User Reviews

I heartily recommend this film, but as others have said before me, avoid the dreadfully hacked version- The Wild Heart. It amazes me that Selznick could ruin such a wonderful piece of cinema. For me the locations are stunningly beautiful yet bleak. Based on the Mary Webb novel the movie was filmed in Shropshire , the book , as most of Webb's were, was also set there. The windswept Stiperstones and The Devil's Chair are not make believe. They really do exist and you can easily visit these locations.I always wanted to visit Shropshire, as a child I loved the Lone Pine stories by Malcolm Saville that were set there ( I still do ). They, as Webb's stories all were set in real places. The little church ( Godshill ) in the film is still standing and you can still make out the shape of the baptism pool in the garden. It's a beautiful, atmospheric place.I have now visited these locations several times. The long chimney you see standing in several sequences can still be found in the ruins of the old Snailbeach mines. It is so wonderful to stand in these places, on these hills ( the stiperstones, the Long Mynd ) and imagine 57 years ago when all the actors and crew stood in the very same place, you can't explain how you feel, but it's something very extraordinary.The film itself is a strangely evocative piece that features eerily scored music, wild but effective performances. Cyril Cusack stands out in a restrained, dignified part as the sad parson.It is his character that I felt so sorry for.Although poor Jennifer Jones ( Hazel ) is a tormented soul that you can't help but feel attracted to.A glorious piece of cinema of the past with wonderful locations. The plot may be all too familiar but the scenery, the characters and yes, Foxy all help pass the time in a blink of an eye. Watch it a couple of times, each viewing brings out something else that you may have missed.

I now own this title on a DVD since it has recently been issued in the UK in its' new digital, re-mastered version.The colours are certainly impressive.I also visited Much Wenlock, Shropshire recently and photographed us next to the town clock (seen at the beginning of the film) which commemorates Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee in 1897, the year the film is set.

The music of Brain Easdale has a haunting quality and I don't think enough credit has been given to this by other reviewers since it adds immeasurably to the atmosphere of the film.While in Much Wenlock I bought a review of Mary Webb's short stories, including "Gone To Earth" as I always like to read the book from which films are adapted (to see where the film plot diverges).Yes it is rather a corny Victorian melodrama but the acting is convincing enough.I could not help but think there were certain parralls with her (Jennifer Jones) previous epic of "Duel in the Sun" (1946).For Lewton McCanless read Jack Reddin, for Jesse McCanless read Reverend Marston, for Mrs Marston read Senator McCanless etc etc.In both films Jennifer Jones plays a half breed, Native American to Gypsy and is discriminated on accordingly by society.

This film has been hidden from view for too long since its' release in 1950 by the major tv networks and viewers should certainly see this Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger film if they can, especially if they enjoyed their other films like "Black Narcissus", "The Red Shoes" or "A Matter of Life & Death" from 1946.Technicolour has rarely been put to such good use.I suppose the main reason why you would watch "Gone To Earth" is to see the ravishing Jennifer Jones in the role of Hazel Woodus although all the cast are very effective.If viewers would like to see another example of David Farrar I saw him in "They Met in the Dark (1944) with James Mason and Joyce Howard.

Somehow this film was made without the incessant tinkering for which David O. Selznick was notoriously famous, presumably because he had allowed his wife, Jennifer Jones, to travel to Great Britain and work her magic untrammelled by his day-to-day presence on the set and in the screening room as rushes were viewed. By all reports, however, he was so horrified by what Powell and Pressburger had wrought that what we on this side of the Atlantic were allowed to view bears only a faint resemblance to the intentions of those English artists,

It has been years since I saw, on a television broadcast, a no doubt truncated and heavily reedited version under its U.S. title, "The Wild Heart" but, as I had before, I was amazed at the "Archers" beautiful, almost florid, use of Technicolor and their apparently reckless disregard for the expectations of an audience weaned on American pablum and the more refined output of their English peers of the cinema.

