Customer Reviews

Green Mansions

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have watched this film twice so far, and consider it to be really enjoyable. The critics didn't really seem to like it but real admirers of Audrey Hepburn will probably like this movie. The film manages to capture Audrey's beauty in an earthy,nature-girl sort of way. She has a baby deer that goes with her wherever she goes. I read in a biography book that in her real daily life the fawn was given to her to nurture and bond with. I think that after the film was made she kept the fawn as a household pet, as I saw a later of her with her husband at the time, Mel Ferrer sitting at home and holding this baby deer. If you are a real admirer of Audrey's beauty and not a movie "critic" you will probably like this film. The beginning is a little slow but eventually the whole thing gets interesting. There is a surprise ending and overall the film makes very good use of colors (it takes place in the Amazonian Rain Forest). Real fans of Audrey should check it out.

This movie has been badly maligned but it has many redeeming points-Audrey is the only Rima that could ever be and Anthony Perkins was actually believable as a nineteenth century hero.The most enjoyable part of the film is the wonderful scenery and luscious photography.Some of the shots are quite amazing! The biggest problem is the change of ending from the book.I think it changes direction a little too fast.But if you like Hollywood endings-it's fine.The directing is average-what is interesting is the level of comfort which Audrey seemed to project during the film.That could have been the result of working with a husband whom she did truly love. I recommend this movie to people who are looking for a feast for the senses-I think you'll find it!

Green Mansions is a strange novel, by William Henry Hudson, and this film captures the strange illustrated edition of the novel very well. It is extremely camp, and Mel Ferrer as a director here is terrible, and Sesu Hayakawa as an Amazonian native is absurd, but Audrey Hepburn captures Rima The Bird Woman to perfection, and she looks stunning, and acts with great style and belief so that you don't care about the others...Anthony Perkins is likable, but stiff, and he clearly is waiting for Psycho...

Get this film if you love Audrey, and especially for her ability to counter bad scripts and direction and miscast fellow actors, and to take you away into her own Green Mansion for a lovely time.

Audrey Hepburn is wonderful in "Green Mansions,". It shows her natural beauty and wonderful acting. She plays the lovely Rima, who lives in the woods and befriends the animals there and soon the very handsome Anthony Perkins, whom she falls in love with. It has a great storyline and is really unique. It's a film well worth seeing.

This must surely be the strangest movie that Audrey Hepburn made, though it's not without its virtues. Directed by her-then husband, actor Mel Ferrer, the 1959 movie is a fanciful adventure story where Hepburn plays Rima, a nymph-like "bird girl" living in the remotest part of the Venezuelan jungle. She is being hunted by the local Indian tribesmen for being an evil spirit, but she is protected first by her grandfather Nuflo and then by Abel, a young political refugee whom she rescues after he is bitten by a deadly coral snake. The slowly-paced story initially focuses on Abel's hazardous journey into the jungle with Joseph Ruttenberg's cinematography nicely capturing the authentic Amazon locations.

Rima shows up as a shadowy figure about a half-hour into the film and doesn't speak until about ten minutes later. Leave it to Hepburn to exhibit any sort of conviction in such an implausible role. Looking ethereal if a little too styled and coiffed (even without Givenchy) and sounding entirely too Euro-cosmopolitan, she still exudes Rima's innocence while discovering the darker secrets of her past. The rest of the cast is not as lucky. Anthony Perkins, a year away from "Psycho", is irritatingly unctuous as Abel when he is not simply confounded by his heroic role. His low point has to be the ridiculous scene when he sings a love song to Rima as he strums his guitar. And where exactly did the guitar come from?

Familiar character actors show up in the oddest roles. Lee J. Cobb, heavily made up as a cross between Uncle Jesse Duke and Santa Claus, turns in yet another ham-fisted performance as Nuflo, and Henry Silva is cast as another exotic as the ultimately nefarious tribal leader. Nehemiah Persoff has a small bit at the beginning as a greedy trader, while Sessue Hayakawa, of all people, has a mostly silent role as the tribal leader. Adding to the artifice is the obvious use of soundstages and matte shots to replicate the jungle, and the ending is pure Hollywood sappiness. This is a curio for Hepburn fans.

The first time I ever saw this movie, I was in my teens. I fell in love with, the story, the haunting music, and the characters. Years later, I came across a 1944 edition of the book, Green Mansions, and fell in love all over again. Since then I've read and reread the book and watched and rewatched the movie. I now have to replace the movie, since I've worn it out. I may not be a movie critic and I don't always agree with their assessment of certain movies. But, I do know what I love. This story has a certain magic to it that is hard to find in movies today. A simply beautiful love story.

I was scared after many people wrote not very good things about this movie. Its maybe not the best movie but interesting and entertaining. With my snake-phobia I was shocked at one scene.

The movie beginns mysterious, Anthony Perkins character enter in a mysterious world, a mysterious forest (and the jungle can be very mysterious).

I enjoyed very much the movie. The art decors / jungle looks great. Henry Silva is perfect for his role and also I liked Anthony Perkins (at this time 27 years, 3 years younger than his Co-Star Audrey Hepburn).

The DVD

The picture quality looks very good. So much better than I have expected for a not restored/remastered movie!
The Sound: very good too in STEREO - Bronislau Kapers score sounds great.


The only one and biggest MINUS point I have: NO SUBTITLES for deaf hearing people, so its a little bit difficult for me to understand every word.

TRIVIA: this was the first Hollywood movie shot in PANANVISION!!!

