The Girl with the Green Eyes

Rita Tushingham, Peter Finch and Lynn Redgrave star in Girl With Green Eyes, a sparkling, Golden Globe-winning adaptation of Edna O'Brien's raunchy bestseller set in and around a rapidly-modernizing Dublin in the 1960s. The young people here may be many miles from Swinging London, but they're hungrily eager to savor the winds of change blowing across the world. Tushingham's free-spirited Kate Brady breaks free from her traditional rural upbringing, embarking on a passionate affair with a considerably older man (Finch)—only to learn that his sophistication is a thin veneer over a chilly heart. Years ahead of its time in its frank handling of sexual matters and fascinating as a glimpse into a great city all-too-seldom celebrated on celluloid, Desmond Davis's directorial debut is an underseen gem of the British New Wave. It winningly blends O'Brien's forthright feminism with acute social observation and a salty streak of down-to-earth, Emerald-Isle humour and is long overdue rediscovery.