Miss Jones is vibrantly beautiful and endlessly fascinating as she plays Hazel Woodus and it goes without saying that her support from a memorable cast of carefully chosen players, professional and, I would guess, amateur is of an order that one can always confidently expect from the British both on stage and on screen. It's wishful thinking, at this late date, I suppose but a VHS or DVD version, available to us here in the U.S., would be a remarkable addition to a movie-lover's library.

This was a hard film to see for a very long time, at least in any form that would do it justice. But the small snippets of it I'd caught made me steadfastly wait for the day I could view it, and having done so, I can say it's considerably better than its fairly middling reputation.

Maybe the easiest way to describe it is as Powell & Pressburger's "Wuthering Heights" - it's set in that gothic period drama genre, anyway - but at root it's a grown-up, thoughtful and adult romance-of-sorts set on windswept fairy-tale moors.

The two films it fits closest to in their body of work would be "I Know Where I'm Going" (for the elemental setting) and especially Black Narcissus, for the matchless colour photography and mood of suppressed eroticism bubbling savagely beneath the surface. You can feel the invisible forces of superstition and desire affecting events, the tiny figures swamped by a greater Nature beyond their understanding or powers.

As I've already said, this is a grown-up film, a good 15 years or more before its time in its depiction of adultery and complexity of emotion in a potboiler setting. The sexuality in it is not explicit, but it's firmly engraved in stone between the lines of the script and in small moments of quiet force - flickers of understanding, judgement or confusion passing over every face throughout, speaking volumes.

There's a lurid, hyperreal, almost cartoonishly painterly look to the colour films of the 40s and 50s, which was never seen again afterwards, and is now impossible to recreate. This one has the texture of Singin' In The Rain but is, unusually, set largely outdoors, in the real world, in wide open spaces. Because of this, the nature scenes look, gorgeously, straight out of Bambi.

Gone To Earth is not P&P's greatest film, but it's a real treasure nonetheless. A wild, dark, pagan beauty.

I am an enormous admirer of Powell and Pressburger, but this Technicolor melodrama was a great disappointment to me once I had tracked down, with some effort, a Korean DVD. I think the problem is that the main character is simply not very bright - I miss the intelligent , spirited women of I Know Where I'm Going, Black Narcissus, Contraband, and A Canterbury Tale. Here, the character who ought to be carrying the story is reduced to almost animalistic status, a prey in a world of hunters, well-intentioned and not so well intentioned. Nevertheless, the cinematography is stunning as ever, and the choir, and the harp playing, are divine indeed -- as always with P&P, there are gems even in this murky, overheated yarn of country parson versus country squire.

I saw this glorious film when it first appeared. The following week I tracked it down to a small London cinema where they screened single films continuously several times a day without supporting features. I hadn't intended seeing it more than once on this occasion but I can recall being so mesmerised that I watched the programme through three times. Clearly I was out of step with the climate of critical opinion. The reviewers had slated it and the audience around me was distinctly hostile. There was a lot of fidgeting and derisory shouts. Quite a few walked out. Behaviour was often bad in British cinemas in the 'fifties particularly if viewers got bored. The manager called the police in during a screening I attended a few years later of "The Trouble WIth Harry" and I can even remember screaming at the usherettes to stop talking when I first saw "A Face in the Crowd". I had to wait many years before I heard good things being said about "Gone to Earth". It was in 1988 when someone introduced a showing of it on British television most enthusiastically. Whatever one thinks about the relative merits of Powell and Pressburger's films (I am clearly in a minority in thinking this their finest) there is no doubt that they are now appreciated in a way they never were when they first appeared. But if passion for what is still considered one of their minor works may seem rather over the top, let me say but one thing; where else in the whole of cinema is there a more haunting and magical evocation of English landscape! Christopher Challis, a brilliant cinematographer, is the real star of the film. Undoubtedly (and this is perhaps at the core of its original problems) style matters more than content. The plot is little more than Victorian melodrama - lecherous squire deflowers simple country girl who has married local vicar - and the dialogue is curiously stilted. However this hardly matters in a work cinematically choreographed with such brilliance. The final foxhunting sequence, where the film's many strands are brought together, is visually and aurally one of the most spellbinding in all cinema. The huntsman's cry of "Gone to earth!" at the very end has haunted me for well over half a lifetime.

