Tess

Roman Polanski's film Tess, (1979) adaptation of Thomas Hardy famous novel of the 19th century "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" , won many prestigious awards, including three Oscars of six nominations and every award for Best Cinematography it was nominated for. If any film deserves recognition for its beautiful, lyrical, sensual yet melancholic and poetic visual presentation, "Tess" is it. The movie might be Roman Polanski's finest achievement, and this statement comes from a viewer who is in love with all Polanski's films starting with his debut "Knife in the Water". "Tess" is one of the best adaptations of the classic novel I've seen and it lives, breathes and moves freely. It never rushes to tell its long story but tells it with rare finesse, compassion, and love for the heroine, a gentle creature who had been insulted, humiliated, and ultimately destroyed.

The success of the movie starts with the choice of the actress for the title role. Tess as played by 20 years old Nasstassia Kisnki is beautiful, sensual, shy and full of life and hope for love. The life of Tess unfolds in front of us from her teenage years as an innocent country girl until the powerfully tragic final scene at the magnificent Stonehenge. The film is almost three hours long but I never was bored, on the contrary, I felt compassion for the girl and anger toward the men that used and corrupted her, ruined her hopes for love and happiness, and toward the society that mercifully discarded of her. Tess is one of the best movies I've seen. It is stunning, subtle, emotional, tragic, and unforgettable.

In this adaptation of the Hardy novel, a peasant girl who may be descended from a noble family encounters romance and tragedy in 19th century England. Meticulously directed by Polanski, this epic drama unfolds quite leisurely but does not drag. The English countryside is beautifully captured, with the cinematography adding a haunting quality to the barren landscape, an effect further enhanced by the evocative score. Perhaps she does not faithfully embody the strong-willed heroine of the novel, but Kinski (resembling a young Ingrid Bergman) looks exquisite and effectively conveys a sense of melancholy in a star-making performance.

Considering that the cultures of nineteenth century Europe were supposedly so rigidly moralist, it is perhaps surprising that many of the great novels from that era are themselves attacks upon the rigidity. Or perhaps that is only the ones we remember, the ones that have survived as classics. After all, it is easier for a contemporary reader to imagine being stifled by or fighting against such strict order than to be comfortable and complicit in it. And these are the novels that have made the most powerful and enduring adaptations to our contemporary medium of cinema.

Surely the most outstanding thing about this adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is its magnificent appearance. The cinematography or Geoffrey Unsworth and Ghislain Cloquet is breathtakingly beautiful, at times referencing various paintings of rural England, with some incredibly natural looking twilight scenes. The art direction and costume design is fabulous too, echoing the tones and textures of the countryside. The design follows such a tight colour scheme, beginning with a motley of off-whites, giving way to greys and browns in the latter half of the picture, and finally a deep crimson. And yet it all looks so natural and unforced.

Director Roman Polanski makes this a rich canvas for his camera. As usual his emphasis is upon confinement, often framing people so the tops of heads are cut off, making the image look short rather than wide. And yet this is a picture very much of the outdoors. Polanski shoots the interiors with briefer shots, more frequent camera moves and many close-ups, and as such the indoor spaces seem the most transient and indistinct, which really helps us get a sense of Tess's feeling of not belonging. Throughout the picture the director encourages slowness, stillness and long takes for key scenes, which brings out the best in the acting performances.

German-born Nastassja Kinski at first seems like an odd choice to play the titular Dorset lass. Her attempt at the accent is a bit wobbly at best (although still impressive considering she is not even English), but really her performance is about more than that. She has that peculiar quiet delicacy that the character requires, and just below the surface of her performance lurk all those suppressed emotions, just visible enough that we believe her final actions. The only other standout is Peter Firth. It works very well the way he appears so mature and manly in his earliest appearances, and then when his feelings towards Tess change, he becomes like a spoiled child. Above all, both performances are calm and subdued.

And subdued calmness is what really marks this movie. Voices are barely distinct. The Philip Sarde music score, containing just a hint of Elgar and Vaughn Williams, is as rich and beautiful as the imagery. It is this non-verbal eloquence that prevents Tess from becoming dull or stilted. The adaptation barely communicates directly with its audience, with no explanatory narration and overt exposition. We are left to infer much, such as the baby which suddenly appears without us even having been aware of the pregnancy. The picture has all the subtlety of a good silent movie, giving us its thoughts and feelings through the purity of its images, and as such very much removed from the word-based format of a novel. And yet Tess retains all the power and meaning as a piece of storytelling.

I don't know what's been keeping them but 'Tess' has been overdue for a DVD release for a very long time. At last it's here, and it looks gorgeous, although it hasn't been digitally cleaned up and there are a couple of scratches here and there. It's been worth the wait though, as this is possibly the most beautifully photographed film ever made.

