2. To The Devil A Daughter (1976)

Nastassja Kinski's second feature, the Peter Syke's directed TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER, is a frustrating film in many respects, most notably in the fact that throughout it is so close to becoming a really great film. Unfortunately, even though it contains one of Christopher Lee's finest performances and several striking sequences, Syke's ambitious film finally falls very short.
By the mid seventies the famed Hammer studios was in serious trouble. The success of films like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, ROSEMARY'S BABY, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE EXORCIST had really changed the landscape of the horror film. Compared to these multi layered, and subversive films made by young filmmakers often barely in their thirties (or younger), the once vital and fresh world of Hammer Horror appeared very tired and old hat to many contemporary horror fans in the seventies.
TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER was a project that Hammer had been kicking around for a very long time. Based very loosely on a Dennis Wheatley, author of THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, novel from the fifties, TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER would prove to be the final Hammer Horror film ever made, even though it actually did quite well for them at the box office. The film greatly benefits from the direction of Sykes, who had helmed the very effective and underrated DEMONS OF THE MIND for Hammer in the early seventies.
The film, which focuses on a group of defrocked priests and a secret coven looking to sacrifice a young nun in order to grant the devil entry to rule the earth, is a strangely plotted and at times dreamlike production that is lovely to look at but ultimately hard to watch. Part of the problem no doubt lay in the behind the scenes difficulties ranging from a lead actor (Richard Widmark) who hated the project completely, a script that was undergoing constant rewrites and a final few moments that needed to be spectacular but was one of the biggest fizzle jobs in seventies horror. It is actually a miracle that TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER is as good as it is, in lesser hands it probably would have been a complete disaster but, in its first half at least, it manages to be a quite good and sometimes near great meditation on evil and the corruption of once good men. I think of particular importance is the contribution of writer Chrstopher Wicking who had infused evil, in the undervalued BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB, with the same kind of dramatic and dark pull that TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER possesses.

Nastassja's age has been questioned in this film and I have seen some reports say that she was as young as 15 or as old as 17 when she shot it. Made just past a year after THE WRONG MOVE, it is most likely that she had just turned sixteen or was close to it. Her age is often brought up no doubt in part due to the full frontal nudity she has in the film as well as the infamous 'reverse birth' sequence that is still pretty jaw dropping.
Whatever age she was, she gives a very good performance in a role that had to be pretty demanding for such a young actor. Like Wenders, Sykes seemed to understand how effective she could be in silence and some of the films best moments with her just focus on her face. Even at this young age, she is very good at representing a seething internal conflict and this is most apparent in the great scene where she pulls the upside down cross out and the viewer realizes that this seemingly innocent young girl is indeed already a part of this dark coven.
Richard Widmark is okay in the role considering how miserable he reportedly was, although he slips completely over the top towards the end and compromises what is already a weak conclusion even further. Denholm Elliott offers his usual, sympathetic solid support and it is always a pleasure to see Honor Blackman. The film though completely belongs to Christopher Lee who gives one of the most chilling performances of his entire career. As the defrocked priest who exclaims near the beginning of the film, "It is not heresy and I will not recant", Lee gives a totally believable performance as a man who was perhaps once very good but has completely given himself over to the darkest of forces. It was a personal role to Lee and he had been trying to get Wheatley's novel to the screen for years. For all of it's shortcomings, Christopher Lee's work in TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER makes it a fitting finale to Hammer's Horror empire.
The final moments of the film are among the most disappointing in any horror film of the seventies. While I don't agree with Lee's assertion that it completely ruins the film, it does seriously call into question much of the style and near greatness that came before it. It has been said that financial issues were a huge part as to why the ending wasn't more successful but to this day it bugs me that the time couldn't have been taken to improve it, even if just slightly.

