Gone to Earth

Hollywood siren Jennifer Jones gives an unforgettable performance as a free spirit caught between the passions of a clergyman and a fox-hunting squire in Powell and Pressburger’s ravishing, rarely screened melodrama.

In a rural England somewhere between the late 19th century and a Technicolor dream, headstrong nature girl Hazel Woodus – played by a swooning, windswept Jennifer Jones (The Song of Bernadette) – lives a carefree existence communing with the animals and fairies of the untamed country. Like the foxes with whom she shares a spiritual kinship, Hazel finds herself hunted by both a dark, dashing squire (David Farrar, Black Narcissus) and a straitlaced clergyman (Cyril Cusack), two men to whom she refuses to be shackled.

Steeped in mysticism and eerie folklore – and serving as vivid inspiration for Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love – this expressionistic romance from the legendary Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes; A Matter of Life and Death) was the British filmmakers’ lone foray into Hollywood, in part due to co-producer (and Jones’s husband) David O. Selznick later bowdlerising the film for its US release as The Wild Heart. Presented here in its original version – and on a vibrant 35mm print, courtesy of Martin Scorsese’s personal collection – the film is a haunting tale of doomed love and the liberating power of nature, led by Jones’s foxy, ferocious performance.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival