When Tess was released in 1979 much was made of the fact that Hardy’s western England had become Polanski’s northern France. Also, that he had cast a German actress in the title role with a wobbly Wessex burr. All these years on, Nastassja Kinksi’s performance looks as ravishing as ever, and doesn’t sound too bad either. An extra layer of otherness is added to her portrayal of a beautiful young country girl passively buffeted by fate – and seduced, possibly raped by a powerful male - with the recent revelation that her father Klaus Kinski abused her half-sister and tried it on with her too.
Polanski’s Tess was a cross-Channel co-production whose script was originally written in French, and feels that way not just for the Breton and Norman locations, caught in all seasons. Among the many fascinating interviews on the excellent extras of this BFI re-release, Polanski explains that it was also a memory film evoking the backwardness of rural Poland, to which he fled from the ghetto. The triumph of Tess is in the yoking of remorseless Hardian sadism to the natural photogenic allure of both Kinski and her surroundings (not to mention Anthony Powell’s gorgeous costumes). All was caught by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth until he died of a heart attack during the shoot, to be awarded a posthumous Oscar with his successor Ghislain Cloquet.
The film is dedicated to Sharon Tate, who had suggested the novel to Polanski as a vehicle for herself. Her own horrible fate somehow feeds into a film which across three hours never wavers or flags. Kinski was born on Tate's 18th birthday, and turned 18 during the shoot. It adds greatly to the poignancy of Tess that she would be never better. In a star-free cast, neither would Leigh Lawson as the dastardly D'Urberville, with whom Tess disastrously claims kin, and Peter Firth as the priggish Angel Clare. It's astonishing to learn that the famous seduction-by-strawberries scene was shot on the first day of an 88-day shoot. A masterpiece.
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