Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski is wrapping up his adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and the filmmaker known for grim and challenging fare says this is his most interesting movie yet.
Speaking on the film set in a muddy field on the edge of Prague’s Barrandov studio on Monday, Polanski insisted the classic 19th century tale about a London orphan was still relevant to children today.
It is here that the narrow cobbled streets of 1850s London have been painstakingly recreated — 75 buildings in all from the redbrick shops and factories with smoking chimneys to the docklands area complete with a canal.
”In all my experiences it was one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting, films to do,” the director of films such as Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, Tess and most recently, The Pianist, told journalists.
Polanski, who grew up in wartime Poland after moving from Paris with his Polish parents at the age of three, said that after completing the 2002 World War II drama The Pianist, set in the Warsaw ghetto, he turned his attention to children’s books in search of suitable film material.
”I wanted to make a children’s film and had always loved the story of Oliver Twist. The last version, a musical which I love, was made in 1968, which is more than a generation ago and that’s why I decided to film a new version,” he said.
”When you go into bookshops and try to buy Oliver Twist you see just how difficult it is to get. That proves that certain stories are universal and will sell as well now as they did 150 years ago,” he added.
”This is a Dickensian tale in the truest sense, which means it is exuberant, intriguing and timeless,” he said.
But it was his wife, French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, who came up with the idea of remaking Oliver Twist.
Polanski, due to finish shooting the film with Ben Kingsley in a leading role this week, said he had strived to be as faithful to the plot as possible.
”The hardest thing was condensing the book into a film -‒ it would have been impossible to film the whole book so we focused on the main plot and eliminated the sub plots. But we kept the essential story untouched,” he said.
In that sense the director said he had been lucky to work with Pianist screenwriter Ronald Harwood again.
Although the film-maker declined to reveal the cost of the film, a French, English and Czech co-production, its budget is understood to have been around 45-million euros ($58-million).
Polanski said that he had decided to make European movies without the backing of large studios several years ago, the first of which had been The Pianist starring Adrien Brody which scooped three Oscars in 2003.
”That makes the work a bit harder as you don’t have the financial largesse of the studio behind you but you don’t have the night-time calls from studio executives either,” he said.
Although he celebrated his 71st birthday on the day that the largest scene, featuring 800 extras, was filmed in August, Polanski insisted he had no plans to give up his film career yet.
”I don’t plan to die yet and as long as I can operate I will certainly continue working,” he said, without revealing any details of future projects.
Polanski said he had considered filming in Romania but opted for the Czech Republic, largely because of Prague’s Barrandov Studio and the high quality of film crews available.
”Romania is much cheaper than the Czech Republic but it and other countries like Bulgaria cannot offer what the Czech Republic can,” he said.
Oliver Twist is due to be released in the latter half of 2005. ‒ Sapa-AFP