inri222

Love him or hate him the guy is a filmmaking genius. So many good ones.

Hokeyboy

Chinatown...but Knife In The Water, Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby are all favorites.

JohnnyMovie

Roman Polanski is not one of my favorite director and I never seen all of his film except I saw in Rosemary's Baby and I'll guess that why I vote for that film I saw and it very good film and I don't have Criterion version yet (I own Paramount DVD) and definitely to get it someday.

so I will checking all of his film!

PopcornTreeCt

He's a great director. As for best I went with Chinatown followed by The Pianist.

Neil M.

I reluctantly choose Chinatown. I could feel different tomorrow.

OldBoy

Chinatown was thoroughly surprising and enjoyable.

JumpCutz

Top five favorite filmmaker for me. Love, LOVE... Cul-De-Sac, Repulsion, Knife in the Water, The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Tenant and Chinatown.

Rosemary's Baby is my choice... it's absolute perfection.

Great thread inri222.

dekker

Chinatown by a country mile followed by Rosemary's Baby and then the Pianist.

van der graaf

Because no one else will vote for it, and because it is a quirky favorite of mine, I choose Ninth Gate.

Crocker Jarmen

Looking at that list is really a reminder of just how many terrific movies he's made, and how different they are.

I would pick Rosemary's Baby. A couple of years ago I read the book, and was amazed to see that the dream sequence is taken directly from the book! It is a long descriptive passage, mixing images and tenses, and it seems to be purely literary and not somthing you would film. Yet amazingly, Polanski figured out how to film this very piece and make it work in the same crazy way it does in the novel.

gp1086

Only one I've seen is Rosemary's Baby...

Charlie Goose

Only seen about half a dozen, but I'll go with Chinatown.

JumpCutz

I'm currently on a Polanski bender. His films are positively hypnotic, an incredibly talented director with a staggeringly diverse filmography.

PhantomStranger

There is a hypnotic attraction in The Ninth Gate after watching it a couple of times. Chinatown is the clear choice here, it has a legitimate argument as being one of the five best films ever made.

Mondo Kane

Macbeth......Although that might be due to being a pure sentimental favorite since I first saw it in high school.

Cul-de-sac was a big surprise (One of my favorite discoveries from a past Criterion-challenge) and Bitter Moon contains, perhaps, the greatest singular sequence I've seen from Polanski's filmography. It's the *Brief, but hilarious* martial-arts beatdown. I sure wish I could GIF that scene.

Shannon Nutt

Chinatown is the best...but I've always been partial to Frantic, which is one of my all-time favorite Harrison Ford movies.

The mention of Rosemary's Baby makes me wonder...if Polanski and Woody Allen teamed up on a film, would Mia Farrow spontaneously combust?

creekdipper

Chinatown hands down. Some other really good/interesting films but also some clunkers & flawed films. For instance, Tess was a beautiful film to look at but a bit sterile. And Ghost Writer was an incredible bore. So far as being entertained, I'd put someone like John Milius above Polanski.

Academy members & friends probably revere his home films, though.

Why So Blu?

Haven't seen every film he's directed but I would rank them like this so far from what I have seen:

Chinatown
Rosemary's Baby
Repulsion
The Pianist
The Ninth Gate
The Ghost Writer

Supermallet

Chinatown is one of the greatest films ever made by anyone, period.

Double_Oh_7

Nothing comes even close to Chinatown.

Spiderbite

Huh, I had no idea he directed Oliver Twist.

I look at that list above and see a whole bunch of boring. Never was a fan of his movies, child rapist or not.

Damfino

I love his 60s movies, but I still voted for Chinatown.

Daytripper

This x 100.

Also, no love for "Tess" yet? Beautiful film. I also loved Polanski's "Oliver Twist". Aside from his other more popular greats. "Rosemary's Baby", "The Pianist" and "Ghost Writer".

Finisher

I'll go with The Tenant since nobody has mentioned it. All his films are well crafted and most have a darkly mysterious side to them. Would say Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Tenant are all masterpiece level.

Tess was well shot, but I was expecting more.

Decker

Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.