Monday, January 13, 2020
Girl with green eyes Essay
It hardly needs a commentary that a movie â€Å"Girl with green eyes†is not just a standard drama which tells a story of unhappy love. It would be no exaggeration to stress that it is a great masterpiece of cinematography. â€Å"Girl with green eyes†was released in 1964 and it was an innovation introduced by the debutant director Desmond Davis. He not only narrated a story, common to the 60s, about a rural girl who has a burning ambition to conquer the city, but made a deep plunge into the characters of his main heroes.             The film is based on Edna O’Brien’s novella â€Å"The Lonely Girl†and is a tender, touching and humorous little drama of a lonely Irish girl. It is about Kate Brady (starring Rita Tushingham), a naà ¯ve, insecure young girl who lives on the family farm in Dublin. The girl wants to escape from this country convent and run away into a big city and change her life. She rooms with another girl Baba Brenan (Lynn Redgrave) who is a lot different than Kate. Heroine appears to be a quite and reserved young lady.            The character of Kate in this movie is very complex. In the beginning of it she is a gawky rural girl from the catholic family with high morals. However, she has a strong urge to enter the modern world. The 60’s epoch is shown in the movie and Kate and her friend are trying to become a part of it, they go out to the rock n roll clubs and date with boys. Even though Kate used to be very shy back at home now she grows up into another person. The friends meet a middle aged writer Eugene Gaillard (Peter Finch). Kate and Eugene start going out. For Kate it seems like her dream is going to come true. They start to live together and at first Kate cherishes every moment they have together. She believes in miracles and hopes that it is hers. She makes the first step in their relationship with Eugene. She invites him for tea. That’s where everything started from. The scenes where Kate attempts to attract Eugene’s attention are among the best in this movie. It looks very cute when the immature girl, assisted by her friend, tries to get acquainted with an older man. And then their first affected endeavor of love-making, their fulfillment of a simply necessary love and then the tensions of possessiveness and boredom that this fulfillment brings.            As director, Desmond Davis is a very talented professional. He was especially good at making the scenes, where Kate is growing up. He shows how her facial expression, speech and mood change. When she arrived in the city her clothes were provincial. With every episode we witness some outside transformations as well as the inside transformations. Director brilliantly shows the alteration of her character. Simple provincial naive girl grows into a young woman with complicated feelings. When she meets Eugene, we definitely know she’s childish (in positive sense of this word). Her looks express her fidelity, love and tenderness to her, so to say, master. However, later the changes on Kate’s face are noticeable in every episode, when she talks with Eugene. Her lovely smile appears less and less. Operator zooms in her look in every single tickler.            Kate’s family finds out by an anonymous letter that she has an affair with a married man. Her father comes to Kate’s work and tries to persuade Kate to return home, she shows real firmness of her intensions and refuses to leave Eugene. That is the part, where she acts not like a childish girl, but as a serious woman. In this scene, she is confident and certain of her deeds, even though she was going against her father’s will and resisting the catholic duties. We can notice how Kate fights inside of her soul with all these factors and tries to find the right answer.            After the â€Å"honey moon†period some friction appears in Kate and Eugene’s relationship. The film was shot in the way, for the audience to deep in Kate’s thoughts along with her and it seems like they are real. Everything around freezes, dies down, when she recalls her home. Director shows peace around in moments like this. But there is reality and it all finally comes to the end when Eugene’s wife reappears and the couple is forced to confront the reality of what is left of their relationship. She leaves him and heads for London.            This movie became such a success mainly because of an artful performance of Rita Tushingham, the leading actress. She was so fluent with her facial expressions and her every move and gesture made sense. It seems that she became this volatile girl, full of controversy, where aggression meets with generosity and selfishness with honesty and hope. This film is full of emotions and impressions. That’s what makes it so bright and colorful, even though it is a black-and-white picture. Sources: Crowthersley, 1964, http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review Desmond Davis, dir., Girl with green eyes, Lopert Pictures, 1964 Â
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