Desmond Davis may be the finest director ever to have been 'overlooked' by the British film establishment. A former camera operator Davis directed his first feature in 1964 and it's a small masterpiece and one of the most beautifully shot black and white films in all of British cinema, (Manny Wynn was the DoP). "Girl with Green Eyes" was adapted by Edna O Brien from her novel "The Lonely Girl" and it's set in Dublin where friends Kate and Baba share lodgings and where Kate meets a much older English writer, (an excellent Peter Finch), with whom she has an affair.
It's a very simple picture, closer in tone to the French New Wave than the British Kitchen Sink and while now it's largely been forgotten it was surprisingly successful in its day, winning the Golden Globe for Best English Language Foreign Film while Davis took the National Board of Review's Best Director prize. Davis followed it with two more superb 'small' films, "The Uncle" and another O'Brien story "I Was Happy Here" before a brief breakthrough into more commercial fare and then an awful lot of television. Still alive at ninety, his name may not mean much to the present generation of cineastes but his first three films alone, and "Girl with Green Eyes" in particular, have earned him his place in the sun
It's a very simple picture, closer in tone to the French New Wave than the British Kitchen Sink and while now it's largely been forgotten it was surprisingly successful in its day, winning the Golden Globe for Best English Language Foreign Film while Davis took the National Board of Review's Best Director prize. Davis followed it with two more superb 'small' films, "The Uncle" and another O'Brien story "I Was Happy Here" before a brief breakthrough into more commercial fare and then an awful lot of television. Still alive at ninety, his name may not mean much to the present generation of cineastes but his first three films alone, and "Girl with Green Eyes" in particular, have earned him his place in the sun