At 76 years old, Roman Polanski is the personification of tragic literary narrative. No Polanski biography is complete without the story arc of Holocaust survivor/Hollywood playboy/heartbroken victim of evil/visionary director/child molester/fugitive. But the storyteller's many-chaptered life turned another page Sunday when Switzerland exercised a 31-year-old-arrest warrant from the Los Angeles county district attorney's office in the far away State of California.

The director of "Chinatown" pled guilty in 1977 to having sex with a minor, but a recent documentary argues that he became a fugitive because the judge was vindictive. Polanski had served 42 particularly unpleasant days in jail awaiting his trial and hoped his guilty plea would spare him a return to prison. Believing the judge would sentence him -- the man who directed "Rosemary's Baby" -- to months or years behind bars, Polanski skipped the country, became a French citizen, later made "The Pianist," won a second Academy Award and stayed out of jurisdictions with U.S. extradition reciprocity.

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Although the former 13-year-old girl he drugged and raped has sort of forgiven him, Lady Justice, apparently, has not. I am a fan of Polanski's art, but as a document nerd, I couldn't help reading the grand jury testimony of the child whose bad luck it was to be chosen by the auteur to model for French Vogue one evening, using Jack Nicholson's Mulholland Canyon home as a set. Polanski, then 44, gave her quaaludes and alcohol, told her to pose topless and then used her as a sex doll for the following several hours. You can read her unsealed grand jury testimony at the SmokingGun.com.

Polanski was in Zurich to accept a lifetime achievement honor at an international film festival when he was detained. The festival went ahead with the retrospective of his movies. Meantime, Polanski may finally return to Los Angeles, where another of his life's epic plot twists will play out.


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