Why Roman Polanski Adapted Thomas Hardy’s Novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles for the Screen

This isn’t exactly like having your reading of a book interrupted by death. But Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, before being savagely murdered by followers of Charles Manson, had pointed out this book to her husband and told him it was ideal for an adaptation. The film, made around ten years later and starring Natassja Kinski, was therefore dedicated to her. Eighteen

Natalie and François hadn’t wanted a child right away. It was a plan for the future, a future that didn’t exist anymore. Their child would remain a virtual one. Sometimes you think about all those artists who died and wonder what their creations would have been like if they’d survived. What would John Lennon have composed in 1992 if he hadn’t died in 1980? Likewise: what would the life of that child who would never exist have been like? You’d have to think about all those fates that foundered on the banks of their potential.For weeks, her point of view had come close to insanity: denying death. Imagining everyday life as if her husband were still there. She was capable of leaving notes for him on the living room table before going out for a walk in the morning. She’d walk for hours, with only one desire: to lose herself in the crowd. Sometimes she also went into churches, despite the fact that she wasn’t a believer. And was convinced she never would be. She had trouble understanding people taking refuge in religion, trouble understanding that you could have faith after having lived through tragedy. However, sitting there in the middle of the afternoon, surrounded by empty pews, she was comforted by the place. It was just a shred of relief, but for a split second, yes, she felt the warmth of Christ. Then she got onto her knees, and she was like a saint with the devil in her heart.Sometimes she went back to the place they’d met. To that sidewalk on which she’d walked, unknown to him, seven years before. She wondered, “And if someone else approached me now, how would I react?” But no one came to interrupt her meditation.She also went to the place where her husband had been run over. Where, jogging, in his shorts, with music in his ears, he’d blundered across the street. Made the ultimate blunder. She would stand on the curb and watch the cars go by. Why not kill herself at the same spot? Why not blend the traces of their blood in a final, morbid union. She’d stay a long time without knowing what to do, tears trickling down her face. Especially in the days following the funeral, she came back to this place. She didn’t know why she needed to hurt herself so badly. Being there was ridiculous, imagining the brutality of impact was ridiculous, wanting to make the death of her husband concrete in this way was ridiculous. Perhaps, deep down, it was simply the only solution? Does anyone know what to do next after such a tragedy? There aren’t any instructions. All of us read what’s written by our bodies. Natalie was giving in to an urge to be there, to weep at the curb, to drown in her tears. Nineteen

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