The Wild Heart

"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.

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.

Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger's weird & wonderful film of a young Shopshire superstitious gypsy Hazel Woods(Jennifer Jones) who is at ease with nature & lives with her pet fox(foxy) & her Father away from the local community,full of Celtic symbolism & myth.This is how she lives until the Minister(Cyril Cusack) comes calling & eventually marry where upon she pursued by the local fox hunting squire Jack Reddin(David Farrer) & try's to resolve her problem by her Mother's book of spells & end's up with the squire only to see the error of her way's & desperately tries to get back to the pastor with her fox in tow,only for a twist of fate to intervene mixed with irony.Nice photography & shot in Techicolour & a haunting music score.Jennifer Jones regional accent enhances her beauty & charm to this film.

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.

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 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.

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.

'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.

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

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.