She may be glamorous, whatever that is, but I’m not sure Bond girl Gemma Arterton has the right kind of face to star in BBC1’s new version of “Tess of the d’Urbervilles”. She looks too modern, too much of our time. I suppose it’s hard to dispel the memory of Nastassja Kinski, in Roman Polanski’s definitive 1979 account, simply renamed “Tess”, so good was the German actress in the part.
Pictured sporting off-shoulder red, as head girl Kelly, promoting the recent remake of “St. Trinian’s”, and about to be ogled as Agent Fields in new Bond movie “Quantum of Solace”, Gemma has been signed to play the lead role in the latest production based on Thomas Hardy’s finest novel. The story of the put upon dairy farmhand was last turned into a television drama, by LWT, in 1998. Although adapted by Ted Whitehead, and starring Justine Waddell, it wasn’t particularly successful!
Filming of “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” begins in the West Country later this month and the four-hour adaptation by David Nicholls will be broadcast in the autumn. Anna Massey, no stranger to Hardy territory, having appeared in Dennis Potter’s Seventies’ adaptation of “The Mayor of Casterbridge” alongside Alan Bates, also features. I must admit to being on tenterhooks as Tess is my favourite heroine in English Literature!
Pictured sporting off-shoulder red, as head girl Kelly, promoting the recent remake of “St. Trinian’s”, and about to be ogled as Agent Fields in new Bond movie “Quantum of Solace”, Gemma has been signed to play the lead role in the latest production based on Thomas Hardy’s finest novel. The story of the put upon dairy farmhand was last turned into a television drama, by LWT, in 1998. Although adapted by Ted Whitehead, and starring Justine Waddell, it wasn’t particularly successful!
Filming of “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” begins in the West Country later this month and the four-hour adaptation by David Nicholls will be broadcast in the autumn. Anna Massey, no stranger to Hardy territory, having appeared in Dennis Potter’s Seventies’ adaptation of “The Mayor of Casterbridge” alongside Alan Bates, also features. I must admit to being on tenterhooks as Tess is my favourite heroine in English Literature!
2 comments:
I'll be interested enough to give this a go when it's broadcast. I studied the novel for my Uni degree - my tutor freely admitted that he was secretly in love with Tess. I kid you not. Very worrying. He saw her a s pure paragon of... well, not exactly virtue but something or other. He'll be biting the end off his pipe when he sees who'll be playing her!
I've already bitten the end off my pipe, Steve, metaphorically speaking you understand! I studied Hardy, and "Tess" in particular, for Eng Lit S-level (higher than A but not as high as degree) at school, but we're talking back in the late Seventies!
I hope the new television version of "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" retains the final twist, that Angel Clare marries Tess's younger sister, thus casting doubt on the nature of his love for her despite Tess having requested it before her arrest, which Polanski omits from his film version.
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