Mary Webb was a member of the rural social-realist school whose other members included H. E. Bates Sheila-Kaye Smith and John Moore. Her works show the obvious influence of Thomas Hardy, one of the founders of that school, and her novel "Gone to Earth" deals with two classically Hardeian themes- a woman who is loved by two or more different men, and love between people of different social classes. The action takes place in the Shropshire countryside, close to the Welsh border, in 1897. The main character, Hazel Woodus, is the beautiful daughter of a reclusive old man living in a remote country cottage. (Hazel's father, Abel, has a number of different professions of which the main one is coffin-maker). She has a deep love of nature and of wild animals, but having been brought up with only her father for company finds it difficult to relate to other people. She is of gypsy ancestry on her mother's side, which increases the local people's distrust of her; some of them even regard her as a witch. (A belief in witchcraft persisted among the uneducated, especially in rural areas, throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, long after educated people had ceased to believe in it).

The two men in the working-class Hazel's life are the aristocratic Jack Reddin, the handsome but roguish local squire, and the middle-class Edward Marston, a young Nonconformist minister. (Contrary to what some have stated, Marston is not an Anglican vicar). Like many English country squires, Reddin is a keen foxhunter, which makes his relationship with the animal-loving Hazel a difficult one, as she owns a pet fox.

The film was made by The Archers, the British team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger as a co-production with the American producer David O. Selznick, who insisted upon casting his wife Jennifer Jones as Hazel. Most of his other suggestions, however, were ignored by Powell and Pressburger, so it is hardly surprising that Selznick cordially disliked the finished film. He couldn't do much about the British version of the film after he lost a court case against The Archers, but had retained the right to final cut of the American version. He therefore had the film re-edited and hired director Rouben Mamoulian to shoot some extra scenes in Hollywood. As a result, "Gone to Earth"(British) and "The Wild Heart" (American) are not simply two names for the same film. They are two different versions of the same film, perhaps even two different films.

Although "The Wild Heart" was the American version, it is the version which I recently saw on British television. I have not seen the original "Gone to Earth" for many years, so I will not attempt a direct comparison of the merits of the two versions. One thing I disliked about both versions, however, was Jones's performance in the leading role. Jones was unable to do a convincing English accent, as she was to demonstrate again a few years later when she played another English character, Catherine in "A Farewell to Arms". Here her attempt at a British accent seems to incorporate features of Northern English, Welsh, Irish and West Country dialects, as well as a hint of the American Deep South. Although I can understand that American viewers unfamiliar with the dialects of the Welsh Marches might not regard this as such a problem, I felt that even without taking her dodgy accent into account it was difficult to accept Jones in the part. She seemed less like a "child of nature" from rural Shropshire than the trophy wife of a Hollywood mogul, miscast in a quite unsuitable role.

On the positive side, Webb's story is a moving one, and Powell's Technicolor photography of the English countryside is superb. (He had already revealed himself as a gifted photographer of the British landscape in the black-and-white movies "A Canterbury Tale", "I Know Where I'm Going!" and "The Edge of the World", this last made without Pressburger, but this was the first time he had done so in a colour film). Jones's co-stars, David Farrar as the lustful, rascally Reddin and Cyril Cusack as Marston, sincere and kindly but out of his depth when dealing with a girl like Hazel, were a lot better than she was. (Farrar had also played a handsome rogue in another Archers drama, "Black Narcissus"). I just couldn't help wishing that The Archers had found a British collaborator, or at least an American one who wasn't married to a glamorous Hollywood goddess. 6/10, but I reserve the right to revise that mark when I have watched the original version again.