Ever since the release of '2001: A Space Odyssey' I have been fascinated by the work of Stanley Kubrick and his cinematographer on that film, Geoffrey Unsworth. 'Tess' was Unsworth's last work; he died during the filming, and shared his Oscar for this with Ghislain Cloquet, who finished shooting, copying Unsworth's own style. The lighting is subtle and appears beautifully natural: just look at the first five minutes starting with village club dancers walking to the field, John Durbeyfield's fateful meeting with the parson, the arrival of Tess' future husband Angel Clare, with the late summer afternoon shading gradually into evening and darkness and all before we have even identified which girl is Tess. Oh, and that stunning moment when Tess finds her confessional letter to Angel has slipped under the carpet of his room unread, and her stunned realisation is underlined by the wheeling camera shot and the blinding flaring of the sun behind her head suddenly wiping all else off the screen for a moment. Wonderful.

Do yourself a favour and look up Geoffrey Unsworth on the internet movie database – the number, quality and range of films he contributed to is astonishing. By all accounts he was a lovely man too, the featurettes underline the terrific camaraderie that existed on the shoot between all the cast and crew, and it is really moving to hear their tributes and memories of Unsworth, particularly Nastassia Kinski fighting back tears as she recalls his death.

In the film, of course, Kinski is absolutely wonderful, just perfect for the role of tragic victim Tess, the 'pure woman' of Hardy's subtitle. Despite comments to the contrary I find her accent quite a commendable attempt at Dorset, having lived and worked there myself, and my wife having been born there. Some of the other accents are generalised country yokel, but Kinski has learned a pretty authentic representation of Dorset's rolling rounded vowels.

I'm also a Hardy fan, and Tess is quite possibly my favourite novel. I remain astonished that Polanski was so successful in transferring it to the screen. The featurettes make it clear the main task of literary adaptation for the screen is cutting things out, yet when I first saw the film I couldn't think of a thing that was missing. That's impossible of course, but the choice of what to film and what to leave out is almost seamless. Perhaps the only serious omission is the passage in the book where Tess feels guilt for inadvertently causing the death of the family horse in a night-time collision with the post-cart, and it is to assuage this guilt that she agrees to visit 'cousin' Alec, which is of course her great undoing. Polanski tried to cut the film to meet the expectations of distributors (and Francis Ford Coppola!) but some idea of his reluctance comes from the disclosure that he took 3 months to cut 20 minutes. I'd love to see a director's cut with that footage restored.

Finally, the background material reveals the bone-headiness of some of those involved in film distribution. The co-producer shows the film to the buyers of the two main IK distributors, and (pre-Oscars) one of them says 'This film will only show in my cinemas over my dead body.' Doesn't that remind you of Decca turning down The Beatles?

This has been my favourite movie since I first saw it in the late 1980s, and I have viewed it probably once a year since that time. My videotape copy was fading and failing, so I was lucky to replace it recently with the Japanese DVD version.

When you compare it to other films made in 1979, it is amazing how little it has "aged". Of course, it is an historical drama, with a "timeless" setting. And yet the cinematography is so assuredly wonderful that the movie is almost as if set in amber.

Many have commented on the score, and it is a pity that this is no longer in issue. Still, there seem to be enough people like myself who are fans of this film, perhaps there is enough of an interest?

While the A and E version was an above-average production, I think Polanski's beats it on almost any characteristic. Polanski's film is a series of tableaux, very few of which do not work well. (One that I find a little bit stupid is the scene where Tess sleeps out in the forest and the deer comes to visit her. Gimme a break!). There are many scenes which, if left in still, look like 19th century portraiture, a la Mary Cassatt or Edgar Degas. The scene where the pedlar comes across Tess at the Crescent Hand! This guy has just stepped out of another century. This is a stunningly visual movie, and perhaps the reason it is so easy to watch time and time again. The dialogue, too, full of the cadences of West Country speech (still there, but disappearing) are an evocation of a lost age. These are hinted at in the scenes showing the modernization of England (the train bringing the milk to market, the threshing machine) which is changing their lives. Tess, and her aristocratic background, are an anachronism, particularly compared with the worldly (and successful) Stokes.

I enjoy the rhythm of the movie, which is rural and slow. Time is marked in slow and languid drips, such as we see with the milk at the dairy farm, and finally with the blood at the boarding house. This is classic story-telling, replete with foreshadowing (particularly Tess' temper and pride). What I enjoyed most is the symmetry of the story-telling, which make it more myth-like, particularly the juxtaposition of the two opening and closing scenes (the dancing of the village girls at sunset, and Stonehenge--which legend has as a circle of giants dancing and frozen by Merlin--at daybreak). Other examples are Alec Durberville's "saving" Tess from a fight with her "rival" and Angel choosing Tess over her rivals on the flooded road.

As you can see, Tess is a movie that replays itself in my mind. Polanski's effort reflects on what I think is one of the greatest 19th century English novels (in my mind, rivaled only by "Middlemarch"), and is a great springboard to further consideration of art and life.