There is much to praise in the film outside of Syke's mostly solid direction and accomplished acting by Lee, Kinski and Denholm. The Paul Glass composed score is very effective as is the sharp editing of John Trumper. The editing of this picture must have been a nightmare, especially in the first half hour with the alternating story lines and dreamlike sequences but Trumper handles it beautifully for the most part. The film would have been a lot more convoluted and confusing in lesser hands. The talented ITALIAN JOB and GET CARTER editor would sadly work on very few projects after TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER though. David Watkin's photography is nice and it is especially good at achieving a languidly creepy tone that is hard to argue with. Kinski's famous nude scene is photographed really beautifully and it's to Sykes and Watkins credit that, what could have been an unbearbly tasteless moment, plays out so well.
The talented Les Bowie, who had done special effects with Hammer since THE QUARTERMASS EXPERIMENT, is let down by a lack of funds on the producers part. Still I don't think the affects are quite as bad as some critics and fans have mentioned, and the must have inspired ALIEN sequence is very well done.
As I stated before, TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER actually did pretty well in its initial run and got a lot more attention than most Hammer films from the mid seventies. Ironically it achieved the updated feel that Hammer wanted, and had the company been able to afford to they might have remained viable players in the marketplace. As it was though, the film turned out to be not only the last Hammer horror film but the next to last feature they would ever produce. 1979's THE LADY VANISHES remake would shut the once mighty Hammer's doors completely with only two tv series coming afterwards.
Outside of getting her seen by many more people than WRONG MOVE, TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER did little for Nastassja's budding film career. Her nude shots appeared in magazines all over the world and it led to a few years of work posing in, mostly German, men's magazines. The role did get her seen though, and that would prove vitally important to the young Kinski who would soon appear in a flurry of films that would lead to her triumphant role 4 years later in Polanski's TESS.
TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER might not be a total success but it is well worth watching and the Anchor Bay dvd from a few years back features a very nice uncut transfer of it. Included is a near thirty minute documentary that is very interesting and features an honest interview with a still disappointed Christopher Lee. Nastassja was not sadly not featured in the documentary and the dvd would have been much more valuable with a commentary track.
While not of the standard of her first film, THE WRONG MOVE, TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER remains a film in Nasatssja's canon well worth seeking out and watching. As the last horror film Hammer ever produced, historically it remains an important chapter in British film history.

4. Passion Flower Hotel (Boarding School) 1978

"I dislike PASSION FLOWER HOTEL so much I wish I had the money to buy it up and burn it."-Nastassja Kinski, 1981.

Wolfgang Peterson's television film, FOR YOUR LOVE ONLY, had given Nastassja a great deal of notoriety in 1977 and to follow it up she made the rather odd decision to travel to Austria to film a sexploitation coming of age comedy called PASSION FLOWER HOTEL. The film is one of the most widely available of all of Nastassja's film, with a tons of public domain copies flooding the market under a variety of titles including, BOARDING SCHOOL and PREPPY SCHOOLGIRLS.

Directed by a relative novice, Andre Farwagi, and taken from teenager Rosalind Erskine's novel, PASSION FLOWER HOTEL concerns a group of boarding school girls so desperate to have sex that they set up a group designed to sell favors to a local boys school. That is probably the easiest one sentence plot description that is worth coming up with. Set in the late fifties, three Bill Hailey and The Comets songs are heard on the soundtrack, although everything in the film screams 1977, PASSION FLOWER HOTEL'S virtues are easy to pick out. First off the film looks absolutely fabulous and was shot by none other than EMMANUELLE cinematographer, Richard Suzuki. Looking very much like a David Hamilton photograph come to life, Suzuki's photography remains fresh and appealing throughout the whole film, even though the film itself loses most of its appeal after the first few minutes. PASSION FLOWER HOTEL'S other big thing it has going for it is its great Francis Lai soundtrack. While not among Lai's best work it does have several cues that would fit nicely on any Lai best of collection and as a soundtrack lp works very well.
Without Nastassja, Suzuki's photography and Lai's score there would be very little to say about PASSION FLOWER HOTEL. It's a sexploitation flick that delivers very little skin, a coming of age comedy without any real laughs and finally a period piece that is never very evocative of the period it is attempting to portray.
PASSION FLOWER HOTEL'S biggest problem lies in that it never fully commits to what kind of film it wants to be. Part of the blame probably rests in the original source material that was said to have actually been written by a middle age man (Roger Longrigg) instead of the credited teenage Erskine. The film never seems to decide whether or not it wants to invest fully in these young girls and play as a rites of passage film or if it just wants to be a leering look at young ladies in various states of undress.
The film's best moments, not surprisingly, involve Nastassja who gives the warmest performance of her early career. While often later characterized by a more distant European cool, here Nastassja is all smiles and laughter. The scenes of Nastassja hoola hooping, dancing and interacting with the other teenage actresses are among the most surprising of her earliest work and she wouldn't get the chance to be so
funny until 1984's UNFAITHFULLY YOURS.
The film really comes alive in the scenes with Nastassja and the boy of her dreams Fibs, played by Gerry Sudqusit. Sundquist, who would die tragically by his own hand in 1993, is very charismatic and shares a real chemistry with Nastassja. Their pretty explicit love scene at the very end of the film is the highlight of the whole production and probably a sign that the producers should have just went the more exploitative route for the whole film, as the writing wasn't strong enough to really sell the coming of age story.
The final love scene between Nastassja and Sudquuist, does almost seemed dropped from another film. It is like the producers suddenly realized they had made a skin film and had forgotten the nudity. The scene, set to an evocative piece of Lai music, works very well and manages to be extremely erotic while never slipping into just bad taste.
The film features some familiar faces outside of Nastassja's. HELLRAISER actor Sean Chapman has worked consistently since the film and can currently be seen in Michael Winterbottom's A MIGHTY HEART. Fassbinder actor Kurt Raab also pops up as does Austin Power's 'Alotta Fagina' herself, Fabiana Udenio.

