Girl with Green Eyes (1964)

Touches You

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Never cared very much for Rita Tushingham. I remember her being tagged for the role of the daughter of Lara & Yuri in Dr. Zhivago. Seriously? That face was not created by the DNA of the likes of Julie Christie and Omar Sharif. I find her acting mannerisms irritating and her face reminiscent of a ferret. I realize that not every movie actor needs to be a great beauty, but swear to god I don't see how she ever got a career in movies. It's just hard to see her for 2 hours in a film. Thankfully I didn't watch it on a huge screen.The movie seems dated. Lynn Redgrave was pretty good and Peter Finch played his usual cold & distant personality which reminded me of his Jake Armitage character in The Pumpkin Eater.

Lovely, lyrical, bittersweet romance with young Rita Tushingham as a simple, convent-reared shop girl in Ireland who forms a relationship with a much older man, an intellectual, worldly agnostic (and married, but separated), living in isolation on a farm, writing books, in a finely wrought performance by Peter Finch. Tushingham and her chatterbox roommate, nicely played by Lynn Redgrave, casually meet on Finch's farm. Tushingham finds him attractive, with age difference no object, and invites him to tea in the city. Finch, somewhat world weary and wary of getting himself into an affair with a young, innocent girl, succumbs to her persistence and after a few meetings they consummate their relationship tenderly in scenes of gentle mutual affection. But, eventually, with family and priest strongly admonishing her for her "adultery" and ultimately Finch's withdrawal, Tushingham moves to England and finds relationships with men her own age and philosophically accepts the end of one, memorable phase of her life and the beginning of another. But this is not a plot-driven film – it's all character. As a sagacious film critic said a long time ago of another actress in another film (Audrey Hepburn in "A Nun's Story"), the theater is all in her face and it's Tushingham's wonderfully wistful performance, all manifested in those big, expressive eyes, that is the central and salient feature of this fine film, and which gives it its special quality.Marc Feldman 3-8-2005

The only thing I had seen before this by Desmond Davis, was the classic "Clash of the Titans." That was perhaps the best movie ever made based on ancient Greek Mythology. It was a wonderful adventure and fantasy film.This is totally different. It is British new wave with a camera that tracks, sweeps and runs across the British/Irish countryside as gently as it tickles Rita Tushingham's large nosed, perky face. Besides the energetic cinematography and editing which is somewhere between Goddard's "Breathless" and Richard Lester's "A Hard Day's Night," we get a hard edge slice of life drama/comedy that leaps with wit and poetry. Its as good as Tushingham's earlier, similar hit, "A Taste of Honey." Lynn Redgrave is cuter than any human being has a right to be and Peter Finch is honest and likable as Eugene, the man who wins Tushingham's confidence, if not her heart.The point of the movie is that we all change and we even "outgrow our friends". We should accept it without getting hysterical or dramatic about it. It is a touch sad, but we move on.In a way it belongs with "My Fair Lady," and "Educating Rita" as a picture about women becoming...All one can say about the movie in its entirety: "Smashing!"

Long into watching this studiously "small," slice-of-life portrait of a naive young woman, I was still wondering if the film would turn out, in the end, to have been worth watching. Earnest in its desire to be grittily true-to-life, in the neo-realist manner of the Angry Young Men, it is also clearly intoxicated with the quotidian lyricism and plain-spoken poetry of la nouvelle vague. It attempts to be charming and brutally frank at the same time, and manages, to some extent, to carry it off.But will we end up caring about Tushingham's somewhat obtuse small town escapee, or Finch's sophisticated cold fish? Or will we be left with the rather sodden sensation that we've wasted our time eavesdropping on bores? For my part, I was pleasantly surprised. The story ends with the palpable sense that Kate has grown up a bit, and Eugene has grown a little older and sadder. We've looked on as two people have lived their bittersweet lives, much as we live our own -- and we're a little sad to bid them adieu.To sum up: not as fresh and appealing today as it probably seemed in its time, but still rewarding and worthwhile.