Cannes gold for Polanski's Pianist

Director Roman Polanski last night won the Cannes film festival's prestigious Palme D'Or for a true story of the Holocaust which he himself survived.

The controversial director, whose career has been overshadowed by a conviction in America for underage sex, was awarded the prize for The Pianist after a contest said to be the most open in years.

The festival lived up to its reputation for setting tongues wagging, when Jeremy Irons and French actress Patricia Kaas appeared on the red carpet. The couple were pictured last year kissing outside a Soho club, and relived the onscreen chemistry in their film, And Now ... Ladies and Gentlemen at its gala screening.

Irons, married for 24 years to actress Sinead Cusack, arrived hand-in-hand with 34-year-old Kaas, who has been dubbed the French Madonna, nuzzled her cheek and then seemed to glance down her top. He said he was being "polite" in holding his costar's hand.

At their home in Watlington, Oxfordshire, Cusack said she was not surprised at Irons and Caas appearing together and added: "Of course he would be. The film opens tonight."

Polanski's Palme D'Or was his first in a career which began in Poland in the Fifties and has included Rosemary's Baby, Tess and Death And The Maiden.

Born in France, he moved to Poland at the age of two. His mother died in a Nazi death camp after his parents were taken from the Krakow ghetto. Polanski survived by wandering the countryside living with Catholic families.

He had shied away from making a film about the Holocaust, saying it would be too painful to recount his own story. But he found inspiration in the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a brilliant Polish pianist who managed to escape the Warsaw ghetto and ultimately survive with the help of a German officer.

Polanski, 68, said: "The exciting thing about finding this material is that it wasn't too personal - it was something I know about, remember very well, something that could help me recreate the events without talking about myself."

Szpilman died two years ago, aged 88.

More film news
REVIEW: The Pianist