PASSION FLOWER HOTEL premiered in Germany in April of 1978 and did fairly well at the box office due to Nastassja's FOR YOUR LOVE ONLY fame. Roman Polanski had cautioned Nastassja to not due the film and it would turn out to be a project that she would regret almost immediately. It would play throughout Europe in 1979 and would finally filter over to the States on home video in the eighties.
John Barry would score a London play with Chad and Jeremy called PASSION FLOWER HOTEL that featured Jane Birkin but I am not sure how close that was to either the book or the film. The movie is, as I noted before, available on any number of public domain dvds and they all pretty much look like they were mastered from the old eighties VHS release, BOARDING SCHOOL.

Nastassja would thankfully have very little time to dwell over the failure of PASSION FLOWER HOTEL, in less than a year she would be starring in a high profile film with one of Italy's greatest actors and getting the best reviews of her young career. PASSION FLOWER HOTEL joins FOR YOUR LOVE ONLY as being the weakest of Nastassja's early roles but is essential viewing for her fans, if just for how different it is from her later more famous roles.

6. Tess (1979)

The late and much missed Sharon Tate loved Thomas Hardy's novel TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES dearly. She was said to have related to the title character in an extremely personal and intense way. Shortly before her murder in 1969, Sharon Tate gave her husband, Roman Polanski, a copy of the novel in the hopes that he would film it one day. Ten years after she was the victim of one of the most brutal and senseless crimes of the century, Roman Polanski released his version of the work she had felt so completely connected to. The mood of the entire film is set just after the film's opening credits with the stirring and sweet, "To Sharon"
Polanski had kept Thomas Hardy's influential and important work with him throughout the seventies. After Tate's murder he knew that he had to film the novel in tribute to her memory and spirit but that the trick was finding an actress that would be able to portray the difficult and heartbreaking character of Hardy's doomed heroine the way it needed to be.
Roman Polanski first caught a look at Nastassja Kinski in the mid seventies and befriended her and her mother. Throughout the seventies he was Kinski's mentor, sometimes lover and among the most influential people in her life. TESS wasn't actually the first time they had worked together, their first collaboration was on an intriguing pirate themed photo shoot for Vogue magazine in 1976. The photos from the session would be among the best taken of the young Kinski and would foreshadow one of Polanski's dream projects, the ill fated PIRATES that he would eventually film in 1985.
Filmed on location in France throughout a nine month period just after his masterful THE TENANT, Polanksi's TESS is his most personal and hauntingly beautiful work. It is also his most human and Nastassja, with her warm aura of dignity and decency was the only person who could have injected Hardy's character with so much soul.
Everything about TESS works. It is paced perfectly and never drags even though it runs nearly three hours. The majestic score by Philippe Sarde is among the award winning composers best. Anthony Powell's costume design and the art direction of Jack Stephens are both peerless in their craft and attention to detail. The look of the film is perfectly realized even though the cast and crew suffered a major shock when beloved cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth died halfway through production and Ghislain Cloquet stepped in and did the impossible task of finsihing the film. Watching TESS is like watching an extremely complicated machine with hundreds of tiny parts that are working perfectly to compliment the other and throughout it's mammoth running time, the complex machine never once slips.

