Name: Gone to Earth
Released: 1950
Duration: 107 min

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.

“This full-blooded rural melodrama affords the gorgeous Jones, with an astonishing accent, the opportunity to inflame passions left and right … a must-see film for its unashamed romanticism, its breathtaking visual delirium.” – Empire

This screening will be introduced by critic and programmer Miriam Bale (The New York Times; Film Comment), who will host a panel discussion with writers and critics Kate Jinx and Isabella Trimboli following the film.

Miriam Bale is a critic and film programmer. She has written for The New York Times, the New York Daily News, W Magazine, Gagosian Quarterly, The New Republic, Film Comment, IndieWire, Sight and Sound and many other publications. She was the Artistic Director of the Indie Memphis Film Festival in Tennessee, and has curated multiple repertory film programs worldwide.

Isabella Trimboli is a writer who has contributed to publications such as The Nation, Times Literary Supplement, n+1, New Left Review and Metrograph Journal, among others. She is a current MFA candidate at New York University.

Kate Jinx is a writer, critic and film curator. She is a Senior Programmer at the Melbourne International Film Festival, film critic for The Monthly, founding program director of Sydney’s Golden Age Cinema and host of the culture podcast See Also.