The Girl with Green Eyes

 

I enjoy watching movies from the 1930s to the 1960s. Given my photography years exclusively in B&W, the technical aspects of these movies attract my curiosity because telling a story in B&W takes much more ingenuity than in colour – it affects our brain and not our eyes.

But these old movies most often also tackle psychological, human and philosophical topics that stay with us long after the screen shows “FIN” or “END” – the cheap thrills of fast car chases and violent behaviors never allured me.

So, a few days ago I discovered a 1964 British movie titled “The girl with green eyes”, based on a novel by Irish writer Edna O’Brien “The lonely girl”. My first reaction was “how does a B&W movie racont the behavior of green eyes?”

Therefore I decided to watch it.

Immediately I was attracted by the visual softness of the cinematography. Whatever British-made pellicule they used, it was noticeably different from American products used decades before the 1960s which are high in contrast and definition.  The Girl with Green Eyes had that comforting, fluid feeling even when capturing moments of love and deception.

A few minutes into the movie, and the genius of the cinematographer gave me yet another feeling – I was actually able to see green eyes in B&W! What a delight.

As for the story and plot, they tackle an age-old topic, that of a young woman falling in love with a man twice her age. She is also innocent and self-described as “unsophisticated”; he is a well known writer with a life baggage.  She finds ways for inviting him to have tea with her, and he eventually gets fascinated by her simplicity and inexperience. They even get married (informally of sorts) but the story ends as many such stories end – the initial attraction fades away for him, and she finds her own way (by going to night school) to meet other men.

… While I started watching the movie for the softness of the cinematography, I ended up with a comfort due to how the story was told. Both characters are candid about their feelings, their expectations and the void they tried to fill. There is no intrigue, no malice or dominance. It is a very fresh (and British!) display of the need for discovery – she about herself, and for him about re-discovering who he had been. It is a moment in time when two people “happen together” and discover that they did not belong to that moment as hoped. As such, it is a moment of selfishness, but without causing harm to each other. They just continue alone, knowing more about themselves.

 

It was a couple days later, when I was making my morning coffee that I knew how best to formulate why I liked that movie. It was not because I “saw” the green of her eyes in a B&W movie; it was not because there was no violence through the loss of passion; and it was not because the story ended with an unexpected twist.

No. It was because there was a soothing message to the viewer – that self-discovery, no matter how selfishly pursued at times, can be gentle and celebrated.

And, when the first sip of coffee cleared my mind, I recalled a line from Khalil Gibran:

The feelings we live through in love and in loneliness are simply, for us, what high tide and low tide are to the sea

And so it flows.

 

November 24, 2023

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023