TESS tells the story of the young Tess Durbeyfield whose drunken father finds out at the beginning of the film that their poverty stricken family is actually descended from the wealthy and proper D'Urbervilles. Tess is sent to claim kin to, what is thought, to be among the other final remaining D'Ubervilles and her life after is systematically and tragically torn apart by virtually every man she meets and the society that she was unfortunate enough to have been born in.
At the core of TESS is the idea of fate. An early long tracking shot towards the beginning points directly to this as Polanski films Kinski walking down a long path surrounded by a covering of trees to what she thinks is her kin's house. This is one of the most ominous shots in all of Polanski's impressive filmography and there isn't any question, for Tess or the audience, that she is walking into another world and there won't be any turning back. Throughout the film's running time we are continually presented with the idea that Tess is being led by some sort of unspoken destiny, and that no matter how hard she fights it there is finally not going to be an escape for her.
TESS is also one of the most masterful films ever made in dealing with the problems of class. One of the great geniuses of the screen play, credited to Polanski, Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn, is that our leading character is ultimately somebody who doesn't care about position, only respect. Everyone around Tess is obsessed by their positions. Her family is jealous of the higher ups and want nothing more than to be among them, no matter if it costs them their daughter. The higher ups in the film are all portrayed as cold and obsessed with their position and how much it means to be able to have their way over the lowers. Tess is caught in the middle of this struggle but as a character all she wants is to love and be loved. Tess is the one truly honorable character in the film and she is the one character who is constantly getting run over by the harsh system her life has been destined to. One of the most telling lines in the film is said by a worker after Tess rides away with the shallow and insensitive Alec, "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."
Along with the question of class that is repeatedly brought up, TESS also centers on treatment of women in society as something less than even second rate. Almost without exception, every villain in TESS is a man and Polanski shows us a harsh world where it isn't just that women are looked down upon but there isn't even the slightest hint that the men in it have any feeling for them, other than how they make them feel as men. Peter Firth's Angel is the darkest character in the film mainly because he claims a goodness and caring but even towards the end when he takes Tess back we are still given the feeling that the act is ultimately a selfish one on his part. Angel, like every other man in the film, ultimately can't understand what Tess means when she explains, "What all women say, some may feel." The only person who says exactly what she feels, and who genuinely loves in this film, is Tess herself.
Nowhere in the film are these issues of class and the split between men and women more noticeable than in the astonishing sequence where Tess takes her dead baby to the town's priest asking for a church burial. After explaining that she had baptised the baby by herself and having the priest tell her that was right in the eyes of God she is still turned away from the church because the father is afraid of the town's reaction. Here Polanski presents us wity a holy man who cowers more towards the very man made rules of class and sexism rather than the wishes of the God he proclaims to serve. Kinski is stunning in this sequence and Polanksi's unnerving closeup of her face and her denouncement of the church is among the greatest moments in either one of their canons.
TESS is finally a film about nature, specifically how far society is slipping away from it and how Tess is essentially a part of it. Kinski is often photographed as not only a character on a landscape but as essentially belonging to it. It is no coincidence that the first close up of her in the film is a stunning shot of her standing in front of a sunset. The rising and setting sun will play a part throughout the film and it is almost always shot with Kinski somewhere in the frame. There is something almost mystical about Tess in these moments and whether she is speaking about laying in the grass and transporting herself to the sky to a table full of confused onlookers or having a wild deer approach her in the words, Tess is very much in tune with the world that the men around her are only looking to pillage and destroy. Of course one of the most heartbreaking aspects of the film is that, much like the land that the men will ultimately destroy, Tess is equally savaged and finally left very much behind to pay for the mens crimes against nature and humanity.
Polanski's direction of the film is flawless. This doesn't feel like a film about the past, this feels like a film filmed in this past. TESS is filled with some of the most beautifully composed shots of his career, from the close ups of Kinski whistling to a group of caged birds to her staring through a window (both of which recall Sharon Tate in THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS) to the final shots of the vast and foggy landscape surrounding Kinski as she sleeps atop Stonehenge. TESS might not be the greatest film Polanski ever made but it is without question the most beautiful.

Despite all of the great people that worked so tirelessly behind the scenes on TESS, the film would not have worked without Nastassja Kinski. She is magnificent throughout the film and gives an explosively humbly performance that infuses the character with a dignity that very few actresses could have even begun to approach. As promising as she was in her first five films, through Polanski's lens Kinski comes alive and carries the film through from beginning to end in an endearing performance that is refreshing, tragic and ultimately heartbreaking.

TESS was a film that nobody thought had a chance and yet when it came out it was one of the most acclaimed and talked about films of Roman Polanski's career. Nominated for six academy awards (including picture and director) and winner of three, TESS was a smashing success. Kinski was shamefully ignored by the academy but was nominated for a Cesar and Golden Globe and the film made her a global superstar.
The film made it's debut on VHS in the eighties in full screen transfer and outside of a Japanese widescreen disc, this was the only way to see it for two decades. Thankfully it finally got its due two years ago in a gorgeous widescreen special edition dvd that has an engrossing ninety minute documentary on the making of the film featuring interviews with nearly everyone connected to the project.

TESS is a near perfect film and one of the great cinematic meditations on fate, destiny, class struggle, sexism and redemption. The teaming of Roman Polanski and Nastassja Kinski was one of the great partnerships in modern film and while it is regrettable that they have never worked together again, perhaps it is right. TESS would be mark an end to a period in Polanski's life and career, it remains his most personal work and one of his greatest. As Tess, Nastassja was given the most important role in her career and there are few performances in cinema that I hold in higher esteem.
I have no doubt that Sharon Tate would have been most pleased and highly moved had she been allowed to see the film that she had asked Roman to make in that fateful and tragic summer of 1969. Her contribution to the film shouldn't be undervalued and TESS is a bold, beautiful and fitting tribute to her memory.

