Word: polanski
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Polanski's style is relentlessly Romantic, his pacing languorous. A procession of cheery young girls, clad in white, approach us from far down the dusty country road. They pass two by two, voices twittering, hair shining, eyes dancing. They disappear slowly into the hilly countryside. Later, a kind farm apprentice helps four damsels dressed in their Sunday-best across an enormous knee-deep puddle. He carries one across and then returns for another, carries second across and then returns for the third, etc. Later, a small army of fox-hunters glide on horseback through an early morning mist. Across...
Phillipe Sarde's gushy score highlights Polanski's excessive Romanticism. When lovers passionately embrace or horses gallop into the distance, the music swells dramatically, reminding that this is a stirring moment. The Romantic flourishes become so predictable that Polanski almost parodies soppy filmmaking. He bombards with shots of gentle animals: deer, cows, wans, all of them looking as though they might, at any moment, transform into a Stubbs oil. Polanski even presents the film's little bit of gore with extreme tameness. His relentless diffidence weakens a potentially powerful story. We watch with a dreamy disinterest as Fate designs...
...actress. Unfortunately, she doesn't emerge in Tess. As Hardy's "pure woman." Kinski shows flashes of genuine expertise. She makes running a hand through her hair a profound expression of violently contradictory emotions; her quick, reluctant smile exudes poignancy. Physically, she is the perfect realization of Polanski's idea of "provocative beauty." Her full lips suggest a smoldering sensuality, undetectable in those Bambi-esque eyes. Even the tiny scar on her left cheek seems to heighten her beauty, like Gene Tierney's over-bite. The trouble with Kinski is her voice, a wonderfully funny, squeaky little thing. It quivers...
Peter Firth plays Tess' pious husband and Leigh Lawson the sly rogue who seduces her. Under Polanski's direction, both characters are shallow and tiresome. Firth and Lawson, both competent actors, struggle to give compelling performances--but with Sarde's strings rising behind them as they utter lines like "Is there no hope for me? I'm dying for you my darling," they fight a losing battle...
Naturally, Fate wins his hand. But so what? After three hours, Polanski's experiment in gentility is over. As Thomas Hardy turns in his grave, we fervently hope that Polanski returns to the cynicism, the terror, and the grotesquery of the Twentieth century that he translates so well into...