Free Polanski

We can trust the Americans, fans of “Law and Order” and “Judge Judy,” to understand the mysteries of judicial procedures, even those in Switzerland. The press is now explaining that the decision to release Polanski is creating an inability to understand whether or not the director had served his entire sentence in California when, suddenly learning that he risked a new (perhaps unjust) sentence, he decided to escape. Americans can understand all of these quibbles, all the more so since they themselves let one O.J. Simpson go, ostensibly guilty, after an incredible juggling act by his lawyers.

In addition, contrary to what was said by Polanski’s entourage, the climate in California did not lend itself to a lynching of the director. Yes, there were some radio talk shows that were rather acerbic against him when I was passing through Los Angeles some time after his arrest in Zurich, but nothing that would foreshadow carnage or a truly biased opinion. A blog from the Philadelphia Enquirer was even offended by the prevailing indulgence.

For some time now, Polanski has not been a monument in the United States, and his story is doubtless a drama for the cinema. He is a vaguely known person who does not really raise controversy. Nor will the repeated appeals of his victim from the time the proceedings were abandoned be forgotten. As for his “enemies” — the Los Angeles district attorney, Steve Cooley, and the judge referred to the case, Peter Espinoza — they don’t reflect the Hollywood cliché of Ayatolla justices thirsty for his blood. Human rights defense organizations and lawyers give them a rather glowing review. They would have kept a cool head, and I remain persuaded that Polanski would have left the hearing a free man, with a suspended sentence or one for the time he already served in prison.

What shocks people here, for a long time — less in the press than in conversations with the man on the street — is very simple: after his flight, Polanski never really faced American opinion to confront history. His rare comments on this corruption of a minor, in fact classic, did not reveal any sign of embarrassment, any scruple: “Everybody wants to fuck young women,” he said, once he landed in Paris.

From now on, certain comments of his allies — who in a documentary on the affair (I am paraphrasing from memory) considered that “this young woman did not really lose her honor,” as she was not a virgin at the time — constitute morally incomprehensible nonsense.

Even if she was an insatiable nymphomaniac — which she was not — she was only 13 years old. And in law-based countries, even the enthusiastic consent of a minor of this age is null and the adult’s responsibility, completely. That is the essence of the notion of corruption of a minor.

That said, we find here voices who salute Polanski’s liberation, and recognize the extraordinary judicial chaos that surrounded the trial at the time. However, these same editorialists cannot admit that the director’s entourage based his defense on his unique film talent. The little phrase of Bernard Kouchner (“Roman Polanski will be able to devote himself to his artistic projects”) was published without commentary by the New York Times. “They thought of his films; they should have thought of their own daughters,” writes Richard Cohen in the Washington Post, even as he salutes the Swiss decision.