16. Maria's Lovers

The Russian film director Andrei Konchalovsky was born in the late summer of 1937. He became interested in both theater and film early in his life and would begin an extremely noteworthy career in both just after his twentieth birthday. Konchalovsky is a massively important Russian director who was, among other things, a friend and collaborator with the legendary Andrei Tarkovsky. MARIA’S LOVERS is notable not only in that it marks Konchalovsky’s English language film debut but it also marks one of the first English language films ever to be shot by a Russian director.
The Gerard Brach scripted MARIA’S LOVERS focuses on a small American town, just after World War Two, that has been spiritually and emotionally ripped apart. The opening newsreel footage of WW2 vets suffering from Post Traumatic Stress syndrome and general combat fatigue is haunting stuff, and Konchalovsky’s handling of the material immediately alerts the audience that MARIA’S LOVERS is going to be an extremely serious minded piece of work.

The story centers on Ivan, a damaged soldier returning home from the war to his drunken father and his lost love Maria. Ivan, played with a beautifully scarred intensity by John Savage, is struggling with a loss of not just a couple of years of his life but also his soul. Kinski’s Maria is the one thing that got him through the horrors he witnessed and was a part of, but when he returns he finds that she has taken up with another soldier named Al, played well by Vincent Spano.
Everyone in the film seems to be in love with Maria. Ivan’s father, characterized wonderfully by the iconic Robert Mitchum, is obsessed by her as she reminds him of his late wife. A travelling guitar playing stranger, Keith Carradine, becomes equally entranced by her but Maria really only loves Ivan, unfortunately he becomes impotent around her even after they are married.
MARIA’S LOVERS is marked by the remarkably sensitive direction of Konchalovsky, the searing and poetic performance of Kinski and the picture perfect photography of DP Juan Ruiz Anchia. It is a tender and moving portrait of personal alienation and stands as one of the five best films that Nastassja Kinski ever had the chance to appear in.
The film works best in its scenes between Kinski and Savage, as their relationship slips further and further down a hole of doubt, frustration and sexual tension that can’t be satisfied. Savage is remarkable in the film and the internal strife he is experiencing is palatable. The film also soars in the moments Kinski shares with Mitchum. She would speak of his penetrating eyes after making the film and he does stare at her with a kind of desire and longing that is extremely rare for modern English language cinema.
The film falters a bit in that it is perhaps overly ambitious at times. It is questionable whether or not the travelling Carradine was really necessary as it does take away from the main storyline, but his inclusion does give Kinski’s Maria an outlet for the blossoming sexuality that is overtaking her.
It is this repressed sexuality that gives the film its most remarkable scene, involving a tour de force moment with Kinski alone in her bedroom. It is one of the most heartbreakingly erotic and beautifully performed scenes of Nastassja’s career and Konchalovsky’s direction of it is splendidly tasteful without feeling compromised. It is one of Kinski’s great moments where she is confronted just by the camera and her own internal solitude, a solitude that she was able to portray as well as an actor that has ever been filmed.

The film also does a remarkable job at presenting America at one of its most pivotal moments. The fact that it took a Russian director, a French Screenwriter, a Spanish photographer and a German actress to do it makes it all the more incredible. MARIA’S LOVERS is one of the eighties great lost films, and the muted reception that greeted it frankly astounds me to this day.
MARIA’S LOVERS was shot on a relatively low budget in less than two months on location in Pennsylvania and was produced by the Cannon group. Cannon eventually became known as more of an outlet for action films, but for a while with films like this one and LADY CHATTERLY’S LOVER (1982) they were really trying to be a more serious player in the world cinema market.
The film would open across Europe in late 1984 to some acclaim but it was greeted by just mixed reviews and poor box office when it opened in the States in January of 85. Kinski’s wonderfully heartfelt performance as Maria was honored with the coveted Silver Ribbon award from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists and Konchalovsky was nominated for best foreign film director at the 1985 Cesar awards. The Silver Ribbon was a big deal for Kinski as it would mark one of the only times that the critical establishment finally recognized her as the wonderfully effective actress she was.
MARIA’S LOVERS is a really special film and it is absolutely essential for fans of Nastassja Kinski. It is currently available on Region 1 DVD in a fairly good widescreen presentation that unfortunately only includes the trailer as an extra.
Konchalovsky would thankfully be given more attention for his directing skills with his next movie, the very exciting and well made RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985). He has since worked in both American and Russian films and is currently working on a production called THE FORBIDDEN CITY with Alec Baldwin.
MARIA’S LOVERS would mark the end to Nastassja’s golden period as a star in America. After shooting HAREM, she would film REVOLUTION which would prove disastrous and she would work almost exclusively in European films for the next decade. When thinking of this I can only agree with Nastassja’s quote concerning her friend Roman Polanski’s exile from the States…”It’s America’s loss.”

