CONTEMPORARY ARTS
CINEMA
K Gone to Earth." (Rialto.) WRITTEN, produced and directed by Messrs. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the adaptation of Mary Webb's loamy novel, Gone to Earth, has all the makings of a masterpiece. Unfortun- ately, however, save for a fine beginning and a magnificent ending, the masters have gone to earth themselves, and there is a long deathly dull wodge in the middle when hunters, hounds and quarry appear to be sleep-walking in deep Shropshire mud. Beautifully coloured; it is as lovely a film to look at as I have ever seen, and when the direction deigns to be mobile it is infinitely rewarding. This makes all the more irritating the slowness of some of the sequences, the little eternities when Mr. Cyril Cusack is pondering whether to get up and go into the next room or stay where he is. Miss Jennifer Jones, running after her pet fox over the glorious Shropshire hills or flaunting her finery in the Squire's drawing- room, gives an outstanding performance, half-human, half-animal, without exaggerating either, and Mr. Farrar makes convincing the somewhat melodramatic Squire. I am not absolutely certain about Mr. Cusack, much as I admire him. In his efforts to look like a spiritual clergyman he rarely succeeds in looking anything but blank. Dame Sybil Thorndike and Mr. Esmond Knight as very different types of parent are excellent ; but it is, alas! true that neither good acting nor superb scenery can prevent one from sink- ing at moments into a veritable slough of despond, weighed down by the strangely ponderous passions of Miss Webb's Victorian Salop.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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