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Gone to Earth
Directed by	Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
Produced by	Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
Written by	Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
Starring	Jennifer Jones David Farrar Cyril Cusack Esmond Knight
Music by	Brian Easdale
Cinematography	Christopher Challis
Editing by	Reginald Mills
Distributed by	British Lion Films
Release date(s)	November 6, 1950 UK
Running time	110 min.
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
IMDb profile

For the Stevie Nicks album, see The Wild Heart (album).

Gone to Earth (1950) is a film by the British-based director-writer team of Powell & Pressburger.

The film was based on the 1917 novel of the same name by author Mary Webb (a novel partly inspired by the Diary of Francis Kilvert). The novel was all but ignored when it first appeared, but became widely known in the 1930s, as the neo-romantic revival gathered pace.

Hazel Woodus (Jennifer Jones) is a child of nature in the Shropshire countryside in 1897. She loves and understands all the wild animals more than the people around her. Whenever she has problems she turns to the book of spells and charms left to her by her gypsy mother.

Local squire, Jack Reddin (David Farrar) sees Hazel and wants her. But she has already promised herself to the Baptist Minister, Edward Marston (Cyril Cusack). A struggle for her body and soul ensues.

It was filmed on location, in Technicolour, around Much Wenlock in Shropshire, England. Many local people were recruited as extras.

A co-production with David O. Selznick. Selznick flooded the production with memos, most of which were studiously ignored. Powell summed up the relationship this way, "We decided to go ahead with David O. (Selznick) the way hedgehogs make love: verrry carefully!"

Although he had been involved throughout the filming, executive producer David O. Selznick disliked the finished film and took The Archers, Powell and Pressburger's production company, to court to get it changed. He lost the court case, but discovered that he did have the right to have the film changed for its American release. Consequently he had the film re-edited and some extra scenes shot in Hollywood to make the version known as The Wild Heart (1952). Selznick's changes are mainly adding: a prologue; scenes explaining things, often literally, by putting labels or inscriptions on them; more close-ups of Jennifer Jones. The most infamous of these are the scenes at the end when she is supposedly carrying a tame fox - in the additional scenes, Jones is carrying what is obviously a stuffed toy fox. He also deleted a few scenes that he felt weren't dramatic enough. Sadly some of these were major plot points so the story doesn't make as much sense as in the original film. In his autobiographies, Powell claimed that Selznick only left about 35 minutes of the original film. In fact, about two-thirds remains intact.

The original version was fully restored by the British Film Archive in 1985. A New Statesman review claimed the restored film to be "One of the great British regional films" and, according to Powell's cinematographer, Christopher Challis, "one of the most beautiful films ever to be shot of the English countryside".^[1]

• Gone to Earth at the Internet Movie Database
• Gone to Earth at the British Film Institute's Screenonline. Full synopsis and film stills (and clips viewable from UK libraries).
• Reviews and articles at the Powell & Pressburger Pages
• Location guide