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The events of Roman Polanski's intriguing life can often be detected in his films. In this piece, his film Macbeth (1971) - about the eponymous Shakespearean character (Jon Finch) who is racked by guilt after murdering the incumbent king, Duncan (Nicholas Selby), to seize the crown for himself - is examined in reference to two disturbing incidents that occurred in the director's life. The first of these is the death of his mother, and the second, which took place twenty years later, is the murder of his wife, rising actor Sharon Tate. The films that Polanski made after Tate's murder express a darker ambience, depicting the reality of fear, paranoia and violence. In addition to personal tragedy, these films reflect the changing face of a troubled America during the 1970s. Accordingly, Macbeth incorporates a variety of themes and symbols that denote the cultural and sociopolitical backdrop of the time in which the film was produced.
POLANSKI'S PAST EXPOSED THROUGH THE LENS
Polanski was born in Paris in 1933 to Polish Jewish parents. They eventually moved back to their homeland of Poland just prior to the German invasion, which was ultimately an unfortunate decision for the family. In the documentary Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir (Laurent Bouzereau, 2011), Polanski recalls the hardship of living in the Kraków Ghetto and the heartache of watching his friends thrown into trucks destined for the concentration camps. When his pregnant mother, Bula, was deported and sent directly to Auschwitz, his father took ten-year-old Roman to a secluded part of the fence enclosing the ghetto and told him to run and never turn back. From 1943 until the end of the war, Polanski was in hiding in the countryside, assuming a false identity.
After the war, Polanski returned to Kraków where he was reunited with his father, who survived the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria. It was not long after that he developed a passion for cinema, which led him to try his hand at acting, appearing in renowned auteur Andrzej Wajda's A Generation (1955). In 1959, Polanski graduated from the prestigious National Higher School of Film, Television and Theatre in Lódz, where he studied film direction. His debut feature film, Knife in the Water (1962), is now considered a...