Green Mansions (1959)

I read the book and watched the movie and I must say the movie did more harm to the book than gaining it attention. What was original a gem of literature is turned into a cliché of white man saving, or trying to save, a natural paradise. It ended up a farce. Of course, Audrey was wonderful, as she always was. But the adaptation was so bad that the original message, of relationship between human kind and environment and the danger of the former on the latter, was totally lost. Of course, the beautiful description of the land in the book is nowhere to be found. I strongly advise those who are interested to go and read the book itself. Understandably, this film was made in 1959 but the script is really so horrible that even the presence of Audrey could not save it.

It's easy to see why 1959 critics called it "muddled". The film, which is set in South America's jungles, manages to be an ecological statement (man should take care of his surroundings), a love story, a tale of redemption (in the film's first ten minutes, Abel (Anthony Perkins) sees his father killed and vows vengeance on the killers. Audrey Hepburn as Rima does her utmost in a near impossible part. Lee J. Cobb overacts as Rima's protector.MGM spent over one million dollars (a great deal of money in 1959) getting shots of South America to mix in with the main filming done on MGM's back lot. The mixing in of the shots is well done, but it's obvious what was shot at MGM and what were the South American jungle shots. Perkins is the voice of sanity in the film, because whenever the plot threatens to get too wispy, he brings it back down to earth. He has a scene where he serenades Rima with his lovely tenor voice. It was a pity that he was never in a film musical.If the film has a message it seems to be that true love never dies.

It's the early 20th Century down in the jungles of Columbia, and a young man (Anthony Perkins) escapes from a revolution. He ends up being befriended by a group of natives, even though only one of them (educated by missionaries) speaks English. They believe Perkins has magical powers (because he owns a cigarette lighter) and order him to kill a mysterious girl in the near-by forest. This girl (Audrey Hepburn) is a waif-like creature with mystical qualities that they believe is a witch. Raised by her grandfather (Nehemian Persoff), she falls in love with Perkins and longs to leave the forest to return to her mother's hometown.There's not really a lot of story except the apparent conflict between Hepburn, Persoff and the natives outside the village. The majority of the film is the romance between Perkins and Hepburn, a bit of philosophizing and the truth about Hepburn's identity. But the last third explodes into questions about everything you've been wondering about up until that point and the journey outside the forest where all will be revealed. Most people will be more enthralled by the colorful painting like photography, shots of some rare creatures (most interestingly an aardvark) and the National Geographic like nature shots. Who Hepburn is will be the film's biggest mystery in this film similar in theme to "Lost Horizon" and "The Portrait of Jennie".

I guess there's some difference of opinion as to what is found in the area that headwaters of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers make their neighborhood. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote that there was a lost world of prehistoric dinosaurs when he wasn't doing Sherlock Holmes stories. But W.H, Hudson has us believe that there's a young waif like girl making her home with her granddad among all the hunter/gatherer tribes of the area.At the time that both The Lost World and Green Mansions were written that area was still one of the few unexplored parts of our globe. I daresay that there are still some parts of that area that haven't seen the trod of civilized feet ever. But it sure makes for stories of imagination and in the case of Green Mansions, romance.W.H. Hudson who was also a naturalist and ornithologist by trade had the advantage over Conan Doyle because he knew from whence he wrote about. The film has some lush photography and in fact was shot on location in Venezuela. In fact it opens with a view of Angel Falls, one of the great natural wonders of the world. Makes the Niagara Falls in my neck of the woods look like a waterfall from a Six Flags Park.Green Mansions had been kicking around Hollywood for almost thirty years before Mel Ferrer decided it would suit his wife Audrey Hepburn. It was originally bought by RKO for Dolores Del Rio who scored big in another exotic romance, Bird of Paradise. Anthony Perkins plays an exile from a revolutionary government in Venezuela who has retreated deep into the interior jungle. He's looking for gold, but instead finds Rima the bird girl living with her grandfather, Lee J. Cobb. Perkins also finds a tribe of headhunters with Sessue Hayakawa as their chief and Henry Silva as his son. They're a suspicious lot and fear the nymph of the rain forest.For a story set in Latin America, it's interesting that only Henry Silva is a Latino in the cast. Yet the leads have to be the sensitive types and Hepburn and Perkins do fill the bill there.Sad to say that Green Mansions was a flop critically and financially. I think we ought to take a second look at it. My guess is that no one wanted to see Audrey Hepburn in something so radically different than what she had been doing up to that time. She's quite good, every bit as good as Jean Simmons in The Blue Lagoon which is a similar story.Check this one out if it is shown on TCM.