Girl with Green Eyes (1964)
Girl with Green Eyes (1964)
Girl with Green Eyes is one of those rather melancholy early 60s British movies. Made in black-and-white, the invariably dealt with doomed romances and very narrow rather bleak lives. Kate (Rita Tushingham) works in a grocery shop in Dublin, and falls in love with a writer twice her age (Peter Finch). She’s attracted to his sophisticated rather cosmopolitan outlook, but at heart she’s still a convent girl. Things get complicated for her when her father finds out about her affair, and takes her away from the wicked big city and sets the village priest on her. Meanwhile she has discovered that her ageing lover has a wife and child. Finch and Tushingham give superb performances and give their characters real depth and complexity. Both are sympathetic but flawed characters, and the movie avoids simplistic moral judgments. Lynn Redgrave is highly entertaining as Kate’s rather bubbly friend Baba. Girl with Green Eyes isn’t as depressing or as tragic as some of the other films of this type. It’s more gently wistful and melancholy. It’s an engaging and rather likeable little film. I recommend it.