Wild at heart… Gone to Earth (1950), BFI, Cinema Unbound, film on film

For me making Gone to Earth was as happy an experience as a return to childhood…

Michael Powell, though Kentish to his core, also had forebears in Worcestershire and Wales and in the second volume of his autobiography, A Million Dollar Movie, he wonders why the myths of these past generations are more potent than our own childhood memories at least when concerning his ability to recreate the atmosphere and feeling on screen. He felt he hadn’t put enough Kent into A Canterbury Tale, whereas he was more satisfied with the atmosphere of this film made on location and with plenty of Shropshire folk. Perhaps it’s just easier working with myths especially in a film with a simpler story and fewer characters than ACT?

“When Esmond Knight roared, ‘Drop that dratted fox, gurl!’ or ‘Put ‘un in a coffin!’ it was the very tone and accent of my father’s bailiff, Joe Wood, whom he bought with him… to Kent.”

The landscape is remarkably well photographed by Christopher Challis and has a beautiful warmth on the BFI’s 35mm National Archive print, Technicolor bringing out the full flavours of striking Shropshire valleys and stark rolling hills, the complex contours of the bleed between England’s lush green and Wales’ abundant granite grey. This sense of place gives the film a character quite unlike anything else Powell and Pressburger produced and the swirling score from Brian Easdale is as heart wrenching as anything he produced for them.

Jennifer Jones and Foxy

The pair were also delighted with their star, American Jennifer Jones who, despite struggling a little with the accent, gives a performance of raw power, almost a part with the starkness of the countryside and her character Hazel’s choice between the carnal Squire Jack Reddin (tooth and claw…) played by David Farrar and the civilising pastor Edward Marston played by Cyril Cusack. Jones is as free as Pamela Brown in IKWIG, but, unlike Catriona Potts, she has yet to understand who she really is, being certainly a child of nature and the land as her protectiveness towards her pet fox shows, yet still unsure of human convention.

"What a beautiful woman, great-hearted girl, inspired actress, restless soul!"

Michael Powell

I haven’t fully appreciated Gone to Earth, an adaptation of Mary Webb's novel Gone to Earth (1917), until tonight’s screening with a packed NFT3 mostly rapt in appreciation of the visual delights on screen, apart from the odd guffaw at Farrar brooding from his high horse! Jones is indeed stunning, acting with a physicality matching her characters’ wildness and well-cast according to members of my party who have read the book which is, they both say, as much a celebration of and call to protect nature as it is about women’s role in rural society.

David Farrar

By gum Hazel, you’re…jam… you’re butter…

Jones is wild as the wind in the early stages, dressed almost in rags running the pathways across the rolling landscape barefoot before emerging in more” conventional” womanly form in the fine green dress she buys from Much Wenlock on market day. Her cousin Albert (George Gole) is struck almost dumb by her appearance describing her first as “jam” and next, the ultimate compliment, as butter! His mother is less impressed and won’t let her niece stay the night affronted by her look and resemblance to her gypsy mother. A fox amongst so many tightly wound chickens.

 

Trudging home barefoot she bumps, quite literally, into Squire Reddin racing along with his horse and trap. He offers her shelter whilst drinking her in with his eyes and getting her to put on a dress owned by his dead wife, he peers at her as she tries it on and is lost in lustful reverie, announcing to himself that deciding “she’ll do”. Reddin is almost a recluse in the book and whilst clearly taking part in the rural community of fox hunting broods mostly alone with his long-suffering manservant, Vessons (Hugh Griffith) the two locked in something like a proto-typical Steptoe and Son relationship. Vessons tries to protect her from the Squires animal desires only to later turn against her when she’s finally brought into the house supplanting his role, upsetting their balance. Why does she not belong?

Cyril  Cusack

Hazel accompanies her father to the local fair and the newly arrived vicar Marston is transported. He’s played by the protean Cyril Cusack, here, a kindly but naïve Christian man who doesn’t quite know how to save the woman who strikes him so firmly. In the book the local community come to love Hazel but here she exposes the hypocrisy not just of the so-called good man of the town but Marston’s mother.

Marston wants to “save” and civilise her and she is placed in clothes that gather up to her neck, constraining her within polite expectations and formality, the costume design from Ivy Baker and Julia Squire plays an even bigger role than usual. Hazel sings with beautiful eloquence yet she talks only in short, stabbing sentences that remind me of Paul Auster’s character in City of Glass who grows up in isolation only learning to speak when finally exposed to the outside world. Hazel is more expressively confident in caring for her Foxy than with people although she grows more fluent as she engages with her twin paths of possibility.

The couple are married and yet even as this happens and Hazel is subsequently baptised in a pond near the church, Reddin is always nearby, sneering from his horse and doing everything but twirl his moustache. Truth is, he’s just as entranced by Hazel as Marston and as the fight to capture her heart both fail to realise that they are both biting off more than they can chew.

