One was hoping that The Ninth Gate would be a welcome return to form for Roman Polanski. The film that The Ninth Gate resembles most is Angel Heart (1987) – both films feature an unbeliever on an occult detective trail on the behalf of a mysterious wealthy benefactor of diabolic connections where each contact made during the course of the investigation is found murdered. Certainly, there is the connection to Rosemary’s Baby in that both are films about Satanism, although both are also very different stories. The Ninth Gate also includes occasional elements of The Saragossa Manuscript with Polanski playing convoluted games of synchronicity as the illustrations from the book start to play out in actuality. The Ninth Gate does come close to Eyes Wide Shut‘s image of the robed society in actuality being a bored social elite dressing up with Polanski briefly making contrast between sinister robed societies and a real Satanism, accusing them of only being play Satanists. However, with Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick was really deconstructing a whole lineage of secret conspiracy society films rather than being one in itself. Like Eyes Wide Shut, The Ninth Gate features conspiracy societies that conduct occult ceremonies in scarlet and black hooded robes.
The Eyes Wide Shut analogy seems a contemporary comparison more than anything else. Polanski called the film his “ Rosemary’s Baby meets Eyes Wide Shut (1999)”, and also alluded to his admiration for The Saragossa Manuscript (1965). The Ninth Gate was Polanski’s long awaited return to genre material. Johnny Depp as rare book dealer Dean Corso There was the standout of Death and the Maiden (1995) and the later return to form with The Pianist (2002) and Carnage (2012), but the majority of Polanski’s work has been generally forgettable efforts such as Pirates (1986), Frantic (1988), Bitter Moon (1992) and The Ghost Writer (2010). Polanski’s career since 1980 has languished in a backwater, lacking the brilliance of his earlier work. It is almost impossible to discuss Roman Polanski without ever referring to his controversies and the shadow his personal life casts – the tragic murder of wife Sharon Tate by the Manson Family in 1967 and his enforced flight from the US in 1980 to avoid charges of having sex with a thirteen year-old girl.
His contribution to genre material has not been inconsiderable, having included masterworks like the madness point-of-view film Repulsion (1965) and the highly influential Satanic impregnation film Rosemary’s Baby (1968), as well as the lesser known but highly absorbing identity-exchange horror film The Tenant (1976), and one non-starter, his heavy-handed venture into knockabout comedy with The Fearless Vampire Killers/Dance of the Vampires (1967). Roman Polanski is one of the great directors.
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