SOURCE: Horne, Philip. “Fantasy, Death, and Desire.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4806 (12 May 1995): 16.

In the following review of Death and the Maiden, Horne asserts that Polanski's film improves upon the stage play through powerful cinematic technique, heightened realism, and a tightened narrative structure.

In Fritz Lang's tour de force of purposeful plotting, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt of 1956, a journalist conspires with his editor to plant circumstantial evidence and have himself sentenced to death for a recent murder in order, at the last moment, to reveal his innocence and discredit the judicial process. It finally transpires that the journalist is an ingenious schemer, and not innocent of the crime; but most of the film, we realize with a chill, would be the same whether he is innocent or guilty. In fact, although the journalist's demonstration of the unsound basis of the death penalty is undertaken in the worst faith...