If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Great Film overall

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It's the early 20th Century down in the jungles of Columbia, and a young man (Anthony Perkins) escapes from a revolution. He ends up being befriended by a group of natives, even though only one of them (educated by missionaries) speaks English. They believe Perkins has magical powers (because he owns a cigarette lighter) and order him to kill a mysterious girl in the near-by forest. This girl (Audrey Hepburn) is a waif-like creature with mystical qualities that they believe is a witch. Raised by her grandfather (Nehemian Persoff), she falls in love with Perkins and longs to leave the forest to return to her mother's hometown.There's not really a lot of story except the apparent conflict between Hepburn, Persoff and the natives outside the village. The majority of the film is the romance between Perkins and Hepburn, a bit of philosophizing and the truth about Hepburn's identity. But the last third explodes into questions about everything you've been wondering about up until that point and the journey outside the forest where all will be revealed. Most people will be more enthralled by the colorful painting like photography, shots of some rare creatures (most interestingly an aardvark) and the National Geographic like nature shots. Who Hepburn is will be the film's biggest mystery in this film similar in theme to "Lost Horizon" and "The Portrait of Jennie".

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.

Pretty weird story about a man and his developing love story with a strange, nymph-like girl in a densely forested and canopy darkened South American jungle. Anthony Perkins plays the young man, in search for revenge and GOLD he heads by canoe into the jungle, abounding with snakes, leopards, and even worse - headhunters. Befriending (well, kind of anyway) one tribe he soon sets into a nearby forest, lush with ferns and fawns and waterfalls and loads of unusual birds, where he meets the beautiful and mysterious Rima (played by Audrey Hepburn) who rescues him after he is bitten by a snake. Rima is a strange little thing indeed, her slim self darting amongst the trees and greenery, she tends to the wild creatures and lives with a gruff old man, her grandfather. But Rima longs to know the truth of herself and where she comes from - Grandfather won't tell.This film is an unusual one indeed, but with beautiful, interesting and colorful scenery, a sweeping orchestral score, and my favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn, who looks especially lovely here - well, it's actually pretty good and held by interest in spite of the possibly less than ZERO chemistry between leading man and lady (it is really pretty hard to believe that this is a couple in love - when they kiss, um, talk about a lack of passion). All in all, though, a quite enjoyable film.

I was 13 in 1959 but was unaware of this film when it came out. Of course, I knew about Anthony Perkins and Audrey Hepburn in those days. I became aware of Green Mansions when I read the novel at age 23. It was after that, that I saw the film on television. I was captivated. It has everything: romance, adventure, politics and mysticism. Audrey as Rima the bird girl is mesmerizing. Her innocence is as much a part of the 1950s as it is Hudson's nature girl. Nature pervades this film. The South American rainforest envelops us. It is an exercise in green. Green Mansions is a work of art, beautiful to behold, yet one step ahead of raw reality at all times. Both Perkins and Hepburn died relatively young. Perkins, a bi-sexual, died of AIDS.