Polanski and the man who judged him
By Charles Lyons The New York Times
Published: October 17, 2006
LOS ANGELES
Marina Zenovich's office here looks as if it should belong to an absent-minded film professor. A cluttered room adjacent to an editing suite, it is packed with file folders containing hundreds of press clippings and the inevitable stacks of videotape. But a corkboard on the wall betrays a preoccupation that stirs more than academic passions in these parts.
The board is dominated by two photographs. One shows Roman Polanski, dapper in a suit, hair parted to one side, looking lean, boyish and handsome. The other reveals a man in a black robe, with thinning white hair and a roundish face supported by a stocky frame.
The caption under it reads, "Laurence J. Rittenband, Judge."
"These two men met their match in each other," said Zenovich in an interview last month.
Rittenband, who died in 1993, was the California judge who almost 30 years ago presided over the notorious case in which Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a minor. Even after Polanski fled to France in advance of his sentencing date, the judge vowed to stay on the bench until he returned to the United States.
Instead, Polanski, now 73 and a French citizen, remained a fugitive, and prospered as a film director, winning an Oscar in 2003 for "The Pianist." Rittenband, who left the bench in 1989, died at 88 without fulfilling his oath. But he left behind enough professional and personal drama to have joined Polanski as a central character in Zenovich's forthcoming documentary, which promises to shed new light on one of modern Hollywood's more perplexing episodes.
The new film, unfinished and untitled, is being produced by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte ("Thirteen") and Lila Yacoub ("The Anniversary Party"), and has Steven Soderbergh as an executive producer. It was recently acquired for distribution in Britain by the BBC, and when it eventually appears here, it will likely renew the debate over whether Polanski still has a price to pay if he returns to the United States.
Zenovich, a 43-year-old former actress, said it is impossible to reach conclusions about Polanski without drawing Rittenband into the equation.
"I've never set out to diminish the seriousness of what Polanski did, but it comes down to crime and punishment," she explained. "How much do you have to pay for the crime? What I've always set out to prove is, despite what Polanski did, which was awful, he was treated unfairly by the judge. That's the bottom line."
Convinced that even reasonably well-informed people do not completely understand the Polanski case, Zenovich pursued a doggedly reportorial course, undeterred by Polanski's refusal to participate. (A spokesperson for Polanski confirmed that he has no involvement with the documentary.)
She conducted on-camera interviews with nearly 100 people, including Samantha Geimer, the girl, now in her 40s, with whom Polanski had sex and who has publicly forgiven him. Other interview subjects included figures like Mia Farrow, Nastassja Kinski, Robert Evans and Robert Towne.
But considerable attention is reserved for Rittenband, who was something of a legend in his own right. Zenovich sees both Polanski and Rittenband as men who rose by force of will from humble roots. Polanski survived Nazi persecution and lost his mother in the Holocaust. The judge, from a less dire background, was a poor Brooklyn boy who, upon graduating high school at 15, bypassed undergraduate work for New York University Law School; he later attended Harvard.
Zenovich describes the judge as having lived the kind of vibrant personal life easier to associate with Polanski. "He was never married, and he loved being kind of a swinging bachelor, juggling a couple of girlfriends at once," she said. "What's most interesting about him is that he tried to come across as so moralistic, but eventually I found out that this was a man who had a 20-year-old girlfriend when he was 54."
In a rough edit of the film, Richard Brenneman, who covered the case for The Santa Monica Evening Outlook, recalls drafting an affidavit immediately after Rittenband's death, in which he documented his conversations with the judge in chambers: "Most specifically, how he asked me what sentence to impose on Polanski, which was illegal."
In another clip the producer Hawk Koch recounts that his father, the late Howard W. Koch, recalled overhearing Rittenband at the exclusive Hillcrest Country Club, where the judge was a popular member.
"One of the gentlemen at Hillcrest came up to Rittenband," Koch tells Zenovich, "and said, 'Are you really going to let that little Polish blah-blah-blah off?' And Rittenband said: 'Well, he thinks so, but no way. We're going to put that little blank-blank away for the rest of his life.'"
But Rittenband certainly has his devotees, including his nephew. "He felt an obligation and a duty to do what he felt was best, and he always stuck to it," Elliot Rittenband tells Zenovich."
A key revelation, Zenovich said, came from the case's retired prosecutor, Roger Gunson, who suggests in the film that Rittenband acted improperly before Polanski decided to skip the country in 1978.
At first, all sides had agreed that the only sentence he should serve would be a 90-day psychiatric evaluation in prison at Chino, California. But when Chino authorities, fearing for Polanski's safety, released him after 42 days, an infuriated Rittenband called in both sets of lawyers and announced a new plan. He wanted to put Polanski back in prison for another 48 days or deport him, Gunson tells Zenovich.
Gunson also says the judge told the assembled lawyers how he wanted them to argue their sides of the case. (Polanski's defense submitted an affidavit charging Rittenband with bias, prejudice and unprofessional conduct, and Rittenband ultimately agreed to allow another judge to handle the case.)
Still, Zenovich said she was determined to create a balanced film, and her preliminary edit includes views from people who appear less concerned about whether Rittenband botched the case than about Polanski's actions.
For her part, Zenovich said her feelings toward Polanski have vacillated in the course of her work.
"You love him one day," she explained. "You hate him the next. I tell some people I'm doing this and they say: 'That pedophile! That child molester!' But all my research leads me to believe he's misunderstood and endlessly fascinating."
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