HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H9872 9/14/98 "TESS ON A&E" ========================================= Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 08:57:59 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Tess on A&E Dear All, I hope some of you were able to watch part one of A&E's production of _Tess_ last night. I was quite impressed, a pleasant surprise in contrast to PBS's disappointing version of _FFMC_ last May. After looking at part two tonight I would like to discuss it with you. Do check your local listing for the time. Regards, Betty Cortus hardycor@mailhost2.csusm.edu ********** Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 10:47:55 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Tess on A&E Hi Betty---a quickie! We missed the first few minutes of both TESS episodes (will have to view again at another time). Thought it the best TH ever done on film. Astutely departed from the text at strategic points to enhance the emotional tone, mood etc. This worked, visually, very well indeed and preserved the spirit of the book in a way that going verbatim would not have done (ie., best: baptism scene/dairymaids carried across the flooded lane). The dynamics of the Tess/Alec and the Tess/Angel relationships were especially fine-- sensitively FELT rather than textually-dictated. Gripes? the musical score (ugh!) and the bathing of too many scenes in the proverbial golden-glow (overdone). Have to fly -- but can't wait to hear what other viewers thought (and thanks Betty for giving out all the broadcasting times--very helpful!) Back later, Cheers, Rosemarie ********** Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 09:36:01 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: Tess on A&E I agree with you Rosemarie. I just loved this production of_Tess_. Even the reedy music seemed to me to be appropriate to the pastoral setting. My only real gripe (apart from the insistent commercials) was the substitution of "mankind" for "the President of the Immortals" at the end. I thought this was a needless violation of the author's intent, placing the blame for her destiny totally on human failure rather than allowing for the mindless workings of the Immanent Will. I too am anxious to hear what others thought. Betty ********** Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 1:29 pm EDT (17:29:02 UT) From: "Robert C. Schweik Dr" Organization: State University of New York - College at Fredonia Subject: Tess on A&E At the beginning of the A&E *Tess* I felt a little disappointed; the version in which Natasha Kinski played Tess brought, it seemed to me, the opening of the novel more vividly to life. But as the drama progressed, and particularly in the second half, I found myself all but completely won over by the extraorinary acting of the characters of Tess, Angel, and Alec. By the end, I was caught up in what had become for me one of the most moving films I've seen in quite a while. Some questions. Both Polanski and whoever scripted the A&E version decided to leave out the final scene with Angel and Liza-Lu walking off hand-in-hand. Would the novel have been better for the same excision? Unlike some, I had no problem with the music--in fact agree with Betty Cortus that it worked well. I *did* have a negative reaction to the voice-overs: they struck me as generally clumsy and intrusive. One exception, though, was the scene near the end where a figure looking remarkably like Hardy walks by Tess and Angel and remarks on what he sees by quoting from Hardy's poetry. Finally, I've often said to myself after viewing cinema adaptations of Hardy's novels that they suffer (and I think they do) from the lack of narrative voice that in so many ways adds such a rich dimension to Hardy's fiction. Would, I wondered, the films be improved by an artful use of voice-overs to compensate for that loss. The clumsy effect of the voice-overs in the A&E version persuades me that adaptors have been right to depend on the resources of the medium to compensate. But without that narrative voice, and the very complex set of perspectives Hardy achieves with it in his descriptions and comments in the last chapter of *Tess*, an introduction of a bare comment on the President of the Immortals would seem oddly out of place. Here, I wonder, would it have been better to have had no narrative comment at all? Bob Schweik Robert Schweik Department of English State University College Fredonia, NY 14063 schweik@fredonia.edu ********** Resent-Message-Id: <199809151907.MAA22910@coyote.csusm.edu> From: "Michele Denevan" Organization: University of Maryland,College Park Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 14:59:32 EDT Greetings Hardy Scholars! I enjoyed A&E's production of "Tess." I was especially impressed with the actor (whose name escapes me at this time) who played Alec. He was quite convincing. The voice overs did bother me a bit. I agree with Mr. Schweik in regard to the lack of narrative voice. Indeed, that is one element of adapting novels for film and television that has always been problem with me. I miss things such as Hardy's comments in the closing chapters and his general insights. I read a few days ago that NBC is presenting an adaptation of "Crime and Punishment" In October. There, indeed, is a novel that has quite a lot of internal dialogue and commentary. I'm curious to see what other viewers thought of the depiction of the farming life, i.e. how the industry became more mechanized as time passed. Did viewers believe that this theme was accurately rendering in the film or could more have been done? Michelle Denevan MDenevan@bss2.umd.edu ********** Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 20:49:31 -0300 From: james kendall Subject: Re: Tess on A&E Hello everyone I must agree with Michelle that not enough was done to emphasize how the farming industry became more mechanised as time went by. However, I must also say that I was very impressed by the otherwise accurate portrayal of the events in the movie according to the novel. Yours Truly Kim Kendall ********** Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 00:04:29 -0800 From: Dale Kramer Subject: Re: Tess on A&E Judging from the responses so far posted to this site, I'm the only person who feels that the A & E production of TESS left a lot to be desired. Mainly, Hardy. Granted, the novel TESS trips along the edge of sentimentality, so in one sense the TV production was faithful to the source; but Hardy also manages to maintain a tone that is acerbic and bleak and angular, whereas, to my mind at least, the TV production was smooth and even-handed and careful. In particular, the TV production was timorous in its avoidance of the sharp and the fantastical that are characterististic of Hardy. Did anyone watching the TV production feel that the thresher was demonic and destructive -- or just exhausting and picturesque? The murder of Alec was commonplace, not magical -- no doubt the scriptwriters and director felt that to have blood soak through a ceiling was