The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 15

a a a a a a a in in The Daily Telegraph, Friday, April 10, 1981 15 FILMS PATRICK GIBBS Kinski the key in brilliant 'Tess' Tess Empire Superman II Warner Popeye Odeon, Leicester Sq HOW STRANGE that a Polish director working on. locations in France should make one of the most faithful and satisfying film versions of a classic English novel my memory. Such is the achievement of Roman Polanski with Hardy's "Tess of the Polanski, of course, has long been known as a clever director in various styles, enlivening Shakespeare nude Lady Macbeth or providing an affectionate pastiche a Hollywood 66 Chinatown thriller. Nothing in his past suggested the seemingly effortless mastery he now displays of what generally regarded as one of the greatest, and most contentious, novels in the English language. From the opening scene of Tess in which Parson Tringham, meeting the carter, John Durbeyfield, late one night, him' unwise enough to regale with an account of his once renowned ancestrv, the film proceeds as originally written, that is to sav in a manner completely to hold the attention, and in due course to affect the emotions: no significant scene being missed nor any failing to make its point.

Very quickly, Durbeyfield is established as a drunken n'erdo-well, with an eye to opportunity, like his silly wife 99 Joan. rich kinfolk now to live not far away, it becomes inevitable that their elder 16-year-old daughter, Tess, should be sent their acquaintance offer her services. A steadier start could hardly have been made, with the poverty of the large Durbeyfield family illustrated, also the fecklessness of the parents, and not least the character and appearance of Tess herself, on which so much will depend. In fact the casting and acting of Nastassia Kinski in this part is the cornerstone of the film. Tess is seldom off the screen, yet never fails to hold the eye and the ear, one of the actress's achievements being a MUSIC David Ward ALTHOUGH David Ward has built up a reputation as a specialist in piano music, it was his interpretations of Beethoven and Schubert which gave the most pleasure in his recital Queen Elizabeth Hall last night.

Mr Ward's finger technique was not very assured in the delicate of Mozart's Duport some notes being omitted resulting in an unsteady tempo in some of these delightful pieces. Again, in the concerto-like first movement of the Sonata in A minor (K.310) highly-strung tension of the music would have benefited by a more buoyant rhythm. However his shaping of the sustained lines in the Adagio in minor captured to perfection the underlying spirit of this tragic music. Beethoven wrote the most precise dynamic details into the score of his Sonata in E. minor, Op.90.

Mr Ward showed an unusual insight into the composer's style, the musical sensitivity and aristocratic poise of his playing bringing a heart-felt intensity to each movement. His liquid cantabile tone and wholly unsentimental phrasing in Numbers 4 and 6 of Schubert's Moments Musicaux were splendidly set off by his vigorous characterisation of the turbulent No. 5. D. A.

W. M. Nash Ensemble THE LATE replacement of Richard Rodney Bennett's Clarinet Quintet by Nigel Osborne's Mythologies a memorial -tribute to Roland Barthes as well as an exploration of the ideas of the French structuralist, Claude Strauss- ensured that the Nash Ensemble's concert at St John's, Smith Square last night remained a Gallic affair throughout. It was the third in a series of five presentations each surrounding English piece with often unfamiliar twentieth century French music. Thus we were treated to the brash jollification of Poulenc's Le Baby heartily sung Thomas Allen and the counter ing limp charm Henri Sauget's La Voyante" (Elizabeth -both songcycles were composed for the same private party in 1932.

Then there was Milhaud's stylish little masterpiece "La Creation du Monde," an uncanny (because so' brazenly handled) distillation of jazz, for all its popularity, and not over-valued by the Nash if their stiff, very BALLET "Taming of the Shrew' IN John Cranko's "The Taming of the Shrew given, by Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet Sadler's Wells last night the onus rests on th central partnership. Fortunately, the company has ideal protagonists for Petruchio and Katherina in Stephen Jefferies and Marion Tait. The masculine conflict and resolution is the essence of Shakespeare's play is interpreted by them with unflagging vivacity and a masterly command of virtuoso comedy. They lift what is, on analysis, a ballet with a minimum of substantial choreographic interest and a heavy amount of padding to a high level of entertainment. TELEVISION SYLVIA CLAYTON 3 19 15 be no hi 18 Dc 16 most persuasive suggestion of peasant speech.

