Chinatown and The Pianist both exemplify Roman Polanski’s directorial style. However, they are vastly different films. An exploration of each, in comparison with one another, illustrates Polanski’s predilections as a filmmaker and possible also as an auteur. The 1974 film Chinatown bears a dark and gritty stamp that exemplifies in many ways the zeitgeist of the era. Building on the tradition of film noir and its romantic depictions of criminal underworlds, Chinatown is unique in its use of an unreliable narrator: the audience does not necessarily know the truth and is thus deprived of the treat of dramatic irony. Polanski’s 2002 film The Pianist is almost the opposite, as the audience knows fully well the realities of Jews living in Nazi Europe. Both films are dark, sociological, and to a lesser degree political, and both offer sweeping and visually poignant narratives.

One of the main themes Chinatown and The Pianist share in common is that of acceptance of the dark humor of life. Jake contends with the realities of Chinatown, of the deception, deceit, and lawlessness that characterized life in the early twentieth century. Szpilman, the titular pianist in Polanski’s 2002 film, epitomizes the psychological art of acceptance. Music symbolizes a psychic salve and also social glue that links together the oppressed. Neither Szpilman nor Jake receive anything approximating redemption, and neither has the power or potential to make a meaningful change in the broader world. Each is, like most members of the audience, a small piece of the bigger puzzle. Polanski uses the medium of film to convey the dichotomies of life in the modern and post-modern world. There is neither hope nor despair, neither miraculous revelation nor complete capitulation. Polanski uses techniques like perspective, limiting what the audience sees, hears, and senses, to involve the viewer deeply into the mindset and worldview of the protagonists and the world they know. As a result, Chinatown and The Pianist are timeless classics in the art of cinama.