Product Details

• Actors: Pedro Almodvar, Istvan Bajzat, Steve Barshop, Marilyn Beck, Madeline Bessmer
• Directors: Marina Zenovich
• Writers: Marina Zenovich, Joe Bini, P.G. Morgan
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: Unknown (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: Spanish, English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Velocity / Thinkfilm
• DVD Release Date: January 27, 2009
• Run Time: 99 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001HB1K46
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,313 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

When Polanski’s defense attorney says midway through this film that he "isn’t surprised Polanski left under the circumstances" surrounding this corrupted court case, one really begins to understand why the director has not returned to America in nearly 20 years. Wanted and Desired, Marina Zenovich’s documentary about Polanski’s 1977 arrest for rape of a minor set facts straight about a case that was blown to ridiculous proportions by a sensationalistic press and a judge who was far from judicious. Comprised of interviews with producers and friends Andrew Braunsberg, Daniel Melnick, Mia Farrow, and many others, the film obviously sympathizes with Polanski. But ample interviews with D.A. Roger Gunson and defense attorney, Douglas Dalton, lend factual credence to the film’s assertion that the director was not guilty as charged and further, shows how separate public image and the real person are. Wanted and Desired covers the tragic loss of his wife, Sharon Tate, only to preface the court case and Polanski’s departing the country as a result. Short clips from many of his fine films are interspersed to poignant effect between interview clips, to show how his public image has been wrongly writ based on his films’ dark subject matter. Polanski’s lack of participation in the film, then, seems not like his condemnation of its making, but rather in keeping with his desire to avoid press in general. At best, Wanted and Desired may serve as a further invitation to the brilliant director, who has been living in France for almost 20 years with a wife and two children, to someday return to America. —Trinie Dalton

Product Description

Genre: Documentary
Rating: NR
Release Date: 27-JAN-2009
Media Type: DVD

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Polanski, the victim?, March 26, 2011

By 

Sigrid Macdonald (Ottawa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (DVD)

This documentary by Steven Soderbergh was fascinating and I learned quite a bit about Roman Polanski that I never knew because I hadn't followed his case that closely. I didn't know he was a Holocaust survivor and had lost his parents to the camps. I did know that his wife Sharon Tate was brutally murdered by the freakish Manson clan. And I imagine that all those hideous and traumatic incidents left a terrible and indelible mark on his psyche. But does this somehow justify drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl?

The production is far too sympathetic toward Polanski. Yes, it appears he had a judge who was obsessed with celebrities and his own fame and publicity. Yes, it looks as though his sentence was unfair, but even the original proposal to incarcerate Polanski for 90 days for a diagnostic was absurd. 90 days for taking a pubescent girl and giving her Quaaludes and sodomizing her? Please? What century are we living in?

Although the girl who was molested appeared on the show and spoke as an adult, I got the distinct impression that the message was "poor Roman", not "poor 13-year-old girl." At one point her prior sexual history was even mentioned -- disgraceful -- yet she clearly said that she had said *no* to him. Even if she had said *yes* and begged him to have sex with her, at 13, she didn't have the mental or legal ability to give consent.

The whole situation is very sad. If only Polanski had served out his time properly in the US, some of this would be behind him and perhaps he could have continued to be a wonderful director. People are complicated. Just because he committed a heinous act doesn't mean that he doesn't have redeeming qualities. He is brilliant and the French realize this. But one problem I had with the documentary is that it's not either or -- it's not that he is wanted in America and desired in Europe where he has won awards, so the Americans are wrong and prudish. It's that he has complex human traits that make him phenomenal in some respects and ugly in others.

20 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Persuasive arguments, November 2, 2008

By 

Clare Quilty (a little pad in hawaii) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (DVD)

This is a crisp, well-structured documentary which brings together most of the principal facts and figures in Polanski's 1977-1978 unlawful sexual intercourse trial.

Two are missing from the scene -- Polanski himself and Judge Laurence Rittenband, who presided over the case -- and they're the most important and, among followers of the situation, the most divisive.

The filmmakers have a clear respect for Polanski the artist, but they make two points painfully clear: That, in 1977, he gave a 13-year-old girl Quaaludes and champagne before having sex with her; and that the case was poorly (in some cases illegally) handled by Rittenband, who was eventually removed from the case.

Rittenband is dead and Polanski fled to France rather than face his judge's increasingly sketchy demands but most of the principals are here, particularly defense attorney Douglas Dalton, former assistant D.A. Roger Gunson and the victim herself, Samantha Geimer, who's now in her mid-40s, a mother of three children and seems ready to put the whole matter to rest.

The account is fascinating, and artfully punctuated by scenes from Polanski's films, particularly those he appeared in including "Chinatown," "The Tenant" and "The Fat and the Lean," which was made a decade-and-a-half before the trouble but which features Polanski dancing on cue to a drum beaten by a man who, ironically, bears no small resemblance to Rittenband himself.

I never like to assume that I'm an expert on a situation simply after seeing one documentary about it, but it's a persuasive argument when a Mormon district attorney sides with a sex offender and his defense lawyer against a judge. That's pretty convincing evidence this movie is spouting something close to the truth.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Roman Polanski, wanted and desired, February 14, 2010

By 

Therese Obrecht "kinomad" (Geneva, Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (DVD)

Excellent documentary, well researched, giving an unbiased and full account of the Polanski case. Excellent testimony of his lawyer who plainly told him that he could not expect a fair treatment from judge Rittenband.