Girl with Green Eyes

Girl with Green Eyes
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Desmond Davis
Written by	Edna O'Brien
Produced by	Oscar Lewenstein
Starring	Peter Finch Rita Tushingham Lynn Redgrave Marie Kean Arthur O'Sullivan Julian Glover
Cinematography	Manny Wynn
Edited by	Brian Smedley-Aston
Music by	John Addison
Production company	Woodfall Film Productions
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	14 May 1964 (1964-05-14)
Running time	91 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£140,000[1]

Girl with Green Eyes is a 1964 British

from her novel The Lonely Girl, the film tells the story of a young, naive country girl's romance with a sophisticated older man. As the film is in black and white the green eyes are never seen.

The film studies the blossoming relationship between a young girl and a man twice her age.

Plot

Kate Brady, a young girl just out of

.

Kate is attracted to him, and when she happens to see him again in a Dublin bookshop, uncharacteristically approaches him and strikes up a conversation. A friendship, and later a romantic relationship, develops between Kate and Eugene despite their age difference. Although clearly in love, and happy to join him in bed, she is unable to have sex. The repeated inability to have sex with Eugene starts to take its toll. The relationship worsens on her discovery that he is married with a child, although separated from his wife who has gone to the United States to obtain a divorce.

When Kate's father learns that his daughter is seeing a married man and thus apparently committing adultery, he and his friends go to Dublin and force Kate to return to his rural home. She sneaks out on the first morning but is waylaid by a cowhand. Later when the priest begins to lecture her she runs off. She returns to Eugene. Kate's father and his friends appear unexpectedly and punch Eugene in the face, but are driven off by his no-nonsense housekeeper Josie, who fires a shotgun at the ceiling and threatens them with the second barrel, forcing them to leave. Kate and Eugene then finally succeed in consummating their relationship.

He buys her a ring and Kate treats it as a wedding ring. She starts wearing make-up and wearing her hair up, looking much more sophisticated. She tells a stranger "I got married today". They live together for a time.

Eventually, Kate becomes unhappy as Eugene does not share her

beliefs, his friends do not regard Kate seriously, and he continues to correspond with his estranged wife, for whom he still has some feelings. When Eugene's wife sends a plane ticket Kate gives him an ultimatum to choose but he does not react as she wishes and it is the beginning of the end.

Kate leaves Eugene and returns to Baba, who is packing to move to London. She invites Kate to come along with her. Kate hopes that Eugene will come after her and she looks expectantly at the people on the dock edge as they sail off. He does not appear. Instead he sends word through Baba that their break-up is probably for the best. He wishes he had been younger or she had been more mature. Kate narrates explaining that she has changed and that she goes to night school. She meets "different people, different men".

Cast

Critical reception

In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote "Girl with Green Eyes is another of those remarkably fresh and natural films that have come from the Woodfall organisation, which is sparked by protean Tony Richardson and which has given us such a dazzling range of pictures as A Taste of Honey, Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Tom Jones. While it is not as ambitious or extensive as any of those, it is a wonderfully tender, touching and humorous little drama of a lonely Irish girl."^[2] Similarly, Variety wrote that the film "has the smell of success," and that director "Davis is imaginative, prepared to take chances and has the sympathy to draw perceptive performances from his cast."^[3]

References

External links

• Girl with Green Eyes at
  IMDb
• Girl with Green Eyes at AllMovie
• Girl with Green Eyes at the TCM Movie Database