Polanski's libel case against Vanity Fair opens

LONDON - Roman Polanski, the Oscar winning film director and unapologetic standard bearer of the 60s sexual revolution, had to confront his past yesterday in an historic libel trial in which he denies seducing a woman in a New York restaurant days after the brutal murder of his young actress wife.

Polanski, 71, who refuses to come to Britain in person because he faces extradition to America over a conviction for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, yesterday gave his evidence by video link from his home in Paris.

At issue in this case is not just Mr Polanski's reputation but also the behaviour of a whole generation during the 1960s in America.

It was at the peak of this sexual revolution, on August 8, 1969, that Mr Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate and three of their friends were stabbed to death by members of the cult known as the Manson Family.

An article published 33 years later in 2002 described how the Polish-born film director had stopped off in a New York restaurant on his way back from London to bury his wife.

The report, published in Vanity Fair, described how Mr Polanski's arrival at Elaine's, a famous New York restaurant frequented by Hollywood celebrities, had drawn gasps from the other diners.

The magazine alleged that without being invited Mr Polanski walked over to a "beautiful" Swedish woman and her companion and sat down between them. It claimed "he slid his hand inside her thigh and began a long and honey spiel which ended with the promise 'I will make another Sharon Tate of you'."

But in his video link to the High Court in London yesterday Mr Polanski described this allegation as an "abominable lie" which showed "callous indifference" to his wife's terrible murder.

The internationally renowned director whose films include Frantic, Chinatown and The Pianist, said yesterday that not only had he himself not behaved in such a way but he thought it was impossible to find a man who could. He said: "It never happened at all."

Conde Nast, publishers of Vanity Fair, has since conceded that the alleged incident did not take place just two days after the Manson family murders but sometime in August of that year at the same restaurant.

Defence counsel Tom Shields QC suggested that Mr Polanski's attitude towards sex showed that he was indeed capable of such a seduction even weeks after his wife's murder.

In his evidence Mr Polanski admitted this was a time of free love and that even within his four-year relationship with Sharon Tate he had been adulterous on a number of occasions.

John Kelsey-Fry QC, counsel for Mr Polanski who is suing the publishers in London rather than America or France, asked the jury to consider the prevailing climate of the time.

He said: "It was a time of revolution, make love not war, pot-smoking hippies and free love." But he also said that Mr Polanski's "libertine" nature was not on trial.

Nevertheless Mr Polanski confirmed that within four weeks of his wife's murder he was leading an active sex life and that he had had sex with more than one woman at a time.

In cross-examination by Mr Shields the film director also admitted engaging in a menage-a-trois involving a 15-year-old girl.

But Mr Polanski explained yesterday that in the weeks and months after his wife's murder he was in "immeasurable shock". He said that while some people might have sought solace in drugs and alcohol or even time in a monastery "for me it was sex".

The plaintive was then asked by Mr Shields to define what he meant by casual sex and he answered "casual sex is sexual relations without any emotional involvement ... in the swinging 60s, during the sexual revolution just two persons who enjoyed sex and did not need to see themselves any more."

He said he had enjoyed casual sex for many years and could not form a lasting relationship with a woman after Sharon Tate's death.

Mr Shields then pressed him as to why he had fled America after pleading guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in the 1970s.

Mr Polanski said that this was wrong and that he did not seek to condone his actions but made it clear that he left America because he had been led to believe that the judge in the case had indicated that he would receive a probation order but then changed his mind so that he would be sentenced to prison.

But Mr Shields said it was an irony that while he was a "fugitive from justice" in America he was now seeking help from the courts in Britain: "It may be grotesque, you are a fugitive from morality, from moral standards."

Mr Polanski retorted: "You are putting it in a grotesque way."

Earlier in the case Mr Polanski admitted that he may have been at Elaine's in August 1969 but the only occasion he can remember was when he was with the actress Mia Farrow.

Ms Farrow is expected to come to the High Court today to testify for Mr Polanski and show that, far from having an obsession with sex, Mr Polanski was still very distraught by what had happened to his wife.

- INDEPENDENT