SOURCE: Pawelczak, Andy. Review of Death and the Maiden, by Roman Polanski. Films in Review 46, nos. 5-6 (July-August 1995): 54-5.

In the following review, Pawelczak asserts that Death and the Maiden lacks the style, imagination, and emotional impact characteristic of Polanski's best films.

Who is Roman Polanski? Besides a hack writer's dream, that is. His life seems made for the tabloids—childhood victimization by the Nazis in his native Poland, early success as a director, then the murder of his wife Sharon Tate by Charles Manson, and in 1977 his conviction for “unlawful sexual intercourse” with a 13-year-old girl and subsequent exile in Europe. The Manson connection in particular has made Polanski into a part of pop demonology—people have always assumed that Polanski has a secret life, that he's a habitué of an international, decadent demi-monde, perhaps something like the society of Parisian vampires portrayed in Interview with the...