Probably the most famous phrase in Chinatown, Roman Polanski’s 1974 homage to detective noir, is virtually the last line spoken in the movie. The ensemble of characters is standing by the car that ...Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) has attempted to escape in with her daughter, Katherine (Belinda Palmer). Detectives have fired shots from up the street in their attempt to prevent Evelyn from fleeing the scene and the result is that the long slow single horn sounding some yards away signals Evelyn’s ...
Filmmaker Roman Polanski declares in his autobiography that he was greatly influenced by renowned neuropsychologist Richard L. Gregory (1923-2010), whose work, Polanski claims, gave scientific ...confirmation to many of his own beliefs regarding the nature of perception. Gregory was a strong advocate for what is referred to as the ‘indirect’ theory of perception, a theoretical model that stresses the agency of cognition, specifically hypothesisation, in the act of perceiving. This analysis of Polanski’s cinema is guided by an exploration of perceptual psychology, with special attention paid to how the theory of indirect perception differs from competing, and often more intuitive, models of perception. The two main focuses of this thesis are: a) to identify the ways in which Polanski’s cinematography is actively informed by neuropsychological research on perception, and b) to discuss the various ways in which the key philosophical implications of the theory of indirect perception find expression in his cinema. My analysis will focus primarily on two (unofficial) ‘trilogies’, what I refer to as the ‘Apartment Trilogy’ of Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976), and the ‘Investigation Trilogy’ of Chinatown (1974), Frantic (1988) and The Ninth Gate (1999). Also included are minor case studies of Knife in the Water (1962), Death and the Maiden (1994), and The Ghost (2010). This thesis hopes to demonstrate the manner in which Polanski’s cinematic engagement with perceptual psychology evolves over his career, from more psychologically intimate explorations of the perceptual mechanism via portrayals of schizophrenia in his earlier films, to more distant studies of highly proficient perceiving bodies who are nevertheless confronted with serious challenges to their perceptual (and epistemological) frameworks.
This chapter establishes that Roman Polanski's Macbeth used the conventions of the horror genre to represent William Shakespeare's play on screen. It considers how Macbeth is placed in the wider ...historical context of the horror genre itself. It also examines how Macbeth fits with the Folk Horror The Wicker Man (1973) or slasher classic Halloween (1978) and shows how the film is situated within the history of the horror genre. The chapter illustrates how Polanski managed to combine an eleventh-century setting and William Shakespeare's poetic idiom to illustrate some very modern concerns in Macbeth. It analyses how Polanski used William Shakespeare's play to form a critique of contemporary society, exploiting and anticipating an emerging trend in horror of the film as social commentary.
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