Tess
by Roman Polanski
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Product details
Actor: John Collin, Leigh Lawson, Nastassja Kinski, Peter Firth, Rosemary MartinDirector: Roman Polanski
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Box set, Color, NTSC
Running Time: 172 minutes
Release Date: 1998-06-02
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Studio: Sony Pictures
VHS Movie Reviews of Tess
Movie Review: Not Masterpiece Theater- but well done
Summary: 4 Stars
While taking artistic liberties from the novel , Polanski's Tess is a very entertaining and beautifully filmed movie. The settings and costuming recreate the feeling of Hardy's Wessex as well as any filmed version of his works ever has.
Nastassja Kinski was beautiful in the role and although her acting can be somewhat wooden at times she does make a memorable Tess. The rest of the cast make up for her shortcoming by providing outstanding performances.
The pace tends to slow in certain parts of the film but if you are a fan of period films loosely based on classics you can do worse than spending some time watching this.
Movie Review: Achingly sadly beautiful
Summary: 4 Stars
I didn't read the novel so I have no comments about the accuracy of the adaptation. I had no problem understanding it. (Some reviewers said that it was necessary to read the book in order to follow the film.) I had no problem, either with the length. In fact I was glad it was so long; I wanted to get "the whole story" not a compressed version.
The photography, as others have mentioned is exquisite. It's worth seeing again, with the sound off, just to see the gorgeous country shots.
The music was perfect too--just right for the mood of the film--not too intrusive.
Nastassja Kinski was perfect as Tess. I can't imagine anyone else playing the role. All of the other principle actors were just right and gave excellent performances. How we loved the divine Angel until his rejection of Tess on their wedding night!
The whole film is gorgeously earnest and deeply felt. The only reason I subtracted one star is that the story is just so damned depressing! Knowing what we do of Polanski's life, one can see how he'd be attracted to such material, but for me...I would have preferred some happiness and joy for poor Tess.
Movie Review: Genealogy gone berserk
Summary: 5 Stars
I like to think of the novel's premise as genealogy really going to someone's head. When John Durbeyfield is informed by the town historian that his family used to be a noble one (and the original name was "D'Urberville"), he sends his daughter Tess (Teresa) to rich relatives in the English countryside for financial help. It's there that she meets with Alec D'Urberville, effectively beginning a downward spiral for everyone concerned.
As always, one can trust a book adaptation in Roman Polanski's more than capable hands. He faithfully adapted Ira Levin's "Rosemary's Baby" in 1968 and Roland Topor's "The Tenant" in 1976 before tackling Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" in 1979.
It's common knowledge that Roman adapted the book to honor Sharon Tate's memory (it was reportedly the last book she read. She put a copy on his night-table with a note suggesting that it would make a good movie). The continuous personal attacks on him are really unnecessary (and, f.y.i., they make the attacker look really dumb ... especially when their missive is a grammatical masterpiece).
For having just learned English during preparation for her role in the title part, Natassja Kinski managed very well. She conveyed the vulnerable and melancholy Tess appropriately. At times during the course of the movie, one can almost feel themselves being sucked into Tess's depressing vortex, snapping out of it with her ... only to fall right back in again.
Leigh Lawson played a right-on Alec D'Urberville. He was the monster I envisioned Alec to be while reading Hardy's novel. Peter Firth as Angel was also excellent in his role. Roman nailed the English countryside dialect and he always does a fantastic job with Victorian England scenery (he repeated that success with 2005's "Oliver Twist").
Roman did an excellent job, as always, with "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." The book could be adapted a thousand times after his version and they still couldn't match up to his vision. Roman took Thomas Hardy's always depressing vision and turned it into a beautiful movie (for further proof of Hardy's depressive novels, check out his final book, "Jude the Obscure").
The DVD and Book collection series was a great idea to try to get people to read the classics alongside the movie.
"Tess" is a must-have for the DVD collection. - Donna Di Giacomo
Movie Review: Not such a special edition
Summary: 3 Stars
Columbia's DVD of Tess is doubly disappointing - not only is it a disappointing transfer but it's also the cut version of the film, which tends to lose a little heart and more than a little irony. There's still much to admire, from the beautiful Scope cinematography and Phillipe Sarde's superb score to Polanski's feel for time and place (even if it is shot in France rather than Wessex) and, ironically, sexual prejudice, although Nastassja Kinski never really convinces in the lead and Leigh Lawson's despoiling cad seems constantly on the verge of twirling his moustache. The murder still seems a plot contrivance, although it does throw in one great moment of vintage Polanski with a spot of blood on the ceiling.
Still, at least the 72-minute documentary is very good.
Movie Review: One of the most beautiful films ever, faithfully told.
Summary: 5 Stars
Every once in awhile a film comes along that it should only be spoken of in hushed tones. Roman Polanski's TESS is one of those films. To place it in context, there are moments in the film DR.ZIVAGO that are some of the most beautiful on film... they are a stark relief to the majority, which is snow covered and bleak. , Being set in lush countryside, 80% of TESS is that gorgeous, making it one of the most visually beautiful films ever made. It won Geoffrey Unsworth & Ghislain Cloquet 1981's Best Cinematography Oscar. (Unsworth died of a heart attack ? way through production.) It also rightfully won for Art Direction and Costume Design.
Like DR.Z., this film tells the story of the downfall of a lower class girl who has neither the schooling or upbringing to fight for herself, in Hardy's unrelenting sad story (written after he had become depressed in the wake of reading Darwin, and saw the dying way of life that industrialization was bringing about).
Natassja Kinski is luminous and looks a bit like Sharon Tate, and reminiscent of young Ingrid Berman here, in look, but also very much in persona and even her voice. Now wonder it has been hard for her to follow this film. Few roles could match it, few productions have gelled this completely. Peter Firth as her misguidedly moral husband is perfectly matched with her, and they both give richly felt performances.
The musical score is soaring and melancholy, the costumes are just right, whether they be the muddy field workers or the finery of a fallen woman, and the shades of class within different farms are delineated here, too, in costumes and set, and the golden days of the happy farm to the grey skies of the sad. All elements are in perfect accord in this literary adaptation that necessarily cuts a few scenes from the novel, but keeps the story amazingly intact.
I've read the book twice. The BBC did a Miniseries of TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLE'S in the late 1990s, and while it's length maintains some of the details of the story, neither it's somnambulent leading lady nor it's visuals can compare to the wonderful performance here of Kinsky, and the constantly awe inspiring visuals, scene after breathtaking scene.
Polanski tells us that Tate had given him this book, as she had been told it would be perfect for her. He did not read it until after her death, so this film is a fully realized bittersweet chanson d'amour. A classic of cinema in every sense of the word.
Summary of Tess
Roman Polanski adapted Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles and came up with this moody, haunting film starring Nastassia Kinski as the farm girl who is misused by the aristocrat for whom she works and who is then caught in a marriage where her initial happiness soon turns to grief. Fans of the novel may feel unpersuaded by Polanski's effort to marry Hardy's Dorset vision with his own fascination with psychosexual impulses toward survival, but the film is an often stunning thing to see, and Kinski's sensitive, intelligent performance lingers in the memory. --Tom KeoghMelodrama Video
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