Green Mansions ** (1959, Anthony Perkins, Audrey Hepburn, Lee J Cobb, Henry Silva) – Classic Movie Review 11,316

Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins romp in the forbidden forests beyond the Amazon.

Director Mel Ferrer’s disastrous 1959 Metrocolor and CinemaScope romantic adventure drama Green Mansions stars the young and handsome Anthony Perkins and Audrey Hepburn (then wife of the director), who romp alluringly in the MGM Venezuelan jungle in this totally unbeguiling version of the 1904 William Henry Hudson classic novel.

He is Abel, an adventurer arrived in South America to evade political troubles, and she is Rima, the bird girl of the Amazon forests, who must never depart thence.

Far from looking romantic, the uncomfortable stars look bewitched, bothered and bewildered. And the film is limp and vapid. It is one of the few critical and box-office failures of Hepburn’s career, costing $3,288,000 an earning $2,390,000, resulting in a loss of $2,430,000.

The film was to be the first of several projects directed by Ferrer and starring Hepburn but this was the only one released. They starred together in War and Peace (1956) and he later produced her film Wait Until Dark (1967). Ferrer was married to Hepburn from 1954 to 1968.

To be fair, Ferrer travelled to South America to scout filming locations but decided the jungles were too dense and dark to film the action sequences, which ended up being filmed on indoor studio stages and at Lone Pine, California.

Green Mansions cinema release lobby card by Joseph Smith.

Director Vincente Minnelli tried to film this previously with Edmund Purdom and Pier Angeli, but delays in production led MGM to choose Hepburn to star and Ferrer to direct. There was also a previous effort to film it in 1933 by RKO Pictures with Dolores del Río and Joel McCrea, which was postponed and then cancelled.

Studio publicity photo of Anthony Perkins and Audrey Hepburn in Green Mansions.

Also in the cast are Lee J Cobb as Nuflo, Henry Silva as Kua-ko, Sessue Hayakawa as Runi, Nehemiah Persoff as Don Panta, Michael Pate as Priest, Estelle Hemsley as Cla Cla, Yoneo Iguchi, and Bill Saito.

It is shot between July and November 1958 in Guyana; Venezuela; Colombia; Santa Clarita, California; and Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park, 10700 W Escondido Canyon Rd, Agua Dulce, California.

The VHS was in cropped pan and scan transfers but the film received an anamorphic NTSC DVD release in the UK on 6 April 2009.

Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos was commissioned to write the score for the film but the scoring the completed film was done by Bronislau Kaper, with Charles Wolcott conducting. Kaper wrote original material and used or adapted work composed by Villa-Lobos. The love theme ‘Song of Green Mansions’ is composed by Kaper with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster.

Ferrer arranged for nearly an hour of jungle footage to be filmed south of Orinoco and in the Parahauri Mountains, much of it incorporated into the film.

Ferrer had snakes and birds native to the Venezuelan jungle captured and shipped to Hollywood for the shoot. He brought a baby deer to his home with Hepburn, and they raised it for several months before filming to use it in scenes where Rima interacts with the forest creatures.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,316

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com