Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired is a 2008 documentary film directed by Marina Zenovich. It concerns film directorRoman Polanski and his sexual abuse case. It examines the events that led to Polanskifleeingthe United States after being embroiled in a controversial trial, and his unstable reunion with his adopted country. A follow-up to the film, also directed by Zenovich, titled Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out was released on 26 March 2013, detailing Polanski's successful legal battle to avoid extradition to the US, a battle that took place after Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired came out.
Reception
rates Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired a score of 78/100 based on 16 reviews. Rotten Tomatoes scores the film at 89% positive reviews based on 46 reviews. Cathleen McGuigan, reviewing the film for Newsweek, referred to the film as "deft and subtle" and particularly noted "an enigmatic little scene near the end ou see a fierce old whale of a man in a chair, banging a drum while an elfin youth jumps and hops to the beats, like a puppet on a string. The hopping boy finally escapes his tormentor by scurrying and tumbling across a field, running toward the Eiffel Tower in the distance. The tyrannized, barefoot kid is Polanski himself, and the footage is from a 16-minute short called 'The Fat and the Lean' that he made in 1961, on the brink of his fame as a brilliant new European director. The wordless scene may last less than a minute in Marina Zenovich's documentary, but it sticks with you, and it echoes another clip in her film. This one is from a television interview Polanski did decades later where he says he felt like 'a mouse with which an abominable cat was making sport.' The cat in question was Los Angeles Judge Laurence J. Rittenband, who'd presided over the director's 1977 criminal case for having sex with a 13-year-old girl." One negative review by Bill Wyman, writing for Salon, stated: "The film, which has inexplicably gotten all sorts of praise, whitewashes what Polanski did in blatant and subtle fashion The tone is set early on, when a friend of Polanski's tells of being woken up and informed that the director had to call his attorney. The moment is actually played for laughs, with interspersed shots of a worried Mia Farrow using the phone in a scene from 'Rosemary's Baby' — that, too, about a horrifically abused woman. But the scene isn't used to illustrate the victim's story -- it's about poor Roman. He's the person making the desperate phone call. It's an odd juxtaposition when you think about it." Nathan Southern of Allmovie writes that, "filmmaker Marina Zenovich revisits this difficult case via extensive interviews with Geimer , defense attorneyDouglas Dalton, Assistant DA Roger Gunson, and others. In the process, she raises pivotal questions about the U.S. legal system and the fairness of the judge, Laurence J. Rittenband and encounters many recollections of judicial malfeasance from those who were involved."
Awards
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired was nominated for five primetime Emmy Awards and won two: "Outstanding Directing For Nonfiction Programming" and "Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming". The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures awarded it the title of one of the top 5 documentaries of 2008. It won the "Editing Award Documentary" at the Sundance Film Festival It was also listed as one of ten films in the "Hall of Shame" of the 2008 Women Film Critics Circle Awards.
Retraction by David Wells
After the arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland in 2009, David Wells, now a retired deputy district attorney, recanted the interview he gave the director about advising the judge in the case in ex parte communication. According to Marcia Clarke of The Daily Beast: Zenovich responded, as reported by Peter Knegt at indieWire: Michael Ceply commented on the affair in the New York Times:
