I cannot think of an actress who looks more breathtakingly beautiful than Nastassja Kinski does in Tess. Her's is a magnetic presence for you are drawn to that face and see little beyond it. Certainly, Kiniski has never been remotely this good in anything before or since.

The film itself, made in 1979, has got better with age or maybe that's just me. Having watched it first as a teenager and then again now, some 20 years later, it's like watching an entirely different movie. The melancholy cuts deeper: everything penetrates the surface of youth and scars you deep inside.

Such is life.

The director, Roman Polanski, had to re-create Stonehenge in France as he feared being deported back to the US if he set foot in Britain.

I don't think Hardy has been done any better on the big screen or the small screen for that matter.

Roman Polanski's Academy Award winning interpretation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a beautiful and timeless masterwork that is destined to become a classic. Tess, portrayed by the entrancing Nastassja Kinski, is the daughter of a poor, drunken farmer who discovers that he is actually of noble descent. Tess is sent off to live with their proper and wealthy relatives. There, she is seduced by a suave but sinister cousin and bears him a bastard son who dies while still an infant. The backdrop is morally rigid Victorian England where Tess must carry the shame of her past even into her marriage to a minister's son - until she cleanses herself of all guilt in one ultimate act of passion.

TESS was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. and won three for its stunning beauty: Cinematography, Art Direction and Costume Design (1980).

Devastating and powerful, Polanski achieves the requisite pathos and shoots a stunning denouement against the backdrop of Stonehenge.