The film starred Audrey Hepburn (who at the time was married to Ferrer) as Rima, a jungle girl who falls in love with a Venezuelan traveller played by Anthony Perkins.

The film was the first feature film to be photographed using Panavision lenses for 35mm anamorphic widescreen cinematography; however, the process listed on the titles was CinemaScope, the 35mm anamorphic widescreen process developed in the early 1950s by 20th Century-Fox in conjunction with the U.S. optical company Bausch and Lomb.

Projected in the theater, the processes are identical in terms of the size of the film used and the screen width and height.

Abel agrees and befriends Kua-ko, who tells him of the "Bird Woman", who killed his older brother, and that their tribe is not allowed in the nearby forest.

She goes to speak with her dead mother's spirit and decides to return to where she came from to ask a village elder about her strange new feelings for Abel.

Rima steals away while Abel is asleep to go back to Nuflo and apologize, but when she finds him, the natives have burnt their home and he is nearly dead.

Although considerable effort had been made to produce a faithful and convincing rendering of the book, the film was not reviewed well by critics at the time, and it was not a commercial success.

Critics were not kind to the film, impressed neither by its lush widescreen visuals nor by the equally lush musical score that accompanied them ...[3]In 1933, after the success of the film Bird of Paradise (1932), RKO Pictures tried to reunite the star couple Dolores del Río and Joel McCrea in Green Mansions.

He also brought a baby deer to the residence he shared with Hepburn, and they raised it for several months before filming so that it could be used in several scenes where Rima interacted with the forest creatures.

Unhappy with the way his music had been used, Villa Lobos edited his full score into the cantata Forest of the Amazon (Floresta do Amazonas).

It premiered in 1959 in New York City with the Symphony of the Air and the soprano Bidu Sayão under the composer's direction.

Alfred Heller, a friend and associate of Villa Lobos, made a modern digital recording of the complete uncut cantata (74 minutes) with soprano Renee Fleming, along with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra.

A separate source from that quoted above indicates that the score by Villa-Lobos was composed from a translated script before completion of the editing of the film.

The love theme "Song of Green Mansions" was composed by Kaper, with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster.

[1] Filmink, discussing George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany's, reflected "matching it against Audrey Hepburn isn’t always easy – look at Anthony Perkins in Green Mansions.

Warner UK struck a deal with former special interest label Digital Classics to release Green Mansions.