Directed By… Roman Polanski (1992 – 1999) – Imprint Films Limited Edition

To say Hollywood has a history of problematic figures is a bit of an understatement. But then that's true of just about any industry. Hollywood just happens to put itself out front on camera for billions of people to see. Of the most controversial figures this side of Woody Allen and Harvey Weinstein would have to be the Polish-born holocaust survivor husband of Manson Family murder victim Roman Polanski. He also happens to have a history of well-documented accusations as a sex offender beyond his infamous 1973 incident with a thirteen-year-old girl. Despite what he may be as a human being, he’s one hell of a filmmaker with a long catalog of incredible films. For Directed By... Roman Polanski, Imprint gathers three titles from his less glamorous (but still productive) 1990s period.

Bitter Moon (1992)
Married man Nigel (Hugh Grant) and his wife Fiona (Kristen Scott Thomas) are trying to reignite their passions while on a cruise. There they meet a mysterious man in a wheelchair Oscar (Peter Coyote) and his beautiful alluring wife Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner). With a story to tell, the man in the wheelchair discloses in detail their passionate relationship, their increasingly twisted sex life, and how he ended up in the chair. Tonally, this one is all over the map, part femme fatale neo-noir thriller, part dark comedy, Coyote anchors the madness with a deliriously entertaining performance. 3.5/5

Death and the Maiden (1994)
On a dark stormy night in the rural range of a nondescript South American country (it’s obviously Chile if you know your history), Paulina (Sigourney Weaver) waits for her lawyer husband Gerardo (Stuart Wilson) to return home. As the country grapples with its history of death squads and torture, he’s been tasked by the president to handle the proceedings. On that night, Dr. Miranda (Ben Kingsley) lends a helping hand bringing Gerardo home after his car broke down. Just from the man’s voice and piggish laugh, Paulina knows the good Doctor’s dark truth as the man who abused and tortured her years earlier, and she’ll do anything to get a confession. Say what you will about Polanski’s later period films, the man knew how to direct a thrilling pot-boiler. I was blown away by it the first time I saw it and it still holds for as one of his best with an Oscar-worthy performance from Weaver. 5/5

The Ninth Gate (1999)
If there is an impossibly rare book to be found, Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is the man to turn to. Hired by the mysterious Boris Balkin (Frank Langella), Corso is tasked with finding rare editions of a satanic tome called The Ninth Gate of the Kingdom of Shadows, and verifying their authenticity. As he digs deeper into the book's history, he discovers a trail of tragic deaths and murders following those who possess the book. From the man who brought the world Rosemary’s Baby, this one feels light by comparison. But then this wasn't supposed to be another Rosemary's Baby. It's closer to a neo-noir with Depp playing Book Detective than a film filled with scares or shocking imagery. The extended version works quite a bit better, but for a horror film, it runs on mood and atmosphere rather than genuine scares. I didn’t love it at first but it’s grown on me over the last 20 years. 4/5

And to the credit of Imprint, this set also includes the 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired by Marina Zenovich. Co-produced by HBO and the BBC among others, ironically it was also a Weinstein Company release. Now it’s no secret the Weinsteins dug up a lot of the Polanski dirt as part of their failed campaign to keep The Pianist out of the Oscars race in 2003, this documentary is also impressively balanced. Without Polanski as a willing participant, his side of the story is largely told through archival interviews and police statements. The film also gives ample time to his friends and lawyers to defend him with time for his victim, the district attorney, and the arresting officer to condemn him. By the end of the film, we have an interesting profile of an incredible filmmaker who was a childhood victim of the Holocaust, a man who endured the horrible death of his pregnant wife, a man who was the target of a horribly managed trial by an overzealous judge - who undeniably also committed the horrible act of sexually abusing a child. Polanski is all of those things, master filmmaker, victim, and monster. How one weighs the value of the art against the artist is a personal test for all of us, one I grapple with whenever I decide to watch a film with the credit "Directed By Roman Polanski."

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray 
Directed By Roman Polanski arrives on Blu-ray from Australia’s Imprint Films. A three-film (technically four films if you count the documentary not as a bonus feature), all five discs in this set are Region Free. Keeping with Imprint’s boxset style, each film gets its own clear case, the set includes a 60-page booklet and housed in a hard-stock box. Each disc loads to a static-image main menu with standard navigation options.

