Hazel Woods, a beautiful and young Welsh girl, lives a wild, rustic life and loves animals — in particular, her pet fox. She is hotly desired by Jack Reddin, a fox hunting squire who vies for her affection and pursues her, despite the purer amorous intentions of the local pastor.
The opening slide names both Sir Alexander Korda and David O. Selznick which though impressive, rather sums up this somewhat confused romantic adventure. Jennifer Jones is "Hazel", a young girl at one with nature - particularly "Foxy", her independently minded fox cub. Eventually, she settles down with the local vicar "Marston" (Cyril Cusack), but is too beautiful and wild not to continue to turn heads and is also sought after by the local squire "Jack" (David Farrar) too. Rejected, he stokes ill-feeling against the girl amongst their puritanical, superstitious, villagers, and a tragiedy ensues. Powell and Pressberger live up to their reputation with this beautifully shot effort - the colours and costumes, and the exterior countryside scenes are terrific. The acting is less impressive. We know that Farrar lusts after the girl, but his actual performance gives little evidence of that. Owen Holder provides us with a rather distracting narration that doesn't add anything at all - and there is quite a bit of padding to draw out to the story - pretty to look at most of the time, but frequently slowing it down to a snail's pace. Dame Sybil Thorndike is quite good as the girl's disapproving mother-in-law, and there are couple of nice contributions from Hugh Griffith and George Cole to help it along, but somehow this production hasn't quite got the momentum to sustain it well. It may well be that Selznick edited the heart (and soul) out of it when he saw it, but in any case this isn't one of the Archers' more memorable efforts.