[D66] Roman Polanski gets César for best director for J’Accuse, in repudiation of #MeToo

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Roman Polanski gets César for best director for J’Accuse, in repudiation 
of #MeToo
By Alex Lantier
29 February 2020

Last night, the César film awards named Roman Polanski best director for 
J’Accuse, defying the diktat of both the #MeToo movement and President 
Emmanuel Macron’s government.

J’Accuse is a powerful and compelling film on the Dreyfus Affair, the 
historic 1894-1906 struggle to clear a French Jewish officer framed on 
charges of spying for Germany. This struggle escalated into a 
confrontation between the dreyfusards, whose most consistent proponent 
was the socialist workers movement led by Jean Jaurès, and the 
antidreyfusards led by the proto-fascistic Action française of Charles 
Maurras. At the high point of the Dreyfus Affair, France teetered on the 
brink of civil war.

Though the film deals with a subject which has the universal sympathy 
and interest of left-minded workers in France, J’Accuse and Polanski 
became the target of relentless attacks from #MeToo and the state. These 
were based on unsubstantiated allegations by actress Valérie Monnier, 
which she closely coordinated with the Macron government before the 
film’s release, that Polanski raped her in 1975. #MeToo supporters in 
France made the fascistic argument that to be interested in seeing 
J’Accuse meant being complicit in rape.

The media atmosphere became so toxic that Polanski and the entire cast 
of J’Accuse decided it was too dangerous to attend the César ceremony 
and avoided the event. In a shameless attempt to impose the Macron 
government’s right-wing politics on the film community, Culture Minister 
Franck Riester personally intervened on the eve of the awards ceremony 
to demand that Polanski not be named best director.

Under these conditions, the Academy’s decision to award Polanski the 
best director prize is an unmistakable repudiation of the politics of 
#MeToo and of the Macron government.

When J’Accuse was named for 12 César awards last month, #MeToo 
supporters orchestrated a successful campaign, supported by Macron 
government ministers, to force the resignation of the French Film 
Academy’s entire governing council. After this awards ceremony, a new 
governing council is to be elected, including a mass recruitment of 
hundreds of new female members.

#MeToo and state propaganda against J’Accuse spread across the media in 
the run-up to the final vote on the César awards and the awards ceremony 
itself. Actress Adèle Haenel, a #MeToo supporter in France, declared 
that giving awards to Polanski means “to spit in the face of every 
victim... It means, ‘It is not so serious to rape women.’”

Actress Rose McGowan, a leading #MeToo figure in America, piled on to 
hysterically denounce Polanski to the magazine Paris-Match. “The 
nominations for Polanski make me want to take a César award and hit each 
person who voted for him," she declared. "We are not talking about 
cinema, but pain... Those people have no idea what goes on in the real 
world, they support the status quo, the celebration of triumphant 
masculinity.”

It was announced that mass protests by feminist groups would be held in 
front of Pleyel Hall, where the César awards ceremony were held.

Faced with relentless and uncontrolled slanders in the media targeting 
him as a despicable rapist, Polanski announced on Wednesday that he 
would not attend the César awards ceremony.
Roman Polanski

He said, “I have been asked this question: will I go or not to the César 
awards ceremony? My question is rather the following: how could I go? We 
know how this evening is to proceed. Activists are already threatening 
me with a public lynching. Some are announcing there will be protests in 
front of Pleyel Hall. Others plan to use it as a way to justify 
campaigning to reform the governance of French film. It will look more 
like a symposium than a cinema festival seeking to reward its greatest 
talents.”

Polanski added that he was acting out of a duty to “protect my family, 
my wife and my children, who are forced to endure insults and 
humiliations.” He added that it was “with regret that I am taking this 
decision, that is, to avoid being tried by a self-appointed court of 
public opinion ready to trample legal rights underfoot so that 
irrationalism can triumph again unchallenged.”

Yesterday morning, Culture Minister Franck Riester went on France Info 
to demand that Polanski not receive the prize for best director. If 
Polanski received an award, Riester claimed, it would be “a bad symbol 
for the necessary development of consciousness that we must all make in 
the struggle against sexual and sexist violence.” He added, “It is up to 
each and every voting member… to act on the basis of this responsibility.”

Riester also rejoiced that Polanski had to take the decision, which 
Riester called “wise,” to not attend the awards ceremony. Riester said, 
“After everything that has taken place for many years, for a certain 
number of women who claim Roman Polanski assaulted them, his presence 
tonight would obviously have been a source of tension.”

After Riester’s extraordinary public intervention, the entire cast and 
production staff of J’Accuse announced that it would not attend the 
Césars award ceremony. Polanski, producer Alain Goldman and actors Jean 
Dujardin, Louis Garrel and Emmanuelle Seigner, who is also Polanski’s 
wife, all were absent during last night’s awards ceremony.

Goldman told AFP: “We have seen an escalation of inappropriate and 
violent remarks and behavior. The culture minister himself, representing 
the authority of the state, has permitted himself to make a statement 
condemning in advance and without knowledge of its outcome, a 
professional, independent and secret vote.”

And during the awards ceremony, several hundred protesters from the Dare 
To Be Feminist association and allied organizations tried to forcibly 
enter Pleyel Hall, facing off with riot police. They shouted the 
fascistic slogan “Polanski is a rapist, cinemas are guilty, filmgoers 
are complicit,” brandishing signs reading “We believe Polanski’s 
victims” and “Down with Patriarchy.”

Dare To Be Feminist spokeswoman Céline Piques told AFP: “We want to 
shake up the film community because they claim to support Adèle Haenel, 
who denounces sexual assault, but at the same time and with incredible 
hypocrisy, they support Roman Polanski.”

Ultimately, however, and at the end of a ceremony largely given over to 
talk of gender politics and women in film, it was announced that 
Polanski had received the best director prize. Haenel and a dozen other 
#MeToo supporters booed and marched out of Pleyel Hall in protest.

It was a blunt repudiation of #MeToo witch-hunting and Macron’s policies 
of social austerity, war and police state repression and his 
rehabilitation of Nazi-collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain.