c-partridge 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.

robert-temple-1 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.

drrap 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.

carollangdonuk 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.cl