Some goofs. Reddin is shown living alone with only an elderly manservant for company, but in fact a stately home like the one he lives in would have required a large staff of servants to run it. An abandoned mine-shaft plays an important role in the story, but there were never any coal mines in this part of Shropshire, although there were some in other parts of the county. (In Webb's original novel this was a quarry). And in some scenes- apparently the ones shot in America- Hazel's pet fox is obviously a stuffed toy.

This amazing film was made in 1950 but was never released and has apparently never been shown in a commercial cinema. A mangled form of it minus 35 minutes, reedited, and with some extra linking scenes was released in 1952 as 'The Wild Heart'. This was because Jennifer Jones, the star, was the wife of the control freak David Selznick, who could not bear the fact that this masterpiece had been made without his supervision and represented something authentic, of which he himself was incapable. For the film which Powell and Pressburger really made, it was necessary to wait until 2001 when it was released in a restored version, with the most beautiful Technicolor cinematography, on DVD as part of the Powell and Pressburger retrospective revival. Of this film for more than half a century, therefore, one could truly say it had 'gone to earth', as the huntsman's cry has it in the final devastating scene. The film is based on a novel by Mary Webb, who died in 1927 aged only 46. Another novel of hers, 'Precious Bane', has been filmed more than once, and helped make the reputation of the British actress Janet McTeer. Jennifer Jones is totally stunning in this film as Hazel, a semi-wild half-Gypsy girl with a pet fox named Foxy, a pet raven, rabbits, and a small menagerie of other creatures. She lives with her Celtic harp-playing father in an isolated cottage. He is wonderfully played by Esmond Knight, with true country humour. The wild gypsy girl who roams the hills was a motif well known to Mary Webb from Theodore Watts-Dunton's fictional Welsh gypsy characters Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell, who were based on real people. This film is shot on the Welsh borders as they were in 1949, and in Shropshire. The landscape is wild and wonderful, magnificently filmed, and the movie is like a paean to the wilds. The story is like a Thomas Hardy tale, though less sophisticated and with more than a touch of Victorian melodrama. Cyril Cusack does a superbly restrained job of playing a quiet vicar who cannot express himself and is paralyzed by inactivity, like the main character in John Cowper Powys's novel 'Wolf Solent'. He marries Hazel but 'respects' her too much to touch her and so does not consummate the marriage. That kind of thing often happened in those days. Along comes the monstrously egotistical and unrestrained squire, played to full effect by David Farrar, who becomes obsessed by Hazel, with dire consequences all round. One of the finest performances is by Hugh Griffith as Farrar's valet. It was one of the greatest moments of that fine character actor's career. Jennifer Jones is entirely magical and captivating, with her weird looks and her expression of always seeing the fairies. She does a superb job, as does Edmond Knight, of speaking a genuine rough country dialect. Since British viewers have to put up with Brooklyn and other mangled and horrible accents, it seems only right that Americans should have to try to decipher Welsh Border dialect for once, but of course they are too spoilt to try, and this has been a cause of complaint. However, the film has full authenticity and is a miraculous preservation in aspic of a lost world. The sets are very good indeed, and all the locations are genuine. This is no fantasy, it is real in what it portrays, only the story is a bit over the top melodramatically. Otherwise, this was then, and now is now. This film can be watched repeatedly by those who want to comprehend a world that is gone forever, like that of the film 'Owd Bob' (see my review of it). It would not be fair to refrain from pointing out that Foxy the fox deserved an animal Oscar, as he is in nearly every scene.

This film is one of the Powell and Pressburger films that have received less attention than many of their more well-known works, and it is a real beauty of a film.

With some excellent acting from Jennifer Jones, Cyril Cusack and David Farrer (Farrer rarely reached this level of believability in any other Archers film) Powell's direction is ahead of the game, and with the photography of Christopher Challis the film evokes the early New Hollywood style of the mid sixties, with many more long shots of groups of people and a far more mobile use of camera than Powell had previous used. The colouring is sumptuous, with many close-up head shots surrounded by the rich colours of sky and countryside.

