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.
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.