Roman Polanski's suspenseful drama is based on a play by Ariel Dorfman, who also cowrote the screenplay. The movie takes place in an unspecified South American country after the recent fall of the dictatorship. Paulina Escobar (Sigourney Weaver) is a former political activist and torture victim. Her husband, Gerardo (Stuart Wilson), a respected lawyer, has just been appointed to head a commission on human rights violations under the old regime, though Paulina, suffering from severe psychological trauma ever since her arrest, objects to what she perceives as a sham investigation. The couple receives an unexpected visitor one stormy night when an affable stranger, Dr. Miranda (Ben Kingsley), drops Gerardo off at the Escobars' isolated house after his car breaks down. Paulina believes she recognizes the man's voice as belonging to the doctor who supervised her torture and raped her on several occasions while she was blindfolded and strapped to a table. In spite of her husband's objections, she decides to take Miranda prisoner, threatening him with a gun, determined to get a taped confession from him at any cost. Under Polanski's keen direction, Dorfman's three-character play is successfully transformed into a captivating film that loses neither dramatic tension nor momentum along the way.

When a woman's husband brings home a man whose car has broken down, she slowly realizes that the stranger might be a man who had terrorized her in the past.

Theatrical release: January 13, 1995.

The play on which the film is based was originally produced on Broadway in 1992 starring Glenn Close as Paulina Escobar, Richard Dreyfuss as her husband, and Gene Hackman as Dr. Miranda.

DEATH AND THE MAIDEN represents one of the rare cases in which Polanski did not act as a contributing screenwriter in addition to directing. (CHINATOWN is another, although he did make uncredited script alterations.

Music: "String Quartet no. 14 in D Minor" (Death and the Maiden) by Franz Schubert, performed by the Amadeus Quartet.

The unnamed South American country where the play is based might be Chile, native land of playwright Ariel Dorfman.

DVD Features:

Region 1
Snap Case
Full Frame - 1.33

Sigourney Weaver: American actress, ALIEN (1979), GORILLAS IN THE MIST
Ben Kingsley: British actor, GANDHI/SCHINDLER'S LIST
Stuart Wilson: British Film/TV Actor

Roman Polanski: Director/Screenwriter/Actor

Rafael Yglesias: Novelist/Screenwriter
Ariel Dorfman: Chilean Playwright

"...DEATH AND THE MAIDEN is all about acting....Kingsley makes it come alive with his insinuating performance..."
"...Roman Polanski restores the play to the pulse-pounding political thriller it is. His electrifying film nearly jumps off the screen..."
"...[A] triumph....[Polanski turns it] into a harrowing experience....Weaver is sternly terrific..."
"...Riveting....One of the most honest --and poetic -- reckonings of human evil in modern movies..." -- Rating: A-
"...[Weaver's] gestures and actions command the screen as resolutely here as they did in ALIEN or ALIENS..."