The good news/bad news of this set is all of the transfers present for each film are dated. They don’t look like very recent remasters, nothing that would be indicative of a new 4K scan. That said, they’re all watchable, but some are better than others. 

Bitter Moon
This film was previously available from KLSC here Stateside, but I never picked it up because of its audio issues (more on that in a second). This does look to enjoy a fairly strong 1080p transfer with clean details and a nice veneer of cinematic film grain. There are some sequences of very heavy grain when Peter Coyote is about to go into surgery as a key example because the amount of speckling and damage is very out of the ordinary from the rest of the transfer. Otherwise, it's a fairly healthy-looking image that no doubt would benefit from a new scan and some restoration TLC. 3.5/5

Death and the Maiden
Another titile that was released here in the States last August by Shout Factory, I didn’t pick it up because I thought it was a little overpriced for the package and then I never imported the German disc. Not sure if this is the same master as those discs or not, but it’s pretty good. Not perfect, there’s quite a bit of speckling throughout and a little bit of flicker here and there, but thankfully nothing too distracting. Details are relatively sharp, sometimes a little crunchy making me wonder if this isn’t an archival HD master with a little lingering edge enhancement. Generally a good-looking transfer, but I’d love to see what a fresh new scan and restoration could look like considering how much of the film takes place in low lighting. 3.5/5

The Ninth Gate
This is a film I’ve seen many times, but never owned because I was always content renting it or checking it out from the library. It’s never really had a good life on home video and with the transfer used here, it remains a title that needs refreshing. This isn’t an unwatchable presentation, it has its moments, but it still looks like a relic HD master leftover from the DVD era. Details don’t fully pop, film grain is never really resolved well, contrast can look a little blown out, and black levels and shadows have their own problem spots. 2.5/5

On the audio side, Imprint sticks with their tried and true of giving each film a clean and effective LPCM 2.0 track. The Nith Gate also offers a DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix but it’s so front-heavy it barely distinguishes itself from the LPCM 2.0 option. Uniformly each film sounds great and works their respective soundscapes nicely. I love how tight and terrifying claustrophobic Death and the Maiden sounds with this track. Like I said, The Ninth Gate has a 5.1 mix, but I just wasn’t wowed by it. The imaging across the front/center channels is effective and there’s some great sub rumble thanks to the beautiful Woljeck score, but there’s relatively little surround spread. The 2.0 LPCM mix manages the workload just as effectively. 

Now the reason I saved Bitter Moon for last is because when this title hit Blu-ray back in 2019, the audio had some serious pitch issues. From what I remember, it was likely some kind of an encoding issue that wasn’t corrected from the StudioCanal master. My understanding is there is a German disc that didn’t have that problem, and it looks like Imprint was able to go that route here. The LPCM 2.0 track sounds just fine, the voices have the right timber to them, and the various music cues sound correct, like with a key scene featuring George Michael’s Faith sounded spot on, even though I was admittedly paying far more attention to the visuals at that particular moment. 

Bitter Moon - 4/5
Death and the Maiden - 4/5
The Ninth Gate - 3.5/5

Now we come to the key reason for considering this set from Imprint. While the A/V presentations for these films might be a bit here or there, depending on the title, the bonus content package is a phenomenal assortment of new and archival materials. All three films combined on top of the documentary, you’ve got hours of extras ahead of you. Each film gets a nice set, at least a new commentary and interview, but The Ninth Gate is the motherload. In addition to the archival extras, we get an excellent and very entertaining new commentary with Troy Howarth and Nathanial Thompson and a new commentary from Doctor David Huckvale that’s worth the time as well. Then there is a new video essays, new interviews with Emmanuelle Seigner and James Russo among others. Again, hours of excellent new content to devour. 

