Corazón indómito

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.

An unlikely co-production between the British Archers production company, comprising Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and dictatorial Hollywood mogul David O Selznick, unsurprisingly starring the latter's wife Jennifer Jones, "Gone To Earth" is a visually remarkable and emotionally turbulent feature. Set in the rugged Shropshire countryside, the action centres around Jones' child of nature Hazel Woodus, only daughter of a semi-idiotic harpist father. Uneducated and wilful, Hazel is a dark haired beauty of wild, gypsy appearance and along with her unusual, instinctive relationship with animals, in particular, a stray fox she has adopted, is obviously set quite apart from the rest of the God-fearing village community where she and father eke out an existence.

Unwittingly causing havoc in the hearts and I dare say loins of almost every young man she meets, the womenfolk in the neighbourhood have Hazel marked down as a man-baiting temptress. Cast out into the street late at night by the Bible-punching mother of another potential suitor, she falls into the path of the brutish and headstrong local squire, David Farrar, who puts her up at his estate for the night, much to the morally-offended chagrin of his attitudinal man-servant Hugh Griffiths.

Later, at a local fair where Hazel sings accompaniment to her father's playing, she comes into the orbit of the new young pastor, Cyril Cusack, who almost immediately falls for her and proposes marriage, which she's bound to accept. However, Hazel has got into the blood of the caddish squire and a tug-of-love ensues over her which in the end, nobody wins.

I sometimes think these wonderful Archers films should come with a warning, "Abandon reality, all who enter here" as the viewer is transported into a stylised version of the everyday world peopled with highly individual, almost preternatural characters. The Thomas Hardy-esque story abounds with hunting and biblical allegories with Hazel identified both as the elusive fox no huntsman can capture let alone tame and also as an unwitting Eve-like stirrer of passions.

Of course it ends in tragedy but not before the Archers customary blend of sweeping narrative, atmospheric music and stunning colour cinematography has created another notable film almost impossible to categorise. Jones speaks a kind of pidgin-English as she immerses herself in her character, although she's probably most effective when not speaking. She doesn't have to, her dark sexuality and wild strangeness bring the menfolk to their knees anyway. Cusack and Farrar make excellent rivals for her in their different ways, the twin benevolent and malevolent influences on either shoulder of Hazel, speaking in her ear.

I'm no fan of hunting and am fully in favour of the fox-hunting ban in this country but I must admit I was carried along in the chase for Hazel's hand in another brilliant Archers production. As a postscript, singer Kate Bush, who in her youth bore a striking resemblance to Jones' appearance in this film, took inspiration from it for her "Hounds of Love" song.

I saw this glorious film when it first appeared. The following week I tracked it down to a small London cinema where they screened single films continuously several times a day without supporting features. I hadn't intended seeing it more than once on this occasion but I can recall being so mesmerised that I watched the programme through three times. Clearly I was out of step with the climate of critical opinion. The reviewers had slated it and the audience around me was distinctly hostile. There was a lot of fidgeting and derisory shouts. Quite a few walked out. Behaviour was often bad in British cinemas in the 'fifties particularly if viewers got bored. The manager called the police in during a screening I attended a few years later of "The Trouble WIth Harry" and I can even remember screaming at the usherettes to stop talking when I first saw "A Face in the Crowd". I had to wait many years before I heard good things being said about "Gone to Earth". It was in 1988 when someone introduced a showing of it on British television most enthusiastically. Whatever one thinks about the relative merits of Powell and Pressburger's films (I am clearly in a minority in thinking this their finest) there is no doubt that they are now appreciated in a way they never were when they first appeared. But if passion for what is still considered one of their minor works may seem rather over the top, let me say but one thing; where else in the whole of cinema is there a more haunting and magical evocation of English landscape! Christopher Challis, a brilliant cinematographer, is the real star of the film. Undoubtedly (and this is perhaps at the core of its original problems) style matters more than content. The plot is little more than Victorian melodrama - lecherous squire deflowers simple country girl who has married local vicar - and the dialogue is curiously stilted. However this hardly matters in a work cinematically choreographed with such brilliance. The final foxhunting sequence, where the film's many strands are brought together, is visually and aurally one of the most spellbinding in all cinema. The huntsman's cry of "Gone to earth!" at the very end has haunted me for well over half a lifetime.

This was a hard film to see for a very long time, at least in any form that would do it justice. But the small snippets of it I'd caught made me steadfastly wait for the day I could view it, and having done so, I can say it's considerably better than its fairly middling reputation.

Maybe the easiest way to describe it is as Powell & Pressburger's "Wuthering Heights" - it's set in that gothic period drama genre, anyway - but at root it's a grown-up, thoughtful and adult romance-of-sorts set on windswept fairy-tale moors.

The two films it fits closest to in their body of work would be "I Know Where I'm Going" (for the elemental setting) and especially Black Narcissus, for the matchless colour photography and mood of suppressed eroticism bubbling savagely beneath the surface. You can feel the invisible forces of superstition and desire affecting events, the tiny figures swamped by a greater Nature beyond their understanding or powers.

As I've already said, this is a grown-up film, a good 15 years or more before its time in its depiction of adultery and complexity of emotion in a potboiler setting. The sexuality in it is not explicit, but it's firmly engraved in stone between the lines of the script and in small moments of quiet force - flickers of understanding, judgement or confusion passing over every face throughout, speaking volumes.

There's a lurid, hyperreal, almost cartoonishly painterly look to the colour films of the 40s and 50s, which was never seen again afterwards, and is now impossible to recreate. This one has the texture of Singin' In The Rain but is, unusually, set largely outdoors, in the real world, in wide open spaces. Because of this, the nature scenes look, gorgeously, straight out of Bambi.

Gone To Earth is not P&P's greatest film, but it's a real treasure nonetheless. A wild, dark, pagan beauty.

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.