There is scarcely a more depressing case in movies than that of Roman Polanski. A filmmaker of considerable talent and not just bad but downright repellent taste, he could well have become a major artist had he remained in his native Poland. Polanski, a naughty little fellow with bizarre preoccupations, desperately needs Big Brother to watch over him. Polish censorship provided him with just such a restraining superego, and never did curtailing of an artist's freedom yield more salutary results. His single Polish feature, Knife in the Water (1962), and the best of his Polish shorts, Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958), are original and pungent achievements, quite possibly major works. In these films, his taste for the perverse in life and (as he sees it) nature is confined within the boundaries of suggestion, saving him from his bent for grossness.

These early films contained also a certain amount of...