Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1488 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-10-27
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 200 minutes

Synopsis
A passionate, sensual and very modern version of Thomas Hardy's infamous novel, combining young, upcoming acting talent with recognisable and much-loved faces. When the beautiful and innocent Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting the manipulative Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent... Whilst unstintingly gorgeous and romantic, this new adaptation is an intense, moving and provocative depiction of the tragically beautiful story.

Synopsis
This lavish adaptation of Thomas Hardy's literary classic start Gemma Arterton (THE QUANTUM OF SOLACE) in the titular role of Tess, the poor peasant girl who becomes a social outcast after she falls pregnant with the child of her rich cousin.

Customer Reviews

Outstanding, Emotional & Beautiful!
I read this book when I was a teenager and found Hardy's style of writing hard going; but it painted a vivid picture of the extremes of the rich and the poor, the depths of emotional despair and the cruel twist of fate. At each crossroad Tess seems to take the wrong path and we are left to ask "what if?".
Having watched and loved the Polanski film, I was expecting alot of the BBC. I wasn't disappointed. Atherton's beauty and touching portrayal of Tess took my breath away. If you don't connect with Tess from the beginning, it is harder to sympathise with her every time she takes a wrong turn, and Atherton captured me from the first scene.
Everything about this adaptation is beautiful ... the cinematography, the casting and the acting.
I was worried from the outset that I wouldnt cry at the end, that somehow this wonderful portrayal would let me down at the crucial climax. Instead I was left sobbing like a baby for about half an hour after the credits rolled and I knew I'd watched something truly special.

I'm counting my chickens...
I'm three quarters through the televised premiere of BBC's Tess, and I'm signing up for the DVDs. It's brought the book to life for me, and the book is lively enough. It captures the desperation, the injustice, the morality and the passion of the story. The cast are great but Gemma Arterton is stunningly brilliant as Tess and the cinematography is just perfect.

As good a dramatisation of any classic I have ever seen and as affecting.
If you scan these reviews you will find that two of them complain that this 'Tess' is too grim and a couple of others complain that it is too 'light' and doesn't reflect the harsh social conditions strongly enough. I think you can safely assume therefore that the makers got it just about right. I certainly think so. The production values throughout are very impressive and the period when Tess works through the winter on a farm, for very low wages, in terrible conditions and cruelly treated, is well conveyed. And on the other hand there are plenty of scenes which are set against wonderful green Hardy landscapes never seen to more advantage than here, as shot with the new HD cameras.
This is the third time that Tess has been done, and all three have been quite superb. The other two were done in the usual cinema feature length form but this one has the advantage, not only of HD, but of an extra hour and more on the running time and so there is room for far more of the novel. Time and again dialogues were expanded on what one remembered and many extra scenes were inserted so that I felt continuously as though the entire space of the novel was being filled out with substantial and significant information that normally you would only get by reading. And by the way I have read Tess but it was back in the late 60's - I did not enjoy it (I really don't think Hardy would have expected me to) and I had no intention of re-reading it but I have since been grateful to Polanski and the ITV version of 15 years ago for keeping it before my attention and making sure that Hardy's necessary and important classic is kept fresh in my mind. I still have no intention of re-reading it and thanks to this version I feel quite comfortable about this.
I said in my Amazon review of the recent 'Mayor Of Casterbridge' that it was better than the book simply because it was more powerful in it's effect, and that Hardy would have agreed with me. I gave my reasons in terms of the Aristotelian theory of Tragedy, and the 'Unities' in particular. I feel the same way about this dramatisation.
I also made the point that Hardy was a writer who by and large described things and people from the outside, and has even been described as a cinematic novelist. I argued that the losses in transfer to screen were therefore minimal. We lose the purely literary value of Hardy's prose of course but this is replaced by the visual accuracy (especially in HD) of what we see for ourselves unmediated by language.
Actually there are other reasons why a dramatisation of Tess can be even more valuable than one of the 'Mayor' and that has to do with the person of Tess herself. I for one believe that Hardy's heart would have overflowed, as mine did, at seeing her so beautifully brought to life as she was here. I still hadn't recovered my composure nearly an hour after Tess met her fate, having switched the TV off immediately out of respect.

Respect is due to all who were involved in this production and I mean all those people low down on the credits as well; film is an industrial production process. Most of the time while watching it I could hardly believe that what I was seeing could possibly be so good, especially as it was all achieved on a TV budget and production schedule.
How could it be this good? We don't really deserve TV of this quality. We don't take TV seriously enough.