Such a frustrating disappointment

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Desmond Davis may be the finest director ever to have been 'overlooked' by the British film establishment. A former camera operator Davis directed his first feature in 1964 and it's a small masterpiece and one of the most beautifully shot black and white films in all of British cinema, (Manny Wynn was the DoP). "Girl with Green Eyes" was adapted by Edna O Brien from her novel "The Lonely Girl" and it's set in Dublin where friends Kate and Baba share lodgings and where Kate meets a much older English writer, (an excellent Peter Finch), with whom she has an affair.It's a very simple picture, closer in tone to the French New Wave than the British Kitchen Sink and while now it's largely been forgotten it was surprisingly successful in its day, winning the Golden Globe for Best English Language Foreign Film while Davis took the National Board of Review's Best Director prize. Davis followed it with two more superb 'small' films, "The Uncle" and another O'Brien story "I Was Happy Here" before a brief breakthrough into more commercial fare and then an awful lot of television. Still alive at ninety, his name may not mean much to the present generation of cineastes but his first three films alone, and "Girl with Green Eyes" in particular, have earned him his place in the sun

Never cared very much for Rita Tushingham. I remember her being tagged for the role of the daughter of Lara & Yuri in Dr. Zhivago. Seriously? That face was not created by the DNA of the likes of Julie Christie and Omar Sharif. I find her acting mannerisms irritating and her face reminiscent of a ferret. I realize that not every movie actor needs to be a great beauty, but swear to god I don't see how she ever got a career in movies. It's just hard to see her for 2 hours in a film. Thankfully I didn't watch it on a huge screen.The movie seems dated. Lynn Redgrave was pretty good and Peter Finch played his usual cold & distant personality which reminded me of his Jake Armitage character in The Pumpkin Eater.

There's not a lot to this movie, which details the relationship of a young woman who sets her cap for a much older man. Not a lot happens, and while the actors are skilled, they are given little to work with. Rita Tushingham seems a bit dim, and Peter Finch is given a series of world- weary lines that are too stylized to fit with the movie's naturalistic pretensions. Those looking for something akin to a story will be disappointed.As a middle-aged man, I see the movie mainly as a warning against dating young women. The girl's conflicted emotions and crazy family are exactly the sort of things a middle-aged man shouldn't have to deal with. I'd be curious to know what moral a young woman would take from the movie though.

Desmond Davis, who had worked closely with Tony Richardson, decided to try his hand directing films. For his first effort he decided to use Edna O'Brien's novella "The Lonely Girl", which we read a long while ago, and frankly, we don't remember it well. The result was a movie that has that "English Look" of what came out of England during those years."Girl with Green Eyes" owes its success to Rita Tushingham, an actress that was the darling of English movie makers. She had a certain waif look that she used to her advantage in films such as this one, and in others of the same period. She holds the movie together as it's hard to take one's eyes from hers. Ms. Tushingham was not a spectacular beauty, yet she had a certain look that was appealing in her work.Peter Finch appears as Eugene Gaillard, a man who is divorced with a child, and whose estranged wife has moved overseas. His attraction for Kate Brennan is quite understandable, yet, Eugene can't get Kate to be more than a platonic admirer, never being able to consume the passion she feels for him, and vice versa.Also in the movie, a young and fresh Lynn Redgrave, who went to make bigger and better things on her own in the British cinema and on the stage and films in America, her adoptive country."Girl with Green Eyes" is worth a look for what Desmond Davis was able to accomplish in his first feature. The copy we watched recently was sadly in need of restoration.