Available on YouTube
Some visceral reactions
1. The Casting of Jennifer Jones is brilliant
2. I love Foxy
3. Traditional English Fox Hunting is vile.
4. The film beautifully evokes a pagan England
Gone to Earth is a 1950 British Technicolor film created by the director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Jennifer Jones, David Farrar, Cyril Cusack and Esmond Knight. The film was significantly changed for the American market by David O. Selznick and retitled The Wild Heart in 1952.
The film is based on the 1917 novel of the same name by author Mary Webb.
The film is set in the Shropshire countryside in 1897. Hazel Woodus (Jennifer Jones) is a child of nature who loves and understands all of the wild animals more than she does the people around her. She is also a bit of a witch, and she consults the book of spells and charms left to her by her gypsy mother. Her father is a coffin maker and a musician. He and his daughter, his only child, have a relationship fraught with quarrels and deep love.
Local squire Jack Reddin (David Farrar) sees Hazel and wants her for himself. But Hazel has already promised herself to the Baptist minister Edward Marston (Cyril Cusack). A struggle for Hazel's body and soul ensues.
Gone to Earth is a beautifully shot and atmospheric film. It is also a complex and challenging film that explores themes of love, passion, nature, and religion. The film was not a commercial success when it was first released, but it has since come to be regarded as one of Powell and Pressburger's best films.
Mel Ulm
Here's another of your films that I did not realise had been made; years ago, reading through the authors that had been republished by Virago in the UK, I read Gone to Earth, not truly appreciating it but still enjoying it well enough. Wasn't it the book (or, the sort of book) that Stella Gibbons was kind of mocking with Cold Comfort Farm? I think so...
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