Bitter Moon 

• Audio Commentary featuring Paul Anthony Nelson and Emma Westwood
• Sailing with a Siren - Interview with Emmanuelle Seigner (HD 12:57)
• Theatrical Trailer

Death and the Maiden

• Audio Commentary featuring Josh Nelson
• Justice or Revenge - Interview with Death and the Maiden writer Ariel Dorfman (HD 39:38)
• Behind the Scenes Footage (SD 1:37:51)
• Trailer 

The Ninth Gate Disc One

• Audio Commentary featuring Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson
• Audio Commentary featuring Dr. David Huckvale
• Audio Commentary featuring Roman Polanski
• The Devil is a Woman - Female Representations of Satan in Cinema Video Essay by Sally Christie (HD 20:18)
• Theatrical Trailer
• Teaser Trailer 

The Ninth Gate Disc Two:

• Dancing with the Devil - Interview with Emmanuelle Seigner (HD 12:12)
• A Page-Turning Perfectionism - Interview with James Russo (HD 10:09)
• Encyclopedia Satanica - Interview with Gary Lachman, Mitch Horowitz, and Brandon Hodge (HD 40:21)
• Occult Classics (HD 21:02)
• Lucifer’s Version (HD 21:56)
• Inside Roman Polanski Featurette (SD 7:14)
• Promotional Interviews (SD 10:26)
• Archival Making-Of Featurette (SD 2:02)
• Satanic Drawings Gallery

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired 

• Audio Commentary featuring Marina Zenovich and Joe Bini
• Deleted Scenes:
• The Polanski Box #A334139 (HD 1:24)
• Richard Brenneman at the Santa Monica Courthouse (HD 00:28)
• Roger Gunson Visiting the Old Courtroom (HD 00:48)
• Roger Gunson Reminiscing (HD 00:29)
• Academie des Beaux-Arts Alternate Version (HD 1:36)
• Bonus Interviews:
• Roger Doyle (HD 1:59)
• Sandi Gibbons (HD 1:52)
• Robert Philbosian (HD 1:49)
• Gil Garcetti (HD 2:35)
• Stuart Rosen (HD 2:22)
• Michael M. Crain (HD 2:00)
• Arthur Barens (HD 2:30)
• Don wager (HD 1:45)
• Jon Ewing (HD 5:05)
• Peter Keane (HD 2:48)
• George Kiejman (HD 3:10)
• Steven Futterman (HD 2:22)
• Friends and Colleagues Talk about Polanski Interviews:
• Ryszard Horowitz (HD 2:58)
• Kris Malkiewicz (HD 2:08)
• Stefan Wenta (HD 2:09)
• Gene Gutowski (HD 5:06)
• Pierre-Andre Boutang (HD 4:58)
• Victor Lownes (HD 2:44)
• Mike Sarne (HD 3:46)
• Anthea Sylbert (HD 2:16)
• Mia Farrow (HD 4:00)
• Hercules Bellville (HD 3:24)
• Hawk Koch (HD 5:01)
• Nastassja Kinski (HD 4:09)
• Robert Evans (HD 3:27)
• Sandy Whitelaw (HD 2:47)
• Ronald Harwood (HD 5:22)
• Timothy Burrill (HD 2:00)
• Lorenzo Semple Jr. (HD 2:31)
• Fred Sidewater (HD 1:56)
• Andrew Braunsberg (HD 2:35)
• Jeff Berg (HD 3:27)
• Robert Towne (HD 1:43)
• Writers on Polanski:
• F.X. Feeney (HD 3:01)
• David Thompson (HD 4:27)
• Joan Dupont (HD 1:21)
• Will He Ever Come Back? Interview Featurette (HD 7:45)

Roman Polanski is a name that elicits an interesting range of emotional responses. As a filmmaker, he made some of the greatest features ever filmed. A brilliant storyteller, his career is also one steeped in personal controversies that some may struggle to compartmentalize. As a fan of many of his works, I struggle knowing that every time I sit down to one of his films there’s a phantom asterisk attached to his name. What I appreciate about Imprint’s Directed By... Roman Polanski box set isn’t that it grabs three of his better later-career films, but that it also doesn’t shy away from the controversy by including the excellent documentary Wanted and Desired. Bitter Moon, Death and the Maiden, and The Ninth Gate are certainly an eclectic trio of films to pull from the man’s 1990s output. Of the three, Death and the Maiden is by far the best of them in my book, but Bitter Moon and The Ninth Gate are often overlooked examples of the man’s natural ability to work in a variety of genres I can not defend him as a man, but I can appreciate the films, great performances, and craftsmanship. While the A/V presentation varies from one film to the next, this set offers an incredible bounty of bonus features. On top of archival extras, there are hours of insightful new commentaries and interviews to sort through. Recommended
Click to order: