9. Tess (1979)
In Victorian England in Dorset, a peasant family learn that they are actually descendants of a noble family with links to William the Conqueror - the d'Urbervilles. The father of the family John Durbeyfield is obsessed with capturing his lost nobility and sends his daughter Tess to some pretty swish d'Urbervilles nearby to secure a job. Alec d'Urberville is taken by the comely Tess, rapes her and impregnates her. The baby dies soon after death. Tess seeks work as a cow milker and falls in love with Angel Clare, a young farmer. Angel Clare is entranced by Tess's beauty and innocent demeanour. But when she tells him of her past with Alec, she takes a mighty plummet in his estimation and he leaves her on their wedding night. Left on her own and with a dead father, facing homelessness and destitution, Tess reignites her affair with Alec and becomes his mistress for the financial side of things. Shortly afterwards Angel Clare returns home from a disastrous trip abroad, full of remorse at the way he treated Tess. He tracks her down to Alec's house and is angry she is with him. Tess realises she has blighted her chances with Angel Clare because of her affair with Alec. She murders Alec and is reunited with Angel Clare. They consummate their marriage and spend two blissful days with each other before Tess is apprehended by the law at Stonehenge. She is subsequently hanged. So there we have it. Another thoroughly bleak Thomas Hardy film adaptation. I have written about Jude in another article about depressing films and Tess is pretty much up there on the misery scale as Jude. The story shows the class system of Victorian England - how it was virtually impossible to rise above your station in life. Tess would undoubtedly fare better in a more lenient period of time but in the movie she is stuck in poverty and is also the victim of Victorian morality. She doesn't have many options in the film and her outlook is bleak. The ending is a major downer as Tess capitulates to her doom.