Green Mansions is a 1959 American romantic adventure film directed by Mel Ferrer. Based upon the 1904 novel Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson, the film starred Audrey Hepburn (who at the time was married to Ferrer) as Rima, a jungle girl who falls in love with a traveller played by Anthony Perkins. Also appearing in the film were Lee J. Cobb, Sessue Hayakawa and Henry Silva. The score was by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Bronislaw Kaper.
The film was intended to be the first of several projects directed by Ferrer and starring his wife, but ultimately this was the only one released. It was one of the few critical and box office failures of Hepburn's early career. Vincente Minnelli had originally been slated to direct the film, but delays in the project led MGM to choose Ferrer to direct it.
Cast
Plot
The film's screenplay generally followed Hudson's novel, although considerably condensed. In addition, in the novel Rima is definitely consumed by a fire and her ashes are retrieved by the grieving Abel; the film's ending is ambiguous as to Rima's fate.
Critical Reception
Although considerable effort had been made to produce a faithful and convincing rendering of the book, the film was not reviewed kindly by critics at the time and was not a commercial success.
Critics were not kind to the film, impressed neither by its lush widescreen visuals nor by the equally lush musical score that accompanied them.. .[1]
And
Screen adaptation of W. H. Hudson's novel suffers due to miscasting of Hepburn as Rima the Bird Girl . .[2]
Rima of the novel was 4.5 feet (1.37 m) tall, 17 years of age, demure and dark-haired (alathough descended from a mysterious group of fair-skinned people), and had lived her life entirely in the deepest jungle. Hepburn at the time of filming was 29 years old, more than a foot taller than the novel Rima, and too stunningly beautiful and smooth-skinned to ever be taken as a forest creature.
Production notes
Ferrer and traveled to South America to select possible filming locations, but eventually concluded that the jungles there were too dense and dark to allow their use in the action sequences of the film. He did cause nearly an hour of jungle footage to be filmed south of Orinoco and in the Parahauri Mountains, much of which was incorporated into the film. The action sequences were filmed on indoor stages and at Lone Pine, California.
Ferrer had several snakes and birds native to the Venezuelan jungle captured and shipped to Hollywood for use in filming. He also brought a baby deer to the residence he shared with Hepburn, and they raised it for several months prior to filming so that it could be used in several scenes where Rima interacted with the forest creatures.[3][4]
Music
Villa-Lobos
The Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos was originally commissioned to write the full score for the film. However, his music was inspired by the original novel, rather than the film adaptation.
Unhappy with the way his music had been used, Villa Lobos edited his full score into a cantata, Forest of the Amazon (Floresta do Amazonas). It was premiered in 1959 in New York with the Symphony of the Air and the soprano Bidú Sayão under the composer's direction. The same forces recorded it in stereophonic sound for United Artists Records, which released it on LP and reel-to-reel tape.
Kaper
A separate source from that quoted above indicates that the score by Villa-Lobos was composed from a translated script prior to completion of the editing of the film. Though Villa-Lobos did some work on the edited film, the task of scoring the completed film was done by Bronislaw Kaper, with Charles Wolcott conducting.[5]
For the final score, Kaper wrote original material and used or adapted material composed by Villa-Lobos. Additional music and arrangements were supplied by Sidney Cutner and Leo Arnaud. The love theme "Song of Green Mansions" was composed by Kaper, with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster.[5]
The complete Kaper score was issued on cd in 2005, on Film Score Monthly records.
Availability
Until recently the film had only been available in cropped VHS transfers. However, Warner UK struck a deal with former special interest label Digital Classics to release Green Mansions and three other catalogue titles from the capacious Warner vaults. The film subsequently received an anamorphic NTSC DVD release[6] in the UK on 6 April 2009.
References
External links