The story of a naive country girl courted by two suiters; a country priest and a local squire is very reminiscent of post-war westerns, and Powell shows the relationships between the three as a battle between the order and probity of the priest's lifestyle and beliefs and the squire's passion and unrestrained desires, a Hardyesque reflection of British society in the 19th century, a view found in the Archer's other films such as A Canterbuty Tale and I Know Where I'm Going. It is a look back to what might be considered a more genteel Englishness, but does it with far more style than the contemporary Ealing Studio films.

Beautiful to look at, forward-looking cinematography and some cracking music by Brian Easdale who had already worked on The Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, this is classic Powell and Pressburger. It can be seen as the pinnacle of their 1940s work, bringing together the technicolour beauty of films like The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death and the rural idealism of A Canterbury Tale.

David O Selznick presents a textbook example of how not to edit a film; this is the hacked, reordered, and partly re-shot version of Powell and Pressburger's 'Gone to Earth'.

Clumsy cuts with scenes chopped, flagging the obvious with signs and the like, additional scenes (not without interest, but not really needed), a more dramatic ending (I preferred the original), more close-ups of Ms Jones, a superfluous narration, and that's just for starters.

I saw 'Gone to Earth', the full and original version of this, first; and can't help finding 'The Wild Heart' a little disappointing in comparison.

It is good to see both versions but give me the original any time. 'The Wild Heart' feels like something which was almost done for a joke, by a film production student!

I first saw this film when it came out in 1950 when I was a child and was fascinated by the beautiful landscapes which reminded me so much of my former home in Ireland with its soft and dreamy countryside. I did not know at the time that it had been shot in Shropshire and was not aware that there was such a place as Shropshire. I was living at the time in the smoky outskirts of Manchester which had been despoiled by the worst excesses of the Industrial Revolution which co-incidentally had first seen the light of day in Shropshire of all places. For some reason the Industry moved out of Shropshire leaving behind a few traces such as the mine shafts, one of which figures so tragically in this film and others such as the first ever iron bridge which of course can be found at Ironbridge near where the film was made. Some years later I happened to go on an outing to Shropshire and was told by the people living near Church Stretton that the film had been made at Much Wenlock which was quite near there. I never got to go to Much Wenlock but I regularly visit there in spirit when I watch the film on my video. at this stage I must have seen it about 40 times - I watch old films whilst breakfasting at my home in Ireland to which I finally returned after 29 long years in Lancashire. I have read some of the other comments and I would agree that plot wise it is little more than a run of the mill Victorian bodice ripper. But I must heartily agree with one of the people who commented that this film evokes the quintessential essence of English landscape at its best. If it was a painting it would be by John Constable who captured the special something that Gone To Earth epitomises.

In making GONE TO EARTH Powell built on his childhood memories of rural England. The finished film owes a lot to Christopher Challis' superb photography and Brian Easedale's music.

But it owes even more to Jennifer Jones' portrayal of an adolescent girl in tune with the prechristian countryside: her love for a tamed fox symbolizes this special relationship with the pagan past.

She was 30 years old when she romped over the Shropshire hills and the Shepperton studio but she has the energy and bodily rhythms of a 16-year-old as she plays her pagan princess. This doomed princess has the ironic fate of being forced into relationships with two contemporary masters of the present-day Christian landscape: one is a mother-haunted cleric, the other a bodice-ripping squire.

Playing these stereotypes is not easy and the two actors, Cyril Cusack and David Farrar, make an ill-balanced pair.

Like Powell's earlier BLACK NARCISSUS, this film works on a symbolic and psychological level; but both story and dialogue have painful weaknesses made worse by censorship and the dreadful U.S.commercial cut.

Avoid older versions of GONE TO EARTH: they usually contain censorship cuts which change the rhythm of several scenes and mutilate the climax. See the whole film - now available on DVD - on the largest screen you can obtain. Then you will appreciate Powell's skill in capturing the colours of the English countryside and projecting Jennifer Jones' energy as the pagan princess.

'Gone to Earth', in its original form (not as revised and reordered under the helm of Reuben Mamoulian), is a powerful realisation in shimmering Technicolor of both Mary Webb's novel and the savage pull of the forces of nature.

