Quite a few years back, I sat down to watch the British movie Girl With Green Eyes when TCM showed it. For some reason, I didn't get to see the whole thing. So when TCM ran it again a few months back, I made the point to record it so that I could finally watch it in full and do a post on it here.
Rita Tushingham plays Kate, a girl who grew up in a rural part of Ireland in the late 1950s when the country was much poorer that it became after the Celtic Tiger years, and there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity staying in those rural backwaters. So after graduating from a Catholic school together with her best friend Baba (Lynn Redgrave), the two head off to Dublin in search of a better life, getting rooms in the same house. As the movie opens, the two have been in Dublin for some time.
They don't really have as exciting a life as they might have hoped for, although it's certainly more interesting than being stuck on the farmstead where the two grew up. They work as shop girls, and go out with guys on weekends, mostly at Baba's insistence as she's the outgoing one who seems to meet all the guys who bring a second one along for Kate to make it a double date. One supposes they'll never meet Mr. Right so much as Mr. Good Enough.
One day, Baba and Kate are out shopping when they see one of Baba's boyfriends with his delivery van stopped in traffic. He's got a job out in the country delivering a dog to be trained, and why don't the two girls come along and enjoy a day out of town? So they get in, eventually going to the house of one Eugene Gaillard (Peter Finch), an author who's written a book about African natives. He and the two girls exchange pleasantries, and that's about it.
Except, of course, with an actor of the caliber of Peter Finch, you know that's not going to be the end of it. A few days later, Eugene and Kate run into each other at a bookstore where Baba is waiting outside. Baba talks him into going out for tea with the two of him, but it's clearly Kate who is more interested in this man who is both more sophisticated than the girls, and never obnoxiously outgoing the way someone like Baba can be if you're an introvert like Kate.
So Kate writes a letter to Eugene to thank him for the tea and invite him to tea again, this time without Baba around. And wouldn't you know it, but he shows up for the appointment! The two start to develop a relationship, although because there's such a big age difference between them, you know that it's not going to be the easiest of relationships. Of course, that age difference is only the first issue. Somehow, Kate's father finds out about the relationship, so he goes to Dublin and finds the shop where Kate works to chew her out in public, and bring her back "home".
Kate naturally tries to run away, and goes off to live with Eugene, since she figures Dad would find her if she went back to rooming with Baba. But when she's with Eugene, she finds out that he's got an estranged wife, and that the two haven't gotten a divorce yet (although to be fair, doing that in Catholic Ireland of the early 1960s would have been difficult if not impossible). Kate also doesn't really have any friends who can fit into Eugene's social circle, not that she does. So can the two forge a happy relationship?
Girl With Green Eyes is an interesting movie, in no small part because it shines a light on a place and time that wasn't commonly seen in the movies. A lot of movies were made in the UK, with various parts of the country being the backdrop for first the "kitchen sink" movies and then swinging London of the second half of the 1960s. But Catholic Ireland? Not so much. The movie is also helped by very good performances from all three of the leads. The black-and-white cinematography also deglamorizes Ireland, something that never would have happened had Hollywood tried to make a movie out of this story.
So definitely make it a point to seek out Girl With Green Eyes if you haven't seen it before.
No comments:
Post a Comment