--- title: "Tess" year: 1979 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/tess" fi1m_score: 74 critics_score: 72 critics_reviews: 8 published: "2026-09-20T06:12:31.212394+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T06:12:43.187026+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Tess (1979) Directed by Roman Polanski · 2h 52m · MPA PG · Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 74** · Critics 72 from 8 reviews *In a sentence:* Three hours of exquisite weather happening to a girl who never raises her voice > Roman Polanski’s Hardy is patient, quiet and as handsomely made as anything he has done, with Nastassja Kinski a still, wounded centre. It is also 172 minutes long and moves at the speed of farm work. Worth the evening, if you have the whole evening. ## Synopsis Marlott, a village in Hardy’s Wessex, in the last years of the nineteenth century. John Durbeyfield (John Collin), a carter who drinks, is told by Parson Tringham (Tony Church) that he descends from the ancient d’Urbervilles, and the news goes to his head. His eldest daughter Tess (Nastassja Kinski) is sent to Trantridge to claim kinship with a rich family of the same name. There she meets Alec d’Urberville (Leigh Lawson), who feeds her strawberries from his own hand, offers her work minding his mother’s poultry and drives her about the lanes in his trap far faster than she would like. Angel Clare (Peter Firth), a parson’s son, has already passed through Marlott once, dancing with the village girls on a May afternoon and not with her. What Alec does in the fog of the Chase shapes everything that follows. ## Review Roman Polanski, with his regular collaborator Gérard Brach and John Brownjohn on the script, has taken Thomas Hardy’s novel about a country girl ruined by two men and made a film that moves at the pace of the seasons it photographs. *Tess* runs 172 minutes. It is beautiful, it is faithful in outline, and it is about half an hour longer than it needs to be. We recommend it, with that plainly stated. The pictures are the reason to sit down. Two cinematographers are credited, Geoffrey Unsworth and Ghislain Cloquet, and between them the film has a consistent look: low sun through mist at dawn, cottage interiors lit by a single window, fields the colour of wet straw. Pierre Guffroy’s production design puts real mud in the farmyards and real dust in the d’Urberville house, and Anthony Powell dresses the field workers in cloth that looks slept in and the gentry in cloth that has never been near a hedge. Nothing here is prettified. The lanes are rutted, the milk is warm, and the girls’ feet are dirty. Kinski plays Tess as a young woman who has learned to wait. She barely moves her face; she watches, and lets things happen to her, and speaks only when there is no way round it. Her accent wanders, and there are stretches where the stillness reads as absence rather than depth. But when the film asks her to hold a look, as it does across a kitchen table with Firth late on, she holds it and something breaks behind it, and we were moved more than we had expected to be by an actress who has been so quiet for so long. The scene in the Chase, which closes the first act, is where Polanski shows what restraint can do. Alec finds Tess asleep under the trees, the fog comes in, and the camera does not stay. We were horrified, and the horror came from how little we were shown: a face in mist, then trees, then morning. A cruder film would have made a set piece of it. This one treats it as weather, which is worse. Leigh Lawson’s Alec is a bounder with a moustache and a fast trap, and he plays him without apology, which is right. Peter Firth’s Angel Clare is the more damaging man because he thinks he is the kind one, and Firth lets us see the vanity under the gentleness without ever pointing at it. John Collin is funny and sad as the father who cannot hold a shilling or a thought. Suzanna Hamilton, Carolyn Pickles and Caroline Embling, as the dairymaids, give the middle stretch its only warmth, and the film is sunniest when they are on screen. The trouble is the length, and it is not a small trouble. Tom Priestley and Alastair McIntyre have kept every season, every walk between farms, every slow approach up a drive, and around the two-hour mark we found ourselves admiring a hayfield and wondering why we were still in it. Philippe Sarde’s score, soft and folk-tinged, tells us to feel sorry for Tess in scenes where Kinski had already done the work. Polanski’s best films happen in rooms: a flat, a boat, a city that behaves like a locked door. This is his first long film shot mostly under the sky, and he is not quite at home there. The fog and the kitchens are his; the wide fields belong to his cameramen. Most critics like it a little less than we do, and the ones who call it hollow have a point about the second half, where suffering becomes the whole of Tess’s character and the film watches it rather than arguing with it. See it in one sitting or not at all; broken up, it loses the slow pressure that is its only real design. It carries a 15 certificate, and it opened in British cinemas on 9 April 1981, two years after it was made. *Fi1m score 74, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics admire Tess, and the praise gathers almost entirely around how it looks. Review after review names the colour photography and the production design as the film’s chief virtues, with one critic likening the scale to David Lean. Nastassja Kinski’s performance draws steady approval, described as delicate and deeply moving. A number of critics also note how unlikely a project this seems for Polanski, and read it through his own history and his recurring interest in innocence spoiled. The reservations start where the beauty ends. The New Yorker finds the film smooth and hypnotic but tame, going soft on Hardy’s rawer material and reducing Tess to a pure victim. Empire calls it good in parts but far too long, blaming the pace on fidelity to the novel. Time Out goes furthest, judging it cloying and hollow, more interested in the director’s preoccupations than the book’s. The spread is wide, though the dissenters are a minority. ### Reviews we read (8) - **Slant Magazine**, Budd Wilkins (90/100, inferred): The critic emphasizes the film's ravishing visual poetry and personal resonance for Polanski, connecting it to themes of exploitation and loss seen in Chinatown, while praising the Criterion Blu-ray's transfer and extensive extras on the adaptation and production. