Whether Roman Polanski was wise in bringing his action against Vanity Fair for what the magazine came to admit was a dubiously founded story about his conduct on the way to his first wife's funeral is a moot point. Going to America, Polanski's view of the world as cruel, absurd and randomly violent found expression in the first of the two pictures he made there, "Rosemary's Baby," where a wife is handed over to Satanists by her treacherous husband, and "Chinatown," possibly his masterpiece. Philip French gives is take on Polanski's career in The Guardian.