Jean Genet, one of France’s greatest 20th-century literary talents, spent his childhood thieving. Half his adolescence was spent in a young offenders’ institution. He was dishonourably discharged from the army on a charge of indecency; roamed Europe as a vagrant, thief and homosexual prostitute; then spent years in and out of jail following a dozen arrests for larceny, the use of false papers and lewd behaviour.
Yet in 1943 dramatist Jean Cocteau stood up at one of Genet’s many trials and declared the barely published author — threatened with a life sentence as a repeat offender — “the greatest writer of the modern era”. Genet stole, Cocteau said, “to nourish his soul and his body”.
Six years later, after a petition launched by Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre and Pablo Picasso, then-French president Vincent Auriol granted Genet a full and irrevocable pardon; he would never again be sent to prison.
The parallels with cineaste Roman Polanski, who skipped bail in 1977 in the United States while charged with unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, rape by use of drugs, oral copulation and sodomy, may help explain the reaction of many Frenchmen to his arrest last weekend in Switzerland, on an outstanding 2005 international arrest warrant.
French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said he is “dumbfounded” by Polanski’s “absolutely dreadful” detention, declaring that it made “no sense” for him to be “thrown to the lions for an ancient story, imprisoned while travelling to an event that was intending to honour him: caught, in short, in a trap”.
Polanski, Mitterrand said, has “had a difficult life” but has “always said how much he loves France, and he is a wonderful man”.
There is, he said, “a generous America that we love and a certain America that frightens us. It’s that America that has just shown its face.”
A large group of French actors and cinematographers have signed an angry petition organised by Thierry Fremaux, director of the Cannes Film Festival, calling for Polanski’s “immediate liberation”.
France, acknowledges veteran French critic Edouard Waintrop, has a tradition dating back to the 19th century of treating artists differently. “There’s … a certain leeway that’s always allowed the creative artist. In the 19th century it was elevated into an ideology. We have a rather different vision of artistic licence — and, come to that, of licence in love.”
Film critic Agnes Poirier agrees that “we’re prepared to forgive artists a lot more than we’re prepared to forgive ordinary mortals. In France creative genius can usually get away with a great deal.”
In a country that has had many child sex scandals, the view is not universal. Commentators on many French media websites appeared divided between those who felt Polanski was being hounded unjustly for an unfortunate and long-forgotten mistake and those outraged by the assumption that the filmmaker merited special treatment.
Said one on Le Monde’s website, with heavy irony: “You have to understand them, these poor stars. What’s the point of being a celebrity if you can’t have the women you want, whether they’re above the age of consent or not, whether they’re willing or not; if you can’t flee abroad and prosper there while our country’s justice system looks after you, circulate freely wherever you want to go to be awarded medals and charms at international festivals, and then mobilise opinion in your favour when things start to get tricky?” (Polanski’s French citizenship protects him from extradition.)
“PatrickO” wonders: “What would have happened if Muhammad, a factory worker from a working-class, immigrant-heavy suburb, had been accused of the same crime?”
Waintrop believes that on paedophilia, child abuse and sex with minors, “the reaction of the average French person will be pretty much the same as the reaction of the average American, everyone finds that appalling”.
But many more would be moved to object to Polanski’s arrest simply because “it was done … at a festival that was out to honour him … [It is] bizarre that Switzerland, a country where he has a house and spends time each year, should suddenly decide to be the only European country that’s prepared to take this step, while so many others have allowed Polanski to travel freely.”
France’s famed anti-Americanism has little to do with the official French reaction, insists Fremaux. Foreign artists — including Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar and Michael Mann — signed the petition, indicating international disapproval.
What has inspired many French people’s objections, said Poirier, is a feeling in France that the US is acting essentially out of revenge against a man “who never abided by America’s rules — even when he was the most celebrated director in Hollywood”.
A documentary by the investigative filmmaker, Marina Zenovich, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, widely seen in France last year, argues convincingly that Polanski never denied the charges against him and that they were dismissed under a plea bargain. If he pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor and agreed to be confined for psychiatric examination — which he was for 42 days — the US authorities’ requirements would be satisfied.
Judge Laurence Rittenband, however, was apparently set to tear up the deal, possibly because he feared public reaction to a lenient verdict. The lawyer of Polanski’s victim, Samantha Geimer, strongly implied to Zenovich that anyone would have fled in the circumstances.
“It’s obviously not a straightforward case,” said Fremaux. “To look again at this now you’d almost need to put the 1970s on trial. Roman has always been extremely reticent about the episode. He never talks about it. But it’s clear that the judge told him to plead guilty and do some time and then he’d be OK. That’s just one reason why this seems wrong.” —