Roman Polanski was looking forward to an award for lifelong achievement from a film industry that has rarely doubted his artistic and intellectual talents.

Instead, the Oscar-winning director found himself in custody in Switzerland and facing extradition to the United States, where he is wanted for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl more than three decades ago.

The arrest of the Franco-Polish director, as he arrived at Zurich airport on his way to the city’s annual film festival, sparked a furious row that threatened to escalate into a diplomatic incident.

Frédéric Mitterrand, the French Culture Minister, said that he was “stupefied” and added, in reference to the tragedies that have marked Polanski’s life: “I strongly regret that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them.”

Times Archive, 1977: Hollywood director charged with rape

According to police, the alleged assault happened at the home of the actor Jack Nicholson

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In a thinly disguised attempt to prevent Switzerland from extraditing a man who is a cult figure among Europe’s cultural elite, President Sarkozy called for a “rapid solution”.

A spokesman for the Swiss Justice Ministry said that Polanski had been arrested on an international warrant issued by the US authorities in 2005 in connection with proceedings dating from 1978. “We must now verify whether Roman Polanski can in practice be extradited,” he said. The Swiss said that he would remain in custody until that verification process was complete.

The arrest is the latest chapter in a saga that has bedevilled the director’s career, prevented him from setting foot in the US for decades and split opinion in the film world.

In much of Europe Polanski is portrayed as a wayward genius who has fallen victim to American bigotry; in the US he is seen as a pervert who forced a teenager to drink, strip and have oral sex during a modelling session at the home of Jack Nicholson, the actor.

Samantha Geimer, who was the teenager in question and who has called for the case against Polanski to be dropped after she reached a settlement with the director, recalled in 2003 that she began to feel uncomfortable after he asked her to lie down on a bed. “I said, ‘No, no. I don’t want to go in there. No, I don’t want to do this. No’, and then I didn’t know what else to do,” she said in an interview.

“We were alone and I didn’t know what else would happen if I made a scene. So I was just scared, and after giving some resistance, I figured well, I guess I’ll get to come home after this.”

Polanski, now aged 76, was originally accused of rape, but the charge was amended to engaging in unlawful intercourse with a minor after he agreed to plead guilty.

The film-maker — who has always maintained that Ms Geimer consented and was sexually experienced — spent 42 days in jail, but fled the US when he was freed while awaiting sentencing.

Considered to be a fugitive by legal officials in California — where he faces a likely sentence of between 18 months and three years, according to prosecutors — Polanski has avoided visiting countries such as Britain that were likely to extradite him.

He had no such fears in Paris because he holds a French passport and France does not extradite its own citizens.

His admirers were unsure whether he had been unaware of Switzerland’s 50-year-old extradition treaty with the US, or had simply assumed that Berne would turn a blind eye when he arrived at the Zurich Film Festival to receive an award for his work.

Nadja Schildknecht and Karl Spoerri, the festival’s organisers, issued a statement expressing their shock at the arrest of “one of the most extraordinary film-makers of our times”.

Polanski was born in France to Polish parents. When he was 3 his family moved back to Cracow, where he escaped the Holocaust but saw his parents taken to Nazi concentration camps. His mother never returned. In 1969 Sharon Tate, his pregnant wife, was murdered with four others by Charles Manson’s gang in Hollywood.

His films are swathed in violence, voyeurism and angst and include Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, Oliver Twist and The Pianist, for which he won an Oscar as Best Director in 2003.

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