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The cultural disapproval of Polanski, then, has been deemed, at least in the U.S., a stronger force for any market in Polanski movies. He’s not a stupid man; he knows what time it is in some respects. His last three films, including the new one, have all been international co-productions in the French language. (One of them was an adaptation of an English-language play, David Ives’ “Venus In Furs.”) One doubts he’ll ever make another movie in English.

As for this one, at the press conference opening the Biennale, festival director Albert Barbera said, more or less, that Polanski was a bad guy who’d made a good film (surely a first), while jury head Lucrecia Martel said the film has a right to be there, but she wasn’t gonna congratulate the director on it or anything. Kind of made me feel bad about having voluntarily shared an elevator with Polanski in 2007. (Don’t worry, it was in Europe, he wasn’t sneaking into New York or anything.)

So yes, then, to have been the first in line to see “J’Accuse” this morning might have looked…unseemly. But I can explain. This is my fifth year at the fantastic Biennale. At the invitation of the estimable Peter Cowie, I’ve been participating in a panel assessing the Biennale College films. I’ll be writing about the program and this year’s films early next week. Since I’ve been coming, I and my fellow panelists have been put up in a hotel near the Venice Lido main drag. Which in the last year has been transformed, apparently, into a Super Deluxe lodging that can no longer accommodate a Motley Crew of film critics.

So we have been relocated at a hotel a little more off the beaten path, one in the oldest neighborhood of the Lido. Quiet enough to write “Death In Venice” in, even though it’s several clicks directly south of the Hotel Des Bains. There’s a shuttle from here to the Palazzo of Cinema, but it only gets off at 8:30, just as the First Hot Screening of the day is beginning.

That being the case, today, my first full day at the festival, I decided to get an early start and get the lay of the land. I did not walk fifty minutes; rather, I tried the municipal bus, which got me to the festival grounds in fifteen minutes. Plenty of time to get a croissant, espresso, and get to the line.

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