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/tess/) - **The Guardian** (85/100, inferred): The critic calls the film an outstanding piece of work. They single out Nastassja Kinski's deeply moving performance as Tess and the ravishing cinematography for praise. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/mar/24/tess-polanski-dvd-review-french) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (85/100, inferred): Polanski has delivered a sensitive, intelligent screen treatment that combines fidelity to the novel with beauty. First-rate contributions include the color photography and superb production design. [Read](https://variety.com/1978/film/reviews/tess-1200424419/) - **The AV Club**, Ben Kenigsberg (B+): The critic highlights the film's sumptuous visuals and cinematography as a departure toward epic scope for Polanski, likening it to David Lean while tying it thematically to his personal history and recurring motifs of innocence defiled. It notes the strong 4K restoration and bonus features on the Criterion release. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-sumptuous-tess-is-roman-polanski-by-way-of-david-le-1798179588) - **The New York Times**, Janet Maslin (80/100, inferred): Polanski has turned Hardy's novel into a lovely, lyrical, unexpectedly delicate movie that might seem an unlikely project for him. It stands as one of the best films of the season for its handsome, sweeping and deft adaptation. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1980/12/12/archives/screen-polanskis-tess-hardy-through-a-mist.html) - **The New Yorker**, Pauline Kael (60/100, inferred): The film is a sustained feat of craftsmanship that is textured, smooth and hypnotic but tame and lacking in Hardy's visual passion and emotional danger. Kinski gives a delicate performance as a pure sufferer, but the movie reduces Tess to a victim and goes soft on the story's raw elements. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/02/02/the-current-cinema-71) - **Empire**, Patrick Humphries (50/100, inferred): The critic finds the adaptation lengthy and lyrical but criticizes its ponderous pace due to fidelity to the novel and Polanski's relocation of the setting. It is insufferably long but very good in parts. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/tess-review/) - **Time Out**, FD (40/100, inferred): The adaptation has visual beauty and lush elements but feels cloying and hollow overall. It prioritizes the director's preoccupations over the novel's themes and omits key details from the source material. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/tess-1) ## Details - **Director:** Roman Polanski - **Director:** Roman Polanski - **Screenplay:** Gérard Brach, Roman Polanski, John Brownjohn - **Novel:** Thomas Hardy - **Cinematography:** Geoffrey Unsworth, Ghislain Cloquet - **Editor:** Alastair McIntyre, Tom Priestley - **Music:** Philippe Sarde - **Production design:** Pierre Guffroy - **Costume design:** Anthony Powell - **Producer:** Claude Berri - **Cast:** Nastassja Kinski as Tess Durbeyfield; Peter Firth as Angel Clare; Leigh Lawson as Alec d'Urberville; John Collin as John Durbeyfield; Rosemary Martin as Mrs. Durbeyfield; Carolyn Pickles as Marian; Richard Pearson as Vicar of Marlott; David Markham as Reverend Mr. Clare - **Runtime:** 2h 52m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 12 December 1980 - **Genres:** Drama, Romance - **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Nominee, 1980) - **Budget:** $12 million - **Box office:** $20 million ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $5.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AT, BE, BG, BR, CL, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, HR, HU, MX, NO, PL, RO, RS, SE, SI, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1981: Best Director (nominated); Best Original Score (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Cinematography (won); Best Costume Design (won); Best Production Design (won) - César Award for Best Actress 1980: César Award for Best Actress (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Far from the Madding Crowd* (1967): Schlesinger’s Hardy, brisker and sunnier, with Julie Christie choosing between three men and choosing badly. - *Barry Lyndon* (1975), Fi1m 85: Kubrick’s candlelit costume drama moves even more slowly and rewards it more often. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/barry-lyndon.md) - *Jude* (1996): Winterbottom’s Hardy is grey, angry and short; Kate Winslet gives it its pulse. - *Days of Heaven* (1978), Fi1m 85: Malick’s wheat fields at dusk, a rich man, a poor girl, and very little talking. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/days-of-heaven.md) - *Lady Macbeth* (2016): A Victorian country wife who declines to suffer quietly; brisk, cold and 89 minutes. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/tess