Roman Polanski’s ‘Tess’: The Most Problematic Movie Ever Made?

Something terrible happened to Roman Polanski in August 1969: while working in London, his wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by members of the Manson Family. The couple had met on the set of The Fearless Vampire Killers, and were wed just a year and a half before Tate’s murder (she was eight months pregnant when she was killed). The darkness in his life reflected the darkness in his next two major films: 1971’s Macbeth, notoriously controversial for its graphic violent and sexual nature, and 1974’s Chinatown, an Oscar-winning neo-noir that many consider to be one of the greatest films ever made.

In March 1977, another terrible thing happened — although this time it was Polanski who committed the atrocious act. At the Los Angles home of his Chinatown star Jack Nicholson, Polanski, then 43, drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl. Although he plead guilty and served 42 days in prison during his trial, the director fled the country in Feburary of the following year when he realized he might not be served with probation, as the judge in the trial had promised, and would likely face more jail time and possibly be deported. Essentially living as a fugitive in Europe ever since, Polanski has not returned to the United States (or any country that might extradite him back to this country) since.

Two years later, he co-wrote and directed Tess, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Ubervilles starring Nastassja Kinski as the titular peasant girl who suffers a variety of hardships throughout her life — including (but sadly, not limited to) being raped by an older man who leaves her with a baby and a heaping of shame thrown at her by the working-class Victorians that surround her.

Tess is not a fun movie to watch (I can’t imagine that Hardy’s novel would be a beach-read, either); it’s a three-hour slow-burn romantic epic in which its lead character, played perfectly by the 18-year-old Kinski (who manages to portray a combination of innocence and worldliness), is broken down repeatedly throughout her brief life as a result of a misogynistic and Puritanical society. Having grown up poor, Tess Durbeyfield learns that she’s a descendant of a noble family, the d’Urbervilles; her father, desperate to earn back his ancestors’ nobility, sends Tess to live with distant relatives — which is how she meets her cousin Alec. Taken with her beauty, Alec attempts to seduce the young Tess, eventually raping her when she doesn’t relent to his charms.

Tess eventually learns that the d’Ubervilles are impostors who simply bought their name and titles; Alec is not her cousin, and she returns home pregnant. Her child dies, and she beings working as a milkmaid at a local farm where she meets Angel, her true love. On their wedding night, Angel admits to Tess that he’s not a virgin; Tess does the same, recounting the rape that was passed as a seduction. Angel, horrified that Tess is not the innocent he assumed she was, leaves her.

Alone again, Tess returns home. After her father dies, she goes back to Alec and becomes his mistress, as its the only way to support herself and her remaining family members. If that weren’t complicated enough, Angel comes back to find her, now full of remorse for leaving her in the first place. Realizing what she must do, she murders Alec (honestly, this might be one of that most satisfying moments in English literature?) and runs off with Angel. She’s eventually captured, convicted of murder, and hanged.

So, yeah, pretty bleak!

The thing about Tess, which earned six Oscar nominations (and won three for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Costume Design), is that it’s a phenomenal and stunning film that depicts Victorian provincial life. Gorgeously shot by Geoffrey Unsworth and Ghislain Cloquet (who picked up the gig when Unsworth died three months into production), the film is reminiscent of Terrence Malick‘s Days of Heaven with its employment of natural light (especially during the “magic hour” shortly after sunrise and shortly before sunset) and its pastoral setting. It’s an incredible piece of art, and one that is chock-full of material to analyze, particularly how the titular character is viewed as either a heroic or tragic figure. Is she a victim of her conservative society, beaten down because of her class and her gender? Is she a champion for finally taking what she’s deserved — even if she is doomed for it? Is the film itself somewhat sadistic in the way it depicts a woman whose fate is so cursed?

Plus, it’s increasingly difficult, especially nowadays, to separate the sexual assault that takes place early in the film — especially given the film’s poster art, which describes Tess as being “born into a world where they called it seduction and not rape” and “a victim of her own provocative beauty” (yiiiiikes) — from the similar sexual assault the director committed two years before the film premiered in France. It’s already difficult at times to separate the art from the artist, but in this case the two are completely intertwined. Making it even more complicated were the rumors of Kinski’s relationship with Polanski when they met in 1976 — she was 15, he was 43. She has since denied the relationship was sexual (and also admitted that her own father, the actor Klaus Kinski, was sexually abusive). One of the reasons why her Tess is so realistic is because she had her own personal connections with what her character experienced on screen.

Would I recommend the film? Absolutely. It’s a beautiful piece of work, absolutely deserving of its accolades (including its Best Picture nomination, even though it lost the award to Ordinary People). And, naturally, it has a stirring meta-narrative that is impossible to ignore. One must consider the hypothetical, alternate realities that would have prevented the film from being made entirely (if Polanski hadn’t fled the United States and, instead, served a longer prison sentence), or from being a completely different film (Tess is dedicated to Sharon Tate, who gave the Hardy novel to her husband and expressed an interest in playing the main character). But ultimately, the only way to consider Tess is to accept that it exists. It’s an uncomfortable film to watch, but it’s worth the commitment and the wide range of emotions the film stirs during its running time.

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Photos: Everett Collection