Pianist Producer Gene Gutowski Dies Aged 90
Gene Gutowski, who said he had always denied being Jewish, described the Oscar-winning film as his "personal catharsis".
Wednesday 11 May 2016 12:52, UK
The producer of the Oscar-winning Holocaust drama The Pianist has died.
Gene Gutowski, a Polish-American Holocaust survivor, died of pneumonia in hospital in Warsaw at the age of 90.
He was perhaps best known as a colleague and friend of film director Roman Polanski, who credited him with launching his international career and describing him as "one of the most important figures in my existence".
Gutowski was born Witold Bardach in 1925 into a cultured and middle-class non-practising Jewish family from eastern Poland (now Ukraine).
But his happy, comfortable early life was shattered by World War Two and the loss of his family in the Holocaust.
At the end of the war, he worked for US military intelligence in Germany helping them in their effort to track down Nazis.
He emigrated to the US in 1947 where he worked first as a fashion illustrator in New York and then moved on to film production.
He lived the life of a jet-setting playboy for many years, travelling between Hollywood, Europe and the Virgin Islands and gathering five wives and many lovers along the way.
His business dealings included consultant work for Saudi arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi but his heart remained in film.
The link with Polanski came in 1963 when he persuaded his non-English speaking compatriot to move to London and make a film in English to test the limit of the censors.
After three initial films - Repulsion starring French actress Catherine Deneuve, Cul-de-Sac (1966) and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), the pair parted company professionally but remained friends.
They reunited in 2002 for The Pianist, a film that mirrored the wartime experiences of both men.
Gutowski said he and Polanski had never discussed their personal war experiences and he added that he had himself always denied being Jewish.
In his memoir, he wrote: "It's not something I'm particularly proud of.
"Through denying it I have obviously tried to block off the past, the deep pain of losing my entire family and the subconscious guilt of being the sole survivor."
Making The Pianist was "a personal catharsis", he said.
"Watching crowds of terrified helpless people being pushed into a train to the gas chambers recalled the last journey of my entire family in the summer of 1942," he said.
"And thus The Pianist, a film crowned with three important Oscars, was also in many ways the crowning moment of my life."