Roman polanski

How should we assess the reputation of a late-career movie director? In the case of Roman Polanski, who turns ninety on August 18, we can clearly tick the box denoting a solid body of work. He’s responsible for half a dozen enduring films, and one — 2002’s The Pianist — that rightly won him an Academy Award. Readers may have their own candidate, but for me Polanski’s first full-length feature, 1962’s Knife in the Water, remains at the top of the list. It’s a beautifully crafted, if at times noticeably low-budget, thriller that offers the classic Polanskian brew of claustrophobia, latent menace, voyeurism, class antagonisms and sexual tension, in this case set aboard a small yacht.

Even if you ignore the endless controversies associated with him, it is undeniably true that Woody Allen has lost his touch. With the partial exceptions of Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine, the director has not made a good film since the early '90s. The last few pictures he's made — Rifkin’s Festival, A Rainy Day In New York, and the like — have been seen by so few people that they seem more like self-indulgent home movies than commercial works. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that, announcing his fiftieth film, the Paris-set crime thriller Wasp 22, Allen, at the age of 86, also allegedly said that he expects it will be his last picture. He told the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, "My idea, in principle, is not to make more movies and focus on writing.