Tess Revisited

Sharon Tate loved Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the Dubervilles dearly, and related to Hardy’s doomed heroine in an extremely personal way. Shortly before her horrific murder in 1969, Sharon gave her husband, famed director Roman Polanski, a copy of the novel in the hopes that he would film it one day. Ten years after she was the victim of one of the most brutal and senseless crimes of the century, Polanski (who was in the shadow of yet another personal tragedy) released his version of the work his beloved late wife had felt so completely connected to. He would indeed set the mood of the entire film just after the opening credits with the stirring and sweet, "To Sharon", and Tess remains one of the most personal works from one of the world’s great directors.



Polanski had kept Thomas Hardy's influential and important book with him throughout the seventies. After Tate's murder he knew that he had to film the novel in tribute to her memory and spirit, but the trick was finding an actress that would be able to portray the difficult and heartbreaking role of Hardy's most iconic character with the grace and passion it called for.



Polanski first caught a look at young Nastassja Kinski in the mid seventies and befriended her and her mother. Throughout the seventies he was Kinski's mentor, friend and among the most influential people in her life. Tess actually wouldn’t be their first collaboration, as they had shot an intriguing pirate themed photo shoot for Vogue magazine in 1976 that would help set Kinski’s career in motion. The photos from the session would be among the best taken of the young Kinski and would foreshadow one of Polanski's dream projects, the ill-fated Pirates that he would eventually film in 1985.



Nastassja, or Nastassia as she was known in this period, had appeared in almost half a dozen films before Tess and had already made international waves with her work in Hammer’s To The Devil a Daughter and in the extremely interesting Stay as You Are. There is no question that Tess was Kinski’s big break though and she knew it. She also knew that in accepting the part she would be fulfilling a very personal vision for Polanski. The young German actress knew that Polanski, “had wanted to do it with his wife”, and that indeed in many ways, “Sharon was Tess (and) she was always there, anyway, with him." It was a big challenge for the young actress, who had already spent her life in the shadow of her legendary father Klaus, but Kinski was up for it and she spent an exhausting but dedicated two years preparing for the part. Kinski said of the prep time, “Roman came along and gave me Tess, it was like…it gave me such dignity, you know what I mean? He would be very strict with me and send me to school. And then when we did the movie he said, ‘I really want you to do this for me, because I wanted to do it for my wife and it means so much to me. But the only way you can do the film is to show you’ll learn the accent, So I’m going to send you to England for four, five, six months and when you come back we’ll do the test.’ He gave me a lot of respect. It was all very serious. He was a very severe person, in the best sense.” By the time the cameras began rolling, Nastassia Kinski had become Tess and it remains one of the key roles in her career.



Filmed on location in France throughout a nine-month period just after his masterfully intense and terrifying The Tenant, Polanksi's Tess is his most delicate and hauntingly beautiful work. It is also his most human work and, even though Polanski is still someone recognized as a master of thrillers and the macabre, he brings an incredibly warm and decent aura to Hardy’s monumental novel. Kinski fell into the difficult role with a remarkable grace. She later said, “I’ve always dreamed of being a person like her. She’s not spoiled by the society she moves through. She still stays untouched. She goes through everything for love.” The entire project can indeed be viewed as a work of love, told by a director who by all accounts should have been totally shattered personally and professionally by 1979.




Everything about Tess works, from the remarkably precise pace that never drags in its three hour running time, to the majestic score by Philippe Sarde that manages to place the viewer firmly inside the spirit of Hardy’s unforgettable heroine. Anthony Powell's costume design and the art direction of Jack Stephens are both astonishing attentive in their detail, and the look of the film is perfectly realized even though the cast and crew suffered a major shock when beloved cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth died halfway through production, leaving Ghislain Cloquet to step in and do the near impossible task of finishing the film. Watching Tess is like watching an extremely complicated machine with hundreds of tiny parts that are working perfectly to compliment the other and, throughout it's mammoth running time, the complex machine never once slips.