One day it occurred to me to wonder why no film had ever been made based upon Green Mansions, the book by W. H. Hudson first published in 1916, which seemingly would lend itself so well to the production of a gorgeous movie. I looked and was able to discover that a movie was made in 1959 by Mel Ferrer, starring Audrey Hepburn as Rima, the bird girl, and Anthony Perkins as Abel, narrator of the written story, who falls in love with this tragically-fated female figment of the verdant jungle "mansions." Abel is initially an angry young man in search of gold with which to avenge the politically-motivated death of his father and whose character is "converted" to love when he encounters Rima. The movie is filmed partly on site in Venezuela, where the action of the original story takes place, chiefly in the jungles.

I think the reason I never heard of the movie is because it must have been a failure with the public. It was, I would say, about 75% a failure with me when I bought it on VHS and viewed it. Hardly any of the depth of naturalistic sensibility or lyrical beauty conveyed by the narrator of the written story is evident in the portrayal of the movie Abel. Perkins seems at first to be little more than a vengeful hot-head who isn't really at all likable. Perkins over-acts the angry part. Later, Perkins does better. Abel becomes gentle and fairly sympathetic as a young swain in love. His "nerves," which are a salient feature of the character portrayed by Perkins, are more settled, and he has grown less and less consumed by vindictive emotions, but he never becomes a character evocative of the highly intelligent and sensitive narrator of the novel who wrote such passages as the following:

"As the sun went down over the ridge, beyond the savannah, the whole western sky changed to a delicate rose-colour that had the appearance of rose-coloured smoke blown there by some far-off wind, and left suspended---a thin, brilliant veil showing through it the distant sky beyond, blue and ethereal. Flocks of birds were flying past me overhead, uttering as they flew a clear, bell-like chirp; and there was something ethereal too in those drops of melodious sound, which fell into my heart like raindrops falling into a pool to mix their fresh heavenly water with the water of earth....Doubtless, into the turbid tarn of my heart some sacred drops had fallen--from the passing birds, from that crimson disc which had now dropped below the horizon, the darkening hills, the rose and blue of infinite heaven, from the whole visible circle; and I felt purified and had a strange sense and apprehension of a secret innocence and spirituality in nature--a prescience of some bourn, incalculably distant perhaps, to which we are all moving; of a time when the heavenly rain shall have washed us clean from all spot and blemish. This unexpected peace which I had found now seemed to me of infinitely greater value than that yellow metal I had missed finding, with all its possibilities. My wish now was to rest for a season in this spot, so remote and lovely and peaceful, where I had experienced such unusual feelings, and such a blessed disillusionment."

The first major things in the movie that felt really "wrong" to me about the production, besides Perkins' over-acting, were that we hear Rima singing invisibly (too long) some very peculiar bird songs in the jungle, but we never see her producing these incredible and none-too-harmonious sounds, and throughout the entire movie, we never even see her moving among the tree-tops but always walking at ground level.

No other actress that I know of could have been so perfect in appearance to play Rima. Audrey's lithe figure and enchanting face are almost unearthly and so they easily suggest the spiritual and bird-like elements that are a part of Rima's character. Nevertheless, despite Audrey's ethereal grace as a nature sprite here, she also looks inappropriately sophisticated. Her neatly-groomed long hair with bangs, her flawless lightly-applied make-up, her correct-English speech when she does finally talk, and her domestic skills focusing upon carding wool and sewing, all bespeak implausible civilized elements that don't seem to fit the situation. She has been adopted as a very small child by her "grandfather," a former bandit, and it hardly seems likely she would have become such a "finished" young woman under his tutelage. Her angry and changeable attitudes to her grandfather, the way she emotionally turns against him several times for no good reasons and tries to call down condemnation from heaven upon him, make her again implausible--or else too excitable--and not very sympathetic.

Lee J. Cobb's part as the grandfather is over-acted with exaggerated mannerisms of woe, disapproval, distress, what-have-you. Even so, he does manage to be a sympathetic character toward the end of the movie. Sessu Hayakawa and the other Indian characters remind me of the simplistic sort of "savages" portrayed in old Tarzan films or Saturday serials.

Some of the natural beauty of the South American settings is definitely evident, but most of the action seems to take place on phony-looking sets where the jungle environment is recreated in an unconvincing way. I noticed something like a claustrophobic atmosphere about these sets.

Overall, the film gave me the feeling of a "Grade B" movie. Except for the refined beauty and magical presence of Audrey Hepburn, who really did not seem to belong on that mediocre film set, there was a general amateurishness about the picture.

I wish someone would make a really sensitive and excellent version of Green Mansions, especially now that the general public is taking seriously issues that relate to naturalism, the environment, and the necessity to respect and care for what is left of our "Edens." With the right direction/ production/ acting/ photography, the themes in this movie could easily symbolize such concerns to a great and effective extent. The book itself, being a masterpiece of creative beauty, deserves a masterful visual exponent of like quality.

I absolutely love this film, Audrey is so beautiful and etheric, awesome location, saw it in the theater as a child, been waiting and checking regularly for it to be released in the USA, finally, a few days ago, I saw that there was a secondary seller on Amazon that has it for $39.95 - wow! So, I went directly to the Warner Bros site and they have it available for $19.95, and they also had the other film I have been watching for available "She" starring Ursula Andress - the Goddess Herself - same price, this was also finally up through a secondary seller on Amazon at the $39.95 as well. What a day, both films I have been wishing for on Region 1 disc and no so bad price! WB also has film clips/trailers for both. When/if they finally become available directly from Amazon, the price will probably be even better, but who can wait? Thank you Warner Bros.

We are in presence of a film that at least, it dared to challenge the delicate issue; civilization against enrooted ancestral beliefs, whose fate has been previously decreed and the lead man, of renovated ideas.

The film had dated but still conserves the interpretative vigor of Anthony Perkins and the well known sweetness of Audrey Hepburn who looks like more an angel than a Bird Girl.

Original in its purpose.