Greenwich Village Story

Greenwich Village Story is a 1963 American feature film written and directed by Jack O'Connell and starring Robert Hogan.

Plot
In the Manhattan section of Greenwich Village, Genie, a talented ballet dancer, is pregnant with the child of her underachieving boyfriend Brian, an aspiring novelist. Genie forgoes a professional dancing job to stay with Brian in the apartment that they share. When Brian's novel is rejected by a publisher upon whose patronage he was depending, he spends several days with his ex-girlfriend Anne, a society woman several years older than he who is often accompanied by a young advertising copywriter named George.

Not aware that Genie is pregnant, Brian has made their marriage conditional upon his success as a writer. Genie fears that Brian, who is emotionally immature, will reject her when he learns of her pregnancy. Brian is informally mentored in the ways of the world by the cynical and experienced bohemian Norman and is tempted into the world of Madison Avenue by George, with whom he has developed a friendship.

While away in the Berkshires with Anne, whose advances he gently shuns, Brian, still unaware of Genie's pregnancy, realizes that he loves and wants to marry Genie. He hurriedly returns to Greenwich Village, but Genie is difficult to trace.

Production
The film was shot on location in Greenwich Village and in the Berkshires, including a nude swimming scene filmed at Lake Garfield, Massachusetts. According to director Jack O'Connell, the loud sounds of motorboat engines in the sequence were replaced in the final soundtrack by prerecorded crickets.

O'Connell had earlier worked as second assistant director for Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura (1960), while cinematographer Baird Bryant later worked as an uncredited assistant to László Kovács for Easy Rider (1969) and shot that film's LSD trip sequence in a New Orleans cemetery.

Reception
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic A. H. Weiler praised O'Connell's direction and the film's realism: "Life, Mr. O'Connell apparently has learned, is real and earnest and happy Hollywood endings occur only on the West Coast. His leads and the supporting players, most of whom have had experience in the theater and television, behave, for the most part, naturally and unaffectedly. There are many evidences of amateurism, but these may be forgiven for the obvious sincerity they contribute to their assignments."