You're opening a pandora's box!
Hmmmmm.
Birth of a Nation. I always sidestep the racism wholly apparent in the film because it was "the times". If we had cinema back when they burned witches at the stake we would be faced with the same question- should we support such images? Personally I cherish my right to see these films. A bigger issue would be the censoring of these historic movies. But then a studio would chop away at that by giving us The Passion of Joan of Arc, so all would not be lost. (There's always some Oliver Stone ready to hack at the status quo)
Triumph of the Will is a little more difficult to "explain away". Leni was Hitler's favorite filmmaker, and considering the climate in her country, you could hardly fault her for endorsing the reich. At least she made a masterpiece documentary (If she made a shitty film then I don't think we'd be talking about her)
To go back to Polanski's "The Pianist"....
I gather that some of us would recognize that Polanski made some most excellent films in the past--if he has faltered a bit lately. Rather than engage in pointless polemics about Naziism or the guilt of the German people, I'd rather go back to Polanski's "The Pianist," which is where this discussion started. There hasn't been much focus on the film itself. I'd suggest that it presents the experience of Wladyslaw Szpilman (or something very like it) and that experience, in all its mystery, sadness, and humanity, that triumph of the human spirit and music, is all we need to get out of watching Polanski's remarkable new creation.
Polanski has always had a coolness and a clear perception of evil that may help explain why his depiction of the Germans in Poland in the war is so convincing. He also happens to have been there (in Krakow anyway, if not Warsaw), as a younger person, hiding out and surviving as Szpilman did. If we recognize the validity and specificity of the experience "The Pianist" presents, all the ideas and generalizations fall back into their proper places where they belong. "The Pianist" is not a polemic but the recreation of an experience of considerable emotional power and of a decidedly tragic dimension. Controversial and unpalatable as this material is, it is the material of art, not of polemic. (Nonetheless I agree with bix171 that the filmmaker is more cerebral than Spielberg: it's this that gives his emotional story conviction.) Polanski himself moreover deserves treatment as an artist, here, not as a pathology or a legal case.
Extraneous issues and culpability
To Marina: What you say is quite true, but I was trying to get back to a discussion of the film in question, which so far hardly anyone here seems to have seen or commented on directly. I'd like to hear specific comments from people who have seen it. Do they think, as David Denby says, that the hero is a blank, and that the film is without great originality or imagination? Do they think, as he has written, that Schindler's List has better acting and is more "complex"?
I have a feeling that a lot of Americans are wearing blinders when they see "The Pianist" and seeing what they want to see instead if it.