Girl with Green Eyes **** (1964, Peter Finch, Rita Tushingham, Lynn Redgrave) Classic Movie Review 8839

Rita Tushingham stars as Kate, a plain lonely girl with green eyes, who is sharing digs in Dublin’s fair city with her vivacious friend Baba (Lynn Redgrave), when she meets and falls for middle-aged, married land-owning writer Eugene (Peter Finch), in director Desmond Davis’s 1964 British drama Girl with Green Eyes.

Writer Edna O’Brien provides the screenplay for this touching Irish romantic drama, adapted from her own novel The Lonely Girl. Girl with Green Eyes won the 1965 Golden Globe for Best English-Language Foreign Film.

Girl with Green Eyes is enchantingly played by the three principals, and a supporting cast who include T P McKenna, Julian Glover, Marie Kean and Yolande Turner, and it looks quite beautiful.

The film is lovingly crafted by début director Davis, regular cameraman for Tony Richardson, who helps produce for the Woodfall company.

Co-star Yolande Turner (1935–2003), who plays Mary Maguire, was Finch’s real-life wife (4 July 1959 – 11 November 1965) (divorced, with two children).

It cost £140,000 to make.

Also in the cast are Arthur O’Sullivan, Liselotte Goettinger, Pat Laffan, Eileen Crowe, May Craig, Joe Lynch, Harry Brogan and Michael C Hennessy.

Girl with Green Eyes is directed by Desmond Davis, runs 91 minutes, is made by Woodfall Film Productions, is released by United Artists, is written by Edna O’Brien, based on her own novel The Lonely Girl, is shot in black and white by Manny Wynn, is produced by Oscar Lewenstein and is scored by John Addison.

Tushingham and Redgrave reconvened in similar roles with director Davis for Smashing Time.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8839

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Rita Tushingham stars as the Girl with Green Eyes (1964).