"Green Mansions" is one of the few Audry Hepburn movies that lost money. Despite her great track record and all the gloss MGM can heap on a film, it failed to click with audiences...and after seeing it, I can understand why. The story was bizarre, the casting decisions bizarre and the dialog was occasionally quite silly.
The story begins with Abel (Anthony Perkins) running away from Venezuela. He heads towards the jungle and soon is captured by a nasty native tribe. They threaten to kill him but back down when he doesn't seem scared of them. So, they become friends and the chief asks Abel to head further into the jungle to kill a strange girl named Rima (Audrey Hepburn). Instead, however, he falls for her after she saves his life. Obviously his new tribal friends won't be happy he didn't kill her. What's next? See the film...or watch something else!
Anthony Perkins in Venezuela, Hepburn as Rima and Sessue Hayakawa (a Japanese actor) as the chief! What were the folks at MGM thinking?!? To top it off, the script is simply weird...and I can't see why they wanted to bring this book to the big screen. To make matters worse, they are in the dense Amazonian jungle...yet some of the scenes filmed outside the sound stage were at Lone Pine....which is a dry, desert-like area near Mt. Whitney....and which looks about as much like the Amazon as New York City! Lone Pine was mostly used to film old B-westerns....and it seemed weird to film jungle stuff there!
So is there anything I like about this one? Well, the musical score was VERY impressive...quite evocative and stately. The widescreen color also looked nice. But when you have to talk about music and color, it means the film isn't very good. Overall, it looks like someone was filming a B-adventure film, like "Cobra Woman", but did it with an A-picture budget.
The story begins with Abel (Anthony Perkins) running away from Venezuela. He heads towards the jungle and soon is captured by a nasty native tribe. They threaten to kill him but back down when he doesn't seem scared of them. So, they become friends and the chief asks Abel to head further into the jungle to kill a strange girl named Rima (Audrey Hepburn). Instead, however, he falls for her after she saves his life. Obviously his new tribal friends won't be happy he didn't kill her. What's next? See the film...or watch something else!
Anthony Perkins in Venezuela, Hepburn as Rima and Sessue Hayakawa (a Japanese actor) as the chief! What were the folks at MGM thinking?!? To top it off, the script is simply weird...and I can't see why they wanted to bring this book to the big screen. To make matters worse, they are in the dense Amazonian jungle...yet some of the scenes filmed outside the sound stage were at Lone Pine....which is a dry, desert-like area near Mt. Whitney....and which looks about as much like the Amazon as New York City! Lone Pine was mostly used to film old B-westerns....and it seemed weird to film jungle stuff there!
So is there anything I like about this one? Well, the musical score was VERY impressive...quite evocative and stately. The widescreen color also looked nice. But when you have to talk about music and color, it means the film isn't very good. Overall, it looks like someone was filming a B-adventure film, like "Cobra Woman", but did it with an A-picture budget.