Hazel (Jennifer Jones, imported from Hollywood, as you would expect from Selznick's involvement in this film), is an innocent, an animal lover with a head full of fantasy, fairies, and spells. Her father (played beautifully by Esmond Knight), plays the harp while she sings in strange, ethereal tones.

Enter the sacred and the profane in the forms of Cyril Cusack as the minister (understated as ever), and David Farrar as the lusty Squire (in his third appearance in P&P films, and in some ways the character is a close cousin to Black Narcissus's Mr Dean). Hazel is desired by them both, but in very different ways, and her naiveté and innocence may well prove to be her undoing.

Against the backdrop of country fairs, fox hunts, flowers trodden into the mud, fairgrounds, parish councils, and disapproving parents (Sybil Thorndike, memorable as the parson's mother), this film proves to be a gem.

There's a couple of nice roles for Hugh Griffith and George Cole as well. And Jones, despite a sometimes dodgy accent, always seemed to look half her age and inhabits the Shropshire hills perfectly as the ill-fated Hazel, in close company with her pet fox.

In many ways. 'Gone to Earth' is as much a potboiler as any Catherine Cookson, but it has enough to keep you watching.

A beautifully made and gently rolling film, almost surreal in content.

Some moments almost seem off cue and through a breathtakingly simple narrative visual style, comes a story of innocence, passion and ultimate tragedy. The music is hypnotic and compliments the flow of the film.

Superb performance by all - including 'Foxy'! If this film was made today it would be showered with Oscars.

Finally, it is hard to see a comparable style in the British film industry prior to this and certainly nothing after it. It is this fact that I believe contributes to the films unique qualities.

I refer readers to the original, longer and in my opinion better version entitled "Gone To Earth" (1950), which I have reviewed here under the latter title.Other reviewers too have pertinent comments which I recommend reading.The subject version was Selznick's severely edited version (down to 80 minutes) in which he only retained about 35 minutes of the original then transported the major actors back to Hollywood and had Raoul Mamoulian film additional scenes as the original flopped in England after its release and this version similarly failed in 1952 in the U.S.A. after its release there.For example in the subject version Jack Reddin makes it clear to the Reverend Marston that he is going to have a new addition to his congregation soon,(i.e. that he has made Hazel pregnant after she married the Reverend, quite a contraversial thing to say in 1950!).I sense that Powell & Pressburgers' films of this era are now only being re-appraised and enjoyed by a different and more appreciative generation of filmgoers and I recommend those quoted in my other critique.

One difference in "The Wild Heart" is a prologue spoken by the late Jo Cotten a la "Duel in the Sun".Certainly the new digitalised and remastered colours of "Gone to Earth" are vastly superior to this version.I have sensed that USA viewers may have a problem obtaining the latter version but try Blackstar.co.uk - Europe's largest video dealer if there is a supply problem.I own both versions and I suppose each has merit and should both be viewed to obtain an overall impression.

In 1897, an unmarried gypsy girl, living in a cabin on the Welsh countryside with her coffin-maker father and pet fox, is desired by two men in town: a lusty squire and a well-meaning pastor. A disappointment for Britain's The Archers--writer-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger--here working for both Alexander Korda and British Lion in the UK and David O. Selznick and RKO in the US (and featuring Selznick's wife, Jennifer Jones, in the lead). Selznick disastrously recut and retitled the picture "The Wild Heart" for its Stateside release, yet the unsubtle original version at 111mns isn't a terrific improvement. The filmmaking duo have, along with cinematographer Christopher Challis, the superlative eyes of real artists (they are particularly good at capturing indignant or dreamy-eyed faces); perhaps it was Mary Webb's book that ensnared them--the storytelling is 'romantic' without being logical, and most of the acting is broad and brash. The girl buys a new dress and practically has men tripping all over themselves taking a gander; later, while walking home at night on a moonlit road, she hear horses pulling a carriage and screams in fright, dropping to the ground. Jones is actually well-cast (she's certainly pretty enough for the role, and she does her own singing), but the character of Hazel is an impossible creation--all wrought up with feminine nerves and exasperation. A bit more humor and gypsy spirit might have improved things. **1/2 from ****