Her fine features and variety of expression, the grace and dignity of her bearing, are gifts to the photographers, Geoffrey Unsworth at first, then Ghislain Cloquet, of which they take every advantage. Their pictures of the Breton and Norman countryside may not satisfy of Hardy's Wessex, though they do adequately give the impression comparable agricultural district sometime in the last century. So, once we have accepted the foreign-looking house, Tess's visit to her 66 kinfolk 99 runs all too naturally its tragic course. She is engaged by the blind Mrs d'Urberville to look after her poultry and seduced, indeed raped, by her dissolute son, Alec, of whom Leigh Lawson manages to make a not-too-conventional rake. At home more, it's typical of Tess's resilient character, that, after the baby she should seek work.

scene of the harvesting, when she stacks and binds with other girls, is one of the film's happiest, and also most moving when one of the younger children brings her baby to be fed at the breast. Its death is a blow of fate typical of Hardy, but also necessary to the 'continuation of the tale. Had this evidence of Tess's 66 frailty lived, there could not have been the misunderstanding which follows when, taking work at a more distant dairy farm, she meets the student farmer, an eccentric idealist, Angel Clare (with whom Peter Firth has some struggle to avoid making him a These, again, are happy scenes of farming life, especially of milking in the barn or the fields, with a likeable farmer in Mr Crick and congenial companions for Tess in Marian, Izz and Retty. Only Clare's falling, for the lovely milk-maid, and importuning her with' cruel persistence to accept in marriage casts a cloud, since Tess can't unsleazy performance is anything to go by. It was mostly due to the acoustias, though, that the concluding shuffle became.

a smutch. 66 Mythologies" was a second performance of a work commissioned by the ensemble. Its connection with structuralist thought could scarcely be deduced by a score-less listener who had not read the programme-note. res fact the connection is residual element from an earlier, more explicit pre-occupation of Osborne's: the present work has grown, typically, in layers from that. Listened to innocently, afforded much delicate pleasure: more so, I felt than at The (less innocent) first performance.

P.W.D. Neil Sedakar AT A GUESS there is a health farm somewhere which has inherited the excess avoirdupois so dramatically shed from the frame of Mr Neil Sedaka he felt obliged on his return to London last night put the question: How do you like my new body?" But as soon as this eterthe popular song had rest at the Apollo, Victoria, a shimmer of sequins on a Perspex stool at his equally transparent piano, it was clear that has done nothing untoward the silky me tenor voice which has survived the modish turbulence of the past 23 years. Appealing as it was, Sedakar has reverted from the autobiographical format of recent visits to a more conventional programme accompanied by full orchestra and a strong rhythm section of musicians boasting impressive credentials. If at first James Fielder's bass guitar was insufficiently promi-. nent, there was much to enjoy in the unusually generous role given to a single accompanying vocalist, Jacqueline Berry.

This well-favoured young lady from Los Angeles made a forceful impression on perhaps Sedakar's prettiest ballad 66 This Will Be Our Last Song Together' Sedakar's 17 year old daughter Dara joined them for 66 Should've Never Let You Go and earned cooing respect from the audience and much beaming from a proud father, However enduring the upbeat numbers like Oh Carol and Calendar Girl," it is the wistful and the emotional which makes a Sedaka, concert outstanding. Me and My Friend," Solitaire" and The Other Side of Me gave added meaning to his own assertion that, "Breaking Up Is Hard J. C. To Their example inspires the rest of the cast to do what they can to camouflage the thin and Alain repetitive Dubreuil, ensembles David Ashwhole and Stephen Wicks give praiseworthy freshness to the juvenile jokes with which they are saddled as Suitors. Tait's ability to range from the sharp ferocity of the virago to the radiant charm of the happy wife equals that of the original Katherina, Marcia Haydee.

Her timing is immaculate and her mobility of expression a delight. Similarly, Jeffries's Petruchio is a total conception, incorporating irresistible comic acting as well as brilliantly bravura dancing. Currently each role he performs seems to confirm his status as an actor-dancer of star quality. w. bring herself to confess her How this marriage leads to her desertion, her working as a labourer in the fields in a hard winter, her taking up with again, and finally her.

murderhim, is a tangled which only Hardy could give semblance of conviction, and Mr. Polanski does well to follow him. Where he fails, in my opinion, is in under-estimating the part played by the countryside itself, which in the novel takes on the almost of a living character. Hardy's descriptions suggest that nature had an erotic, ultimately evil influence, and about Clare's courtship of Tess in the height of a hot summer is something of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Hardy had been reading Zola just before writing and this erotic" effect of nature is a feature of such Zola novels as La Terre" and especially La Faute de Mouret." In this, 'lovers consummate a.

fatal passion in Son the overgrown one in garden, which similar Tess listens to Clare playing music. So although the background 'is superficially faithful with effective of the seasons (though attempt changing, is made at morning or evening mist), there is less depth in the character of the countryside than perfection demands; though Mr. Polanski does seem, perhaps intuitively, to have appreciated the symbolic significance colours frequently and carefully mentioned in the novel. At all events, he makes much of Tess's association with white red, indeed the picture is always finely composed and coloured, and had the landscape itself somehow moved us to pity and fear by its influence on the inhabitants, then the film would have been the tragedy, I think, which Hardy envisaged. English soil would have responded better than French in this respect is a nice question.