implausible thus unuseable. Who can take seriously one of the most famous images in English fiction? We mustn't risk risibility, particularly with teenagers who might rely on the TV production as a substitute for actually reading the novel. I could accept that argument, but to portray in Tess and Alec's final argument an Alec who was both tolerant and declaring his love for Tess may fulfill a desideratum strongly desired by Hardy readers who object to the crude and melodramatic if subliminally admirable Alec, but it produces also an Alec who didn't really deserve to die. After all, he is correct to call Angel a "bastard". And, no doubt there wasn't time enough to present Tess pushed to the last extremity of wishing she could be inside the d'Urberville vault. It was much easier, and a quicker move to the "tragedy" of the return to Alec, just to stress the unpleasantness of the Durbeyfields being forced to move from their cottage. While I (obviously) thought the decisions about the script must have been made by a committee of soap writers, in some respects the TV production would serve very well for students and general readers as a guide to agricultural processes in the 19th century. It was good to see the thresher in its realistic portrayal (despite its platitudinousness as a symbol). All in all, this was the first film of any of Hardy's stories that adequately suggests the hardness of agricultural life. Also, I liked the casting of Tess. The woman who portrayed Tess conveyed well both innocence and weariness. Angel, on the other hand, was conveyed as maladroitly as Sue was by Kate Winslet in the movie JUDE (1996). The actor playing Angel looked more like a libertine on a rural weekend than someone as up-tight as Hardy suggests Angel is. The actor playing Alec did a fine job: it's not his fault that the powers-that-be on the set decided that Alec should be so decent and well-realized. (One of the great appeals of the novel TESS is the incoherence of Alec that so well parallels the incoherence of the universe that wrecks Tess's chances for happiness.) Finally, while I agree with Rosemarie Morgan about the golden-glow of the camera work being a bit self-conscious, this disturbed me less than the production's second-guessing Hardy about the best way to express his , or a, view of life. Powerful, if outre, symbols are preferable to the production's smoothing things to a rational ordinariness. Well, this is a long posting. I expect some flaming responses. ********** Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 10:31:01 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Tess on A&E I agree with you entirely, Dale. On every point. But I guess, despite my fascination with popular culture I do have lower expectations of the Jane-Doe-style-cinematic media than I do of Hardy. However, as I speak I am about to fulfil the recommended kharma-change of altering one's lifecourse at the decade-point: as of next week I return to studenthood -- film studies at NYU. Perhaps this will sharpen my insights? cheers, Rosemarie ********** From: "Michele Denevan" Organization: University of Maryland,College Park Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 09:03:33 EDT Subject: Re: Tess on A&E Dale, I have to agree with you on the portrayal of Alec, particularly in the scene of his murder. While I did think that the actor who played Alec had his moments in which he was especially good at portraying his more, shall we say, sleazy, side; I did think that in the final scenes the character was presented in a surprisingly sympathetic light. For me, one of the most powerful images in the novel is that of the thresher as menacing and destructive. From this production one picked up the idea that the work being done was hard and back-breaking, it didn't seem, though, to go into the deeper issues presented by Hardy regarding the mechanization of agritculture and what that meant for people like Tess and her family. Indeed, I at times felt that the production tended to stress the more soap opera elements of the novel and did not handle well the deeper issues contained within the work. Yet, I remind myself that there is only so much that can be done on a television production, and that there is no substitute for reading the actual text and being mesmerized by the words of Mr. Hardy himself. Michelle MDenevan@bss2.umd.edu ********** Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 01:09:59 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: A& E Tess More marvellous glimpses of the A&E TESS tonight -- but I am still 'out' on the musical score. Wish it really were 'reedy'! Think it could fit any old romantic movie any ole time any ole where.....can't help comparing, in terms of aptness, the more thrilling score of Branach's Henry V!. Tonight, though, very excited to see more of the first part of TESS Part II, earlier missed, and thought the final scene with "Humanity" in place of the "gods" very Hardyan and very appropriate. Didn't TH, in any case, switch to "Aeschylus" to avoid the thunders ? (I'm trying to recall the ms) was he not actually hitting at the inhumane judicial system-- here, parenthetically aligned to pagan barbarism? I had always thought so -- partly, I mean on his part, because his publishers wouldn't print so many of the other sacreligious episodes in this book, didn't he HAVE to be somewhat oblique? Hey! let's be completely Freudian about it and call it a displacement mechanism of a literary kind? I thought that in following TH rather than the dictates of 19 century publication politics our 20th century Tess-makers were doing Hardy proud! (the bystander Hardyan-narrator does rather grow on you, doesn't he? which poem is it .."Under the Last Lamp" (no. ..doesn't sound right, is it "Beyond the Last Lamp" ??) where` this is precisely the speaker's narratorial stance, and so very typical of TH? I think he wd have LOVED it when the TESS-makers had this stance occur on the bridal night scene....in the lane-- oooo! itchingly close! Completely irrelevant probably, but "Aesculapian" also connotes, in Greek, healing-- a double irony given the "remedy" humanity provides for Tess..?) Besties, Rosemarie Morgan ********** Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 13:25:28 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: Tess on A&E Like Rosemarie, I also watched quite a bit of Tess for the second time around over the weekend, and found it just as enjoyable as I did at first. Unlike Dale I thought the actor playing Angel gave a fine and sensitive performance. I do agree, however, that the murder of Alec was less than effective, portraying him as just a little too sympathetic to justify his end. Perhaps it would have been better carried out off-stage and left to the imagination as it was in the Polanski version. I also think that the failure to show the blood soaking through the ceiling was to omit the single most graphic image in the novel--melodramatic no doubt, but awfully gripping nevertheless. Betty Cortus hardycor@mailhost.csusm.edu **********