Among the strangest, and loveliest, of the Archers films. As with so many of their films, its real subject is the profound, almost mystical, connection of people to their physical environment, most notably the British countryside. The much under-rated Jennifer Jones gives an utterly fearless performance, throwing herself into a role that sounds unplayable on paper. The Christopher Challis three-strip Technicolor photography is bold and gorgeous, underlining the central importance of the landscape. Strange in the best possible sense, in that it takes us somewhere we've never really been. Even the Bronte sisters couldn't capture rustic England as well. But they never had the benefit of Technicolor.

This Powell and Pressburger film is one which inspired Kate Bush to write Running Up That Hill, so for that at the very least, we should definitely be grateful. I'm guessing it inspired the song, as quite a few scenes in it have the main character, who is a woman of nature, running around on hills in the English countryside; so I would surmise that it is the imagery and feel which inspired the song, more than the content, after all Kate was inspired to write Wuthering Heights after only seeing the last five minutes of the BBC adaption, which strikes me as a kind of similar situation. This film is a romantic-drama and, like Powell and Pressburger films in general, it has a sumptuous Technicolor look. It ends on a particularly impressive final few minutes.

An unlikely co-production between the British Archers production company, comprising Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and dictatorial Hollywood mogul David O Selznick, unsurprisingly starring the latter's wife Jennifer Jones, "Gone To Earth" is a visually remarkable and emotionally turbulent feature. Set in the rugged Shropshire countryside, the action centres around Jones' child of nature Hazel Woodus, only daughter of a semi-idiotic harpist father. Uneducated and wilful, Hazel is a dark haired beauty of wild, gypsy appearance and along with her unusual, instinctive relationship with animals, in particular, a stray fox she has adopted, is obviously set quite apart from the rest of the God-fearing village community where she and father eke out an existence.

Unwittingly causing havoc in the hearts and I dare say loins of almost every young man she meets, the womenfolk in the neighbourhood have Hazel marked down as a man-baiting temptress. Cast out into the street late at night by the Bible-punching mother of another potential suitor, she falls into the path of the brutish and headstrong local squire, David Farrar, who puts her up at his estate for the night, much to the morally-offended chagrin of his attitudinal man-servant Hugh Griffiths.

Later, at a local fair where Hazel sings accompaniment to her father's playing, she comes into the orbit of the new young pastor, Cyril Cusack, who almost immediately falls for her and proposes marriage, which she's bound to accept. However, Hazel has got into the blood of the caddish squire and a tug-of-love ensues over her which in the end, nobody wins.

I sometimes think these wonderful Archers films should come with a warning, "Abandon reality, all who enter here" as the viewer is transported into a stylised version of the everyday world peopled with highly individual, almost preternatural characters. The Thomas Hardy-esque story abounds with hunting and biblical allegories with Hazel identified both as the elusive fox no huntsman can capture let alone tame and also as an unwitting Eve-like stirrer of passions.

Of course it ends in tragedy but not before the Archers customary blend of sweeping narrative, atmospheric music and stunning colour cinematography has created another notable film almost impossible to categorise. Jones speaks a kind of pidgin-English as she immerses herself in her character, although she's probably most effective when not speaking. She doesn't have to, her dark sexuality and wild strangeness bring the menfolk to their knees anyway. Cusack and Farrar make excellent rivals for her in their different ways, the twin benevolent and malevolent influences on either shoulder of Hazel, speaking in her ear.

I'm no fan of hunting and am fully in favour of the fox-hunting ban in this country but I must admit I was carried along in the chase for Hazel's hand in another brilliant Archers production. As a postscript, singer Kate Bush, who in her youth bore a striking resemblance to Jones' appearance in this film, took inspiration from it for her "Hounds of Love" song.