WITH Richard Lester as director and such useful names in It's no bed of roses London. When people need happy to call you. But doesn't suit them and isn't fit to print. After a while, however, become very printable Published recently written by a' south "Policeman's Progress" Here are some Constable Harry Cole: "It is one of the present day society where work and have no idea will bring. It could be an armed a request for directions.It explosion, a false alarm "I was asked about ment for budgies, security, conservation, politics and prison visits.

upon to chastise (occasional success), errant dred percent failure), and obstinate grandparents" "I received anonymous ing letters (I recognised anonymous threatening recognised the voice), for birthday (it was "I was invited to and divorces (often in with the very young)? Could put "I rarely completed out having to report a loneliness" "The bodies, dogs, the villains and the gentle, the cowardly and the lovers and the just day I shall have to live be easy." Any police officer in similar story. But the the same. What kind of person a job? It isn't enough for required minimum height a woman to make 162 cm Regardless of your no good if you don't have This means having people.A real sense of And a real sense of Qualities more qualifications. (If you have a few'O' degree is no handicap NEVER having actually met any BC programme planners, imagine them seated round a table, G. K.

Chesterton style, responsible for a different day. And I would dearly like to know what has happened to the man who was Thursday. Why is he the one that gets landed with the less appealing subjects like breast cancer and Borstal, and was expected last fit in both a trip to Broadmoor, and disease an introduction The Man Alive programme, Some of the Nicest People I know Have Had (B C-2) took its style from its title. It was brisk and breezy. We've had everybody here, literally everybody," cheerful doctor from the STD (sexually transmited diseases) clinic at Westminster Hospital, handy, as the commentator said, for Whitehall Parliament.

There were jaunty clips, Disney cartoons in which Attack force (for Gonorrhea) in red berets and Attack force (for Syphilis) in green berets, lined up to do battle with homo sapiens. Some patients talked about their the including sympathetic one woman who had become preignant and infected at the same time. Paul Hamann's programme showed some to approach. avoid It was the THEATRE Not a supermarket disease STD in terms of a consumer society. solemn, moral tones of say brilliant talents for war, Ibsen's Ghosts" and present politics and tax gathering.

6 6 Recently, consumer guide in a magazine gave this clinic a three-star rating." This is not, however, a disease that can' be looked at rationally in supermarket terms. Personal relationships and responsibilities are involved, risks for partners as well as patients. Despite the effectiveness of penicillin, and other antiSTD is spreading, especially among young people, and some of its viruses are as yet incurable. British clinics expect half-a-million cases this year. These are facts that could have been presented in clinical manner and related to the way we live now.

With In Search of William the Conqueror (B C-2) Michael Wood left behind Ethelbald the Unmentionable and other littleknown Anglo-Saxon worthies and arrived at 1066, though he was much less certain than were Sellar and Yeatman that the Norman Conquest was a Good Thing. In version the highlycivilised Anglo-Saxons overrun by illiterate Norman duke who never did learn to speak English, but who had Painful discovery By JOHN BARBER MORE passionate feeling than skilful writing has gone into Kate Phelps's Coming Up" at the Half Moon, Aldgate, diffuse study of a fashionable young actor and his, painful discovery, of his his Sheffield foreign family. alleand working-class origins. The play spends long making heavy weather of Kevin's homosexuality and his explosive relationship with lover. It gains in impetus when he goes north after the questionable death of his father, a strong union man.

"CLEAR OFF FUZZ. THIS IS A PRIVATE QUARREL" "MY HANDBAG HAS BEEN SNATCHED" calling degree of common sense.) you'll earn £4,956 a year start at £5,919. pick up London Allow- somewhere to live for free, if with a tax-paid Rent year. earn every penny of nasty accidents and turn up when you least get as a human beingfor greater than any being a Metropolitan to be fora start. your enthusiasm, Careers Information Yard in Victoria Street? name, your age and send you the informa- Now Michael Wood has slowed down a little, and stopped trying to be the Higgins of medieval studies, he is much easier to watch.

He has not yet developed the art of bringing a building or a landscape into the foreground rather than himself, a skill which Prof. W. G. Hoskins Westward Television's David always London's Dark Ages to the Roman life-style long after AD 410, there is virtually no evidence for continuity in London. There is no account of a siege or battle, and the city's ruins resulted from simple neglect and decay.

