The director Roman Polanski (Paris, 1933) portrays in his new movie, The officer and the spy, which opens in Spain on Wednesday 1 January, the Dreyfus affair, which marked the history of France in the late NINETEENTH century. The unjust conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a jewish officer, for a spy that was totally innocent, divided the society and promoted one of the foundational texts of modern journalism, I acknowledge, of Émile Zola. The echoes of that scandal coming to us, as has been demonstrated by the success of the film in France, where it premiered in November.
The film received the Silver Lion at the Venice film Festival and is in addition to one of the filmografías more solid and surprising in the film world. Polanski is the author of titles like The pianist, Tess, Chinatown, The seed of the devil or The chimeric tenant. A survivor of the Holocaust, much of his family was slaughtered in Auschwitz. In 1969, his wife Sharon Tate was murdered in a way atrocious when I was pregnant. In 1977, he raped a minor of 13 years, Samantha Geimer, a crime which he has recognized and for which you may not return to the united States. The new French film of The officer and the spy coincided with a new accusation of sexual violence and abuse, in 1975, against a young man of 18 years. The director nearly has not granted interviews since then.
This conversation took place by phone 10 days ago and the agents of Polanski set two conditions: that lasted 20 minutes and focused on the movie, without specific questions about the new allegations against him, that just a few days before in an interview with Paris Match he called “false” and “aberrant”. However, finally, yes he agreed to be asked about how all this affects your reputation and to your movie.
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Question. do you Think the Dreyfus affair is still an affair that speaks of this?
Response. Much. In the background speaks the truth and the way to establish the truth. If we leave aside the problem of anti-semitism, that is what is left, what is most important in any case.
Q. You live in France, where there is a large problem of anti-semitism. What brings you memories plus terrible of your childhood?
A. When filming the sequence of the auto de fe against Dreyfus and the scenes in which people write slogans anti-semitic in the windows of the shops, just at that moment, did the same a few streets from the place where we worked. Wrote jude in a restaurant. Also put on crosses gamadas in portraits of Simone Veil.
Q. Has returned to work with the british writer Robert Harris, who have already adapted in The writer. Did you choose the character of Picquart, the army officer investigating the case, as the protagonist because she is in the novel in which is based the film?
A. did Not happen. Took a lot of time mulling over directing a film about the Dreyfus affair, I thought that was a very good subject for a film. I think that is an important issue and that making films about important issues is always more satisfactory. After having collaborated in The writer, I suggested to Harris to work on Dreyfus. We got to write, but it didn’t work. We try to tell the story from the point of view of its protagonist, and our first efforts focused on Dreyfus. But we understood that the problem was this, because everything that was interesting during this case took place in Paris as he could on Devil’s island. What can we tell from this confinement? We encadenaban for the night, he was being released for the morning. And Robert Harris it occurred to him to adopt the point of view of Picquart. I thought it was very good idea, but I was a long time that I was not working and told him I had to make a movie to earn the bread. I said, ‘Make another movie and I write the book’. Is what we did. I shot The venus of the skins, and he published The official and the spy. Harris tends to write about historical events and conducts research to fund. This facilitated the rewriting of the script. But the book I wrote after the first draft.
Q. Georges Picquart is an anti-semite who does not defend Dreyfus because it believes that it is outrageous that an innocent person is in prison, but to defend the Army. Just become a hero, but do you think that he is a hero for the wrong reasons?
A. Is a hero, is someone that is just because your goal is to defend the truth. I like it a lot one of its replica: “I Would have preferred that he should be guilty because life would be so much easier.”
Q. And do you believe that the truth is in danger in Europe right now?
A. Without a doubt, absolutely. There is No truth, there is what we call posverdad. Only care about the emotions. The historical truth, scientific or not has no importance. We say that something is the truth because it is good for us. It is something very sad. I don’t think that the historical truth or scientific has an opportunity in our societies.
Q. What he says also by the charges against you? Have you ever wondered why almost no one believes him?
A. a long time Ago that I am a victim of lies.
Q. do you worry that they think that the film is a metaphor about his own case?
A. Is actually aberrant and stupid to say that I think Dreyfus. It is another lie, another way to insult me.
Q. do you worry that this will affect the way in which the movie is viewed and the way in which you see their movies in the future?
A. Depends on the viewer. You can’t generalise. You can’t put everyone in the same sack.
Q. Dreyfus, who is the victim is certainly not a character is nothing nice.
A. Is another reason why it was not working at first, because it was nothing nice. It was very cold. It was another of the fundamental reasons for telling this story from a point of view outside and not from your own look.
Q. There is a moment in which Picquart goes to visit his predecessor in the secret services, and this throws a discourse that does not recognize already to France because it is full of foreigners. Wouldn’t you get the feeling that we are listening to someone from the National Front?
A. Not only the documents that appear reproduced in the film are accurate: everything is authentic in this film. Most of the dialogues are, at least, based on dialogues authentic. As the case went through different processes, everything was estenografiado and you can find what was said. We reconstructed the dialogues that are true.
Q. do you Think that there is someone in Europe today that has the moral force that Émile Zola demonstrated in this story?
A. I wonder, if someone like that belongs more to the past than to today’s world. Honestly I can not answer this question, because once in a while we are surprised by the heroism of some people.
Q. Are you working on something?
A. No, I’m sorry, I’m not that kind of directors that you can think of another movie when I’m in one. It is something that has occurred to me. I absorbed so much shooting that I don’t get to concentrate on any other thing.
Q. Have you made an effort of disclosure on the approach of the film? If you read I accused at present the case is so complicated and convoluted that it is very difficult to understand.
A. we Study a lot. I have many books about Dreyfus, not all, because there are more than 500. From a century ago have not stopped to be written essays about the case. We started to work on this issue seven years ago. We simplify some things and concentrate on what is essential.
Q. do you Think your film may be seen in the united States?
A. I don’t know. You will have to ask others. We make films for people to go to see them, and the hope of any director is that crowds will come to see your work. I am not different from others.
