Roman Polanski
Chinatown
(1974)
Robert Towne
Won 1 Oscar. Another 20 wins & 23 nominations.
JJ 'Jake' Gittes is a private detective who seems to specialize in matrimonial cases. He is hired by Evelyn Mulwray when she suspects her husband Hollis, builder of the city's water supply system, of having an affair. Gittes does what he does best and photographs him with a young girl but in the ensuing scandal, it seems he was hired by an impersonator and not the real Mrs. Mulwray. When Mr. Mulwray is found dead, Jake is plunged into a complex web of deceit involving murder, incest and municipal corruption all related to the city's water supply.
Rosemary's Baby
(1968)
Ira Levin (novel), Roman Polanski (screenplay)
Won 1 Oscar. Another 9 wins & 12 nominations.
A young couple move into an apartment, only to be surrounded by peculiar neighbors and occurrences. When the wife becomes mysteriously pregnant, paranoia over the safety of her unborn child begins to control her life.
The Ghost
(2010)
Robert Harris (screenplay), Roman Polanski (screenplay), Robert Harris (novel)
34 wins & 54 nominations.
An unremarkable ghost-writer has landed a lucrative contract to redact the memoirs of Adam Lang, the former UK Prime Minister. After dominating British politics for years, Lang has retired with his wife to the USA. He lives on an island, in luxurious, isolated premises complete with a security detail and a secretarial staff. Soon, Adam Lang gets embroiled in a major scandal with international ramifications that reveals how far he was ready to go in order to nurture UK's "special relationship" with the USA. But before this controversy has started, before even he has closed the deal with the publisher, the ghost-writer gets unmistakable signs that the turgid draft he is tasked to put into shape inexplicably constitutes highly sensitive material.
The Ninth Gate
(1999)
Arturo Pérez-Reverte, John Brownjohn, Enrique Urbizu
2 wins & 5 nominations
In New York, the money-driven dealer Dean Corso is a rare-books expert and partner of Bernie, who owns a bookstore. He is contacted by the renowned collector of books about the devil Boris Balkan, who has just acquired the rare The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows from the collector Andrew Telfer, to verify whether his book is authentic or a forgery. Balkan explains that the book was written by the writer Aristide Torchia, in 1666, with Lucifer and he was burned at the stake with his entire work. There are only three exemplars of The Nine Gates and in accordance with the legend, its nine engravings form a riddle to conjure the devil. The skeptical Corso accepts the assignment and has to fly to Sintra, Portugal, and Paris, France, to contact the owners Victor Fargas and Baroness Kessler and find the genuine exemplar for Balkan. Meanwhile, he asks Bernie to hide the rare book. Before traveling to Europe, the widow Liana Telfer wants to retrieve the book and has sex with Corso, but he does not accept her offer. When Corso returns to Bernie's bookstore, he finds his friend murdered in the same position of an engraving. Corso travels to Toledo, Spain, to meet the Ceniza twin brothers and learn more about The Nine Gates. During his journey in Europe, Corso is pursued by Liana and her bodyguard, who belong to the sect The Order of the Silver Serpents, and is protected by a mysterious Girl with supernatural powers. Meanwhile, the owners of the two other exemplars of The Nine Gates are murdered. Corso becomes obsessed with the book and discloses the truth about it.