As timely today as the day it was written.

She was born into a world where they called it seduction, not rape. What she did would shatter that world forever.

Columbia Pictures is proud to present a film by Roman Polanski, based on the classic Thomas Hardy novel.

She was a poor man's daughter, an aristocrat's mistress and a gentleman's wife. She was Tess, a victim of her own provocative beauty.


In Roman Polanski's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Nastassja Kinski plays Tess, a poor British peasant girl sent to live with her distant and wealthy relatives, the D'Urbervilles. Though Tess' father had hoped that the girl would be permitted a portion of the D'Urberville riches, he is in for a major disappointment: Tess' new housemates are not D'Urbervilles at all, but a social-climbing family that has bought the name. Tess won three Oscars, including a "Best Cinematography" statuette for the late Geoffrey Unsworth and his successor Ghislain Cloquet. The film also served to catapult Nastassja Kinski to stardom

Tess is a 1979 romance film directed by Roman Polanski, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles.[1] It tells the story of a strong-willed, young peasant girl (played by Nastassja Kinski) who finds out she has title connections by way of her old aristocratic surname and who is raped by her wealthy cousin (Leigh Lawson), whose right to the family title may not be as strong as he claims. The screenplay was by Gérard Brach, John Brownjohn, and Roman Polanski. The film won three Academy Awards and was nominated for three more.


Release Date: December 12, 1980

Distrib: Columbia Pictures


Boxoffice: $20,093,330 2013: $59,308,900