For her part, Hazel seeks advice from beyond this realm and following her mother’s scribbled book of folklore and magic, takes herself atop God’s Little Mountain and recites a magical incantation as she pledges herself follow whatever nature reveals as her choice. She wants to hear the faerie music and, suddenly through soft gusts of wind is carried the mysterious sound of a harp. The camera cuts away to reveal her father playing someway off, but she believes the coincidence and makes no attempt to rationalise the moment.

This is a supreme Powell and Pressburger moment… subtle but clear and part of a story that blends characters and countryside in ways that are just a magical realist step away from either Black Narcissus or The Red Shoes: there’s the same passion, struggle with human nature and men struggling to control women. You can waste too much time trying to rank their films and if this film has been in the lower reaches for many it can only be because it just doesn’t quite have the story dynamic to match those truly great films. Whatever, it is still The Archers in their prime if not at their very best.

 

The writer and director, by Powell’s own account, agreed suspecting that the film was “not great, or even big, by their american producer David O. Selznick’s standards…” but they underestimated his affection for their star (he was besotted) and he announced he was going to take over the film and upset by a perceived lack of screen time for Jones, had the film re-cut and partially re-shot by director Rouben Mamoulian and retitled as The Wild Heart*. According to Powell, this was only after he’d shown it to King Vidor, William Wyler and Josef von Sternberg all of whom admired the film and did not want to work on it.

Selznick unsuccessfully attempted to sue Korda's company for not keeping to the spirit of Webb's novel, and in the end London Films was given the British rights to the film, while he retained the American rights which is why both versions can be seen now. It’s certainly an irony that the only way to get a Blu-ray copy of Gone to Earth is to obtain the US Kino Lorber disc of The Wild Heart which has the original – and far better – film as an extra. It looks slightly anaemic in comparison with the 35mm we saw tonight so hopefully, someday, we’ll get a domestic release with the depth and vitality this film deserves.

 

Super natural Shropshire... Gone to Earth (1950)

Michael Powell’s cinematographer, Christopher Challis, described Gone to Earth as "one of the most beautiful films ever to be shot of the English countryside". This is hard to deny as the director brought his unique sense of cinema to the depiction of the rolling hills of Shropshire near the border of England and Wales.

What he had done for Scotland in I Know Where I’m Going, the hebridean islands in The Edge of the World and to north Wales in the early film The Phantom Light, Powell brought to Shropshire. He created a heightened sense of the real through cinematography, painstaking location selection and expertly eerie sound recording.

The use of sound in P&P films played a crucial part in the creation of mood. With studio recorded sound mixed with on site recordings there is often dead silence punctuating the dialogue interrupted by almost over-amplified moments. It’s almost as if they used the limitations of audio recording to create a sense of expectation and the tension of still moments before something major is bound to happen.

Jennifer Jones recites a magical incantation as she pledges herself to her fateful course of action. She wants to hear the faerie music and, suddenly through soft gusts of wind is carried the mysterious sound of a harp. The camera cuts away to reveal her father playing someway off, but she believes the coincidence and makes no attempt to rationalise the moment. This is what Powell and Pressburger expect of us too…just believe and lose yourself.

Jones plays Hazel Woodus, a pure being of nature and as wild as the fox she keeps as a pet. She sings with a frail beauty that emphasises her purity and runs barefoot and wild through the hills - pure "jam" as one of the admiring locals calls her.

David Farrar is the epitome of rugged English masculinity playing the dis-likable rogue, John 'Jack' Reddin. He encounters Hazel late one rainy day and quickly decides that "she'll do". He knows what he wants and lures the innocent towards the decadence of his decaying manor house. At the same time, the newly arrived priest, Edward Marston played by the superb Cyril Cusack, also takes a more worshipful fancy to the pursued.

Hazel is torn between the two but marries the cleric only to find the draw of wild Jack too much to resist. She follows her base instinct and runs to his home only to be followed by Edward who is willing to risk reputation to be with her. Torn between the two extremes, is there any way Hazel can find peace - to strike a balance between nature and (a) man?

There's great support from a host of British character actors - especially Hugh Griffith and Anton Knight - along with a village full of actual villagers: funny how you can always tell! Jennifer Jones is simply outstanding. Her rural accent may be variable but it doesn't matter, she has the look and the ability to make us fall for this character. She is true to her self and in the end loves nature more than man. As Powell later wrote: "What a beautiful woman, great-hearted girl, inspired actress, restless soul!"

The film was controversial on a number of levels. Powell struggled to find a dog pack as the film was seen to be anti-hunting (it's far more complex than that) whilst producer David O. Selznick, upset by a perceived lack of screen time for Jones, his then girlfriend, had the film re-cut and retitled as The Wild Heart.

Unfortunately Gone to Earth has gotten rather collectable - I hadn't realized, sorry! - but is still available at inflated prices from Amazon. Not as powerful as the very best Archers films it is still a top quality production with many of the hallmarks of their glory years: the very best and most consistent partnership in British film history. Hopefully a re-release isn't far away.