The opening slide names both Sir Alexander Korda and David O. Selznick which though impressive, rather sums up this somewhat confused romantic adventure. Jennifer Jones is "Hazel", a young girl at one with nature - particularly "Foxy", her independently minded fox cub. Eventually, she settles down with the local vicar "Marston" (Cyril Cusack), but is too beautiful and wild not to continue to turn heads and is also sought after by the local squire "Jack" (David Farrar) too. Rejected, he stokes ill-feeling against the girl amongst their puritanical, superstitious, villagers, and a tragiedy ensues. Powell and Pressberger live up to their reputation with this beautifully shot effort - the colours and costumes, and the exterior countryside scenes are terrific. The acting is less impressive. We know that Farrar lusts after the girl, but his actual performance gives little evidence of that. Owen Holder provides us with a rather distracting narration that doesn't add anything at all - and there is quite a bit of padding to draw out to the story - pretty to look at most of the time, but frequently slowing it down to a snail's pace. Dame Sybil Thorndike is quite good as the girl's disapproving mother-in-law, and there are couple of nice contributions from Hugh Griffith and George Cole to help it along, but somehow this production hasn't quite got the momentum to sustain it well. It may well be that Selznick edited the heart (and soul) out of it when he saw it, but in any case this isn't one of the Archers' more memorable efforts.

Saw this film August 2005 at the National Film Theatre, London had been longing to see it since reading the book "Gone to Earth" by Mary Webb. It used to appear on TV from time to time but no longer.

I have to say it was well worth the long wait and the trip to London. It was remarkable how the film kept atmosphere of the countryside and the buildings as in the book. The acting all round was brilliant and Jennifer Jones was superb. All right her local dialect had to be understood by an American public, but there are plenty of people with mixed accents. The photography was outstanding.

In a story of sombre characters and places, humour was provided by the local squire's manservant, anything but servile. "She'll do" says David Farrar on picking up Jennifer Jones for the first time, "but will you do" mutters the manservant.

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Anytime you see a Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film, you know you're going to see beautiful cinematography, lush colors, and a bit of fantasy or magic in the story. In Gone to Earth, you get an extra treat in the beauty and wild spirit of Jennifer Jones. It's funny that she got typecast as a wild child, when she won an Oscar for playing an innocent in The Song of Bernadette. Nevertheless, this movie features another Duel in the Sun type of character: sexy, emotional, irresistible, and almost unhinged. She has wonderfully expressive eyes that can go from sweet to crazed in a second, which is why she does so well with these characters.

If you like Jonesy, don't miss Gone to Earth. She has a beloved pet fox whom she follows everywhere, and when Foxy accidentally gets chased during a hunt, she gets very upset. One of the English gentlemen, David Farrar, is taken with the free spirit, but her father wants her to marry someone who can really tame her.

At times, this movie can get pretty heavy, so don't expect a fluffy little barefoot romp in the woods. Jonesy is adorable, as is Foxy, but if you sense the story might take a dramatic turn for the worse, you're probably right. It's not a very good date movie, but if you like Jonesy, rent it. I'm her biggest fan, and once when I got adopted by a new cat who started showing up in my yard, I toyed between naming her Jonesy or Foxy before settling on Pearl (for Duel in the Sun). The cat had the last laugh, as he turned out to be a boy!

"Gone to Earth" is a very, very pretty film. It was made in the UK and the colorful English countryside is quite nice. However, the film also is incredibly slow to be point of being tedious. It also features a main character who is a bit stupid and difficult to like. For me, this film was very tough going.

Hazel (Jennifer Jones) is a sort of free spirit who loves nature and lives her own odd life. While somewhat pretty, this alone didn't explain why both the Parson and Squire were so smitten by her. The Parson's love was sincere but lacked passion and the Squire's had plenty of passion but nothing else. During the course of the film, Hazel vacillates between the two...though you wonder why any sane woman would want either of these losers.

Overall, the film just didn't pay off for me. Pretty English countryside aside, the movie just seemed tedious and many of the characters nonsensical. It did, however, have a happy ending.