Rita's eyes in black and white

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.

Every Little Crook and Nanny

Another of my recent movie viewings to try to clear some space off the DVR was Every Little Crook and Nanny.

Lynn Redgrave plays Miss Poole, who runs a school that teaches children to be good little ladies and gentlemen, teaching them dance especially, but also comportment and other sundry stuff. One day in the middle of class, a bunch of goons walk in and start dismantling the place! They're from the Ganucci organization, which a Mafia family, but don't you dare say that the Mafia exists. The head of the family, Carmine Ganucci (Victor Mature), has bought the buiding to use for running local numbers games, and poor Miss Poole is out of luck even though she has a lease.

Carmine is planning on going back to the old country with his wife to do some business, and he wants to leave his son Lewis (Phillip Graves) behind since he's been raising Lewis not to know that his dad is part of the Mafia that we all know doesn't exist anyway (this is a running joke throughout the movie). His lawyers Azzecca (Dom DeLuise) and Garbugli (John Astin) are helping him find a nanny. So far, none of the nannies are to Carmine's liking.

That is, until Miss Poole comes storming into the office. She's not a nanny, mind you. It's just that she's pissed about what Ganucci did, ruining her office and injuring her pianist Luther (Austin Pendleton). She wants to be compensated for this, and is out for blood. Carmine sees Miss Poole and, in a case of mistaken identity, immediately thinks she'd make a great nanny for Lewis.

Miss Poole takes the job, if only because it allows her to come up with a ridiculous plan. She'll stage a kidnapping of Lewis, and set a ransom high enough to cover her losses from the school and to be able to start a new life. Of course, she knows nothing about kidnapping, but that's beside the point. She and Luther plan it, and after it goes off seemingly without a hitch, Poole turns to one of Ganucci's low-level gangsters, Barry Napkins (Paul Sand), to help get the ransom.

It's here that problems begin to show up. Benny isn't particularly competent, while nobody else wants Carmine to know what really happened, so they -- especially Garbugli and Azzecca -- try to get the money in a roundabout way. Carmine wants a money transfer for his business deal in Italy and Benny is engaging in petty larceny to raise the money, so there are multiple sets of money in the amount of the ransom going around. Luther is the one holding Lewis, and his wife Ida decides she'd really like a kid.

Every Little Crook and Nanny is a movie that sounds like it has a really good premis, but which winds up not quite working. I'm assuming Redgrave wanted to do a comedy, and she looks like she's having a lot of fun doing it. But the movie is supposed to be a relatively light comedy, at least light for the sort of material it's covering, so something like The Trouble With Harry or Too Many Crooks; not something heavy like a Paddy Chayefsky satire. Every Little Crook and Nanny, however, descends into a much too complex plot to save it as a light comedy.

Every Little Crook and Nanny is available on DVD if you want to judge for yourself.