experience the full force of the tragedy that struck his wife Sharon Tate who was murdered by the Manson "family" , his years of disenchantment and self -inquiry;his arrest and imprisonment in California on charges alleging the rape of a minor;his personal and professional resurgence in France.

Roman Polanski is an artist of our time. Politically , technologically, socially, his story has a resonance that leaps from the page, is a journey in mid-flight with locations in Warsaw, Hollywood, Paris, London , Rome, anyplace his obsession with film brought him. Inevitably, his odyssey includes encounters with the gods of our time- the great movie stars- as well as accounts of his personal achievements and despair, his reaction to the great praise that greeted him, and to the equally great calumny that he has suffered.

In Roman, Polanski never shrinks from revealing himself , and allows us to discover the vital artist and hte real person behind the brutal headlines and supermarket scribblings. What we discover it the human being;what we come to understand is the man himself.And how,exactly, life happened to Roman Polanski.