Sarde’s aforementioned score has perhaps never gotten all the attention it deserves. After the success of their collaboration on The Tenant, Polanski asked Sarde to score Tess and it would turn out to be perhaps the finest soundtrack from the famed composer. Sarde's Oscar nominated score is a moving and at times sweeping work that stands very much apart from a typical period piece soundtrack. There is something remarkably fresh and modern sounding about the work, but it never feels out of place with Polanski's images from the past.



While the behind the scenes players all could constitute great stories themselves, it is the story on screen that remains the most endearing aspect of Tess. For those who might not be familiar with Hardy’s book or any of the filmed adaptations, Tess tells the story of the young Tess Durbeyfield whose drunken father finds out that their poverty stricken family is actually descended from the wealthy and proper D'Urbervilles. Tess is sent to claim kin to, what is thought, to be among the other final remaining D'Ubervilles, and her life after is systematically and tragically torn apart by virtually every man she meets, and the society that she was unfortunate enough to have been born in.



At the core of Tess are the ideas of fate and destiny. A particularly long shot early in the film of Kinski wandering down a seemingly endless path points to the film’s key preoccupations. The beautifully rendered shot is one of the most impressive and ominous in all of Polanski's awe-inspiring canon and there isn't any question, for Tess or the audience, that she is walking into another world and there won't be any turning back. Throughout the film's running time we are continually presented with the idea that Tess is being led by some sort of unspoken destiny, and that no matter how hard she fights it there is finally not going to be an escape for her.



Tess is also one of the most masterful films ever made in dealing with the problems of class. One of the great qualities of the screenplay, credited to Polanski, Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn, is that our leading character is ultimately somebody who doesn't care about position, only respect. Everyone around Tess on the other hand is very much obsessed by his or her position. Her family is jealous of the higher-ups and want nothing more than to be among them, no matter if it costs them their daughter. The higher-ups in the film are all portrayed as cold and obsessed with their status, and how much it means to be able to have their way over the lower classes that surround them. Tess is caught in the middle of this struggle, but as a character all she wants is to love and be loved. Tess is the one truly honorable character in the film, and she is the one character who is constantly getting run over by the harsh system her life has been destined to.



Along with the question of class that is repeatedly brought up, Tess also centers on the treatment of women in society as something less than even second rate. Almost without exception, every villain in Tess is a man, and Polanski shows us a harsh world where it isn't just that women are looked down upon, but there isn't even the slightest hint that the men in it have any feeling for them, other than how they make them feel as men. Peter Firth's Angel is the darkest character in the film mainly because he claims goodness and caring, but even towards the end when he takes Tess back we are still given the feeling that his act is ultimately a selfish one. Angel, like every other man in the film, ultimately can't understand what Tess means when she explains, "What all women say, some may feel." The only person who says exactly what she feels, and who genuinely loves in this film, is Tess herself. The role would prove life altering for Kinski who said of it, “I’ve changed so much with this part…Tess is such a rich complex character…you find yourself taking on her patience and strength and courage…I’ve always dreamed of being a person like her.” Kinski also recognized how much of Polanski himself could be found in the film, “Roman is a true poet. He is very cruel sometimes too. He just wants the inner part of you. He is every character in the movie. He is Tess and Angel and the countryside and everything.” She summed up the film with, “Tess is about the evilness of a mass people. It is the story of how laws and society can only destroy the purest people, how the truest and purest are trapped by the spiders…Tess is much deeper than revenge. She is always the same, knowing she would die again and again for the same thing.” She finally admitted that, “Tess was my first real confrontation with myself, my own thoughts and feelings…the book (and film) became like a drug to me.”




Nowhere in the film are these issues of class, confrontation, and the split between men and women more noticeable than in the gut wrenching sequence where Tess takes her dead child to the town's priest asking for a church burial. After explaining that she had baptized the baby by herself, and having the priest tell her that she was right in the eyes of God, she is still turned away from the church because the father is afraid of the town's reaction. Here Polanski presents us with a so-called holy man who cowers more towards the very man made rules of class and sexism rather than the wishes of the God he proclaims to serve. Kinski is stunning in this sequence and Polanksi's unnerving closeup of her face is among the greatest moments in either one of their careers.



Tess is also very much a film about nature and our relation to it, specifically how Tess remains part of her God made surroundings while society slips further away. Kinski is often photographed as not only a character on a landscape but as essentially belonging to it. It is no coincidence that the first close up of her in the film is a shot of her in front of a sunset. The rising and setting sun will play a part throughout the film and it is almost always shot with Kinski somewhere in the frame. There is something almost mystical about Tess in these moments, and whether she is speaking about laying in the grass and transporting herself to the sky to a table full of confused onlookers, or having a wild deer approach her in the words, Tess is very much in tune with the world that the men around her are only looking to pillage. Of course one of the most heartbreaking aspects of the film is that, much like the land that the men will ultimately destroy, Tess is equally savaged and finally left very much behind to pay for the men’s crimes against nature and humanity.




