Wanted and Desired: Was Roman Polanski a Pedophile?

New documentary focuses on Chinatown director’s 1977 rape trial

A A A Comments (0) By Ella Taylor Wednesday, Jul 9 2008

Polanski meets the press.

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At the end of Wanted and Desired, Polanski plaintively asks James, “Do you think there’s something more to my life than my relations with young women?” It’s possible that his career was damaged, as the movie implies, by the trial and its fallout, though, in fact, he continued from his base in France to work with Hollywood producers — mostly on terrible or aborted projects. Just as plausibly, this masterful director, who never made good on the promise of Knife in the Water and Chinatown, simply peaked early and then applied his fabled technical expertise to a procession of potboilers (even The Pianist, which won him an Oscar in absentia, was more faithful adaptation than great art), and finally burned out on high living. In Zenovich’s movie, Polanski comes off as a whiny, self-styled victim and a liar, who first pleaded not guilty, then changed his plea to guilty of unlawful sex with a minor, then ran away without telling his lawyers. According to many who have worked with him, as well as a clear-eyed, entertaining new biography by British writer Christopher Sandford (to be published in September), Polanski is also a gifted artist and a generous, intelligent, charming man whose charisma has won him undying loyalty from friends, fellow filmmakers — and, perhaps, a free pass from all the critics who loved this movie.