It is likely that a few people lived among the decayed buildings, farming in the open areas. They may have been either British or Saxon: archaeology could not confirm their identity. Archaeologically London in the later 5th and 6th centuries remained a virtual blank. By KEITH NURSE Arts Correspondent THERE is little, if any, evidence for continuity of urban life in London from Roman into Anglo-Saxon times, and effectively the once impressive city disappeared from history for 150 years. This is one of the main conclusions of a booklet, 66 Saxon and Norman London," just published by the Museum of London.

In his account of the 800. years of the city's history following departure of the Romans, in assistant AD 410, keeper John of Clark, the museum's medieval department, has drawn on latest evidence from discoveries made by the archaeological staff. Though the surviving cities of Britain seemed to have clung Nastassia Kinski and Peter Firth in "Tess." the cast as Gene Hackman, Valerie Perrine, Terence Stamp and Susannah York, it seemed that a serious attempt had been made to make Superman II superior to the usual sequel. neAlas, mixture good turns intentions, out to the be much as before, which I didn't rate very highly. Christopher Reeve is again in the name part of a newspaper reporter who can turn into Superman at will.

His romantic relations with colleague, played by Margot Kidder, continue, but are much interrupted by a trio of other flyers led by Gen. Zod (Mr Stamp), who have been exiled from some planet and find their supernatural powers just the thing to subdue the earth. They achieve much spectacular destruction before, need I say, Superman gets their measure. Mr Hackman's role being a police officer in help they're only too just you turn up when it what you can get called the experience can indeed. was a paperback London copper called random quotes, by Police few occupations left in a person can arrive for what the day "THANK an accident, a OFFICER.

robbery, arson ot could be an or a drunk" holidays, treatwallpapering, social contraception, I was called drunken husbands wives (hunwayward kids threatenthe writing), phone calls (I and an anonymous cake stale)" christenings, weddings that order, particularly you up with a Christmas duty withsuicide, usually caused by demos, drunks and fights; victims; the brutal, the the brave; the haters, plain indifferent One without them; it won't London could tell you a question it would raise is measures up to such a man to reach the of 172 cm Orfor height you're obviously the stature for the job. a real concern for fair play. humour. valuable, in our view, than levels, fine, Auniversity either. funny man is minimal.

Best thing is a crystal hall looking like Lalique. ROBERT ALTMAN'S Popeye seems likely to appeal most. to those who enjoyed Max Flesher's animated cartoons written, or rather, drawn around this nautical, character, which flourished '40s. The idea of peopling his cartoon world with real actors seems curious, though thing of the kind came off admirably with "Li'l Abner," a musical version of Al Capp's comic strip, in a 1957 Despite the evidently affectionate reproductions, as it were, by Robin Williams and Shelley, Duvall Olive as Oyl, and Popeye some and loyal support, I don't think this comes all; but then, no fond memory of the originals. Best looking GOD YOU'VE ARRIVED THE DRIVER IS LOSING BLOOD" "YOU ONLY STOP ME 'COS I'M BLACK" But best of all is a If you're under 22 the day you join us.

If you're older you'll (What's more you'll ances of £1,482.) You'll also get you need it. Or we'll provide you Allowance up to £1,457 a Believe us, you'll your pay. Violent criminals, freezing weather will all expect them. But the reward you handling it all is compensation pay packet. Still interested in Police Officer? You'll have If we haven't dimmed why not drop round our Centre at New Scotland Or let us know your your address and we'll tion you need.

It is not made clear whether the father died after drinking much, or was the victim of police brutality. The important after a struggle Kevin elects to join the union demonstrators who believe his father was murdered. As a homosexual, he must identify with any minority whom the authorities shove Drew Griffiths presents hero as a personable, indecisive sulk but he is not helped by the total inauthenticity of both the London and Sheffield backgrounds. The direction is by the author. "OFFICER, YOU DID NOT SEE ME GO THROUGH ARED LIGHT." "WATCH IT COPPER, I'VE.

GOTA KNIFE" "SHE'S ONLY 3 YEARS OLD. SHE'S BEEN MISSING FOR 3 "TWO MEN HAVE JUST BROKEN INTO MY SHOP." a like ours? The man to write to Metropolitan Police Careers Department MD524, London SW1H 0BG. Or you can phone us. 5215 and 5146. Yours is one call we'll is The Chief Inspector, Information Centre, New Scotland Yard, Our number is 01-230 to get.

London needs people like you in the Metropolitan Police. be especially pleased IN of 9 a to.