Polanski's direction of the film is flawless. This doesn't feel like a film about the past, this feels like a film actually filmed in this past. Tess is filled with some of the most beautifully composed shots of his career, from the close ups of Kinski whistling to a group of caged birds, to her staring through a window (both of which recall Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers) to the final shots of the vast and foggy landscape surrounding Kinski as she sleeps atop Stonehenge. Tess might not be the greatest film Polanski ever made, but it is without question the most beautiful.




Despite all of the great people that worked so tirelessly behind the scenes on Tess, the film would not have worked without Nastassja Kinski. She is magnificent throughout the film and gives an explosively humble performance that infuses the character with a dignity that very few actresses could have even begun to approach. As promising as she was in her first five films, through Polanski's lens Kinski comes alive and carries Tess through from beginning to end in an endearing performance that is refreshing, tragic and ultimately heartbreaking. Kinski would herself call the Golden Globe winning performance, “the best thing I’ve ever done, not in terms of performance maybe, but the purest and the most beautiful thing.”



Tess was a film that nobody thought had a chance, and yet when it came out it was one of the most acclaimed and talked about works of Roman Polanski's career. Nominated for six Academy Awards (including picture and director) and winner of three, Tess was a smashing success. Despite the Golden Globe, Kinski was shamefully ignored at the Oscars, one of the great oversights in the Academy’s history.






Critical reactions were almost universally unanimous in their praise. Many not surprisingly focused on Kinski’s performance. John Coleman would write in The New Statesman, “In her first starring role Nastassia Kinski, whose occasional resemblance to the young Ingrid Bergman is startling, does more than might be expected of her: even the West Country accent works a lot of the time...she is far more than a pretty face.", while Tom Milne in the Monthly Film Bulletin would sum it up succulently with, "Kinski (was very much) the right raw material for Hardy's Tess."




Some critics would question Kinski’s accent in the film, while others had problems with her youth and German heritage. It is a tribute to Polanski’s film that repeated viewings bring out the richness of Kinski’s performance in extremely poignant ways. David Denby partially changed his mind about Kinski’s work in the film after re-watching it. Whereas originally he wrote in the pages of New York magazine, "The principal problem with the movie is its star, Nastassia Kinski is a slender, beautiful girl who bears a startling facial resemblance to Ingrid Bergman, unfortunately reminding us how well Bergman would have played a doomed romantic heroine like Tess. In Brief Kinski doesn't have the range for it.”, he would later state, “"The beauty of Nastassia Kinski in Roman Polanski's Tess is so great that, at times, simply gazing upon her loveliness satisfies a moviegoers every longing. Polanski has clearly taught her a great deal...Kinski is like a young aristocrat in an 18th century painting...at the same time, her dark eyes and full, ripe lips (the lower protrudes, just slightly, in a suggestion of sensual hunger) are the features of a passionately alive woman, not a noble idea....Polanski uses her very shrewdly...her confusion is exquisite.”







Perhaps more than anything else, the critical reaction to Kinski in Tess highlights the problem that would haunt her throughout the rest of her career, namely that critics and the public couldn’t get past her beauty no matter how good she was. How ironic that many of the harmful attitudes present in Tess towards women would remain in effect in 1979, and as well in 2009.





The film made its debut on VHS in the mid eighties in a full screen transfer and, outside of a Japanese widescreen disc, this was the only way to see it for two decades. Thankfully it finally got its due several years in a gorgeous widescreen special edition dvd that features an engrossing ninety minute documentary on the making of the film.




Tess is one of Roman Polanski’s key films and one of the great cinematic meditations on fate, destiny, class struggle, sexism and redemption ever shot. The teaming of Polanski and Kinski was one of the great partnerships in modern film and while it is regrettable that they have never worked together again, perhaps it is right as they would have been hard pressed to top Tess.





Tess, outside of being one of the most powerful and moving films in modern cinema, stands as a great tribute to the still much missed Sharon Tate. For those who are aware of the film and Polanski’s history, it is hard to watch Tess today without occasionally flashing on those oh so haunting home movies the staggeringly beautiful Tate looking so unbelievably happy with what should have been a wonderful life still in front of her…the work of Polanski, Kinski, Sarde and everyone involved with Tess begins with these images of Sharon Tate, and the film remains a breathtaking and haunting tribute to her.



***This piece was cobbled together from several that I wrote a couple of years ago for Nostalgia Kinky. Please excuse its choppiness.***