Reflections in a Golden Eye

Director John Huston paints life at a Georgia army base in odd pinkish and amber tones to point up its off-color nature beneath its khaki uniformity. Reflections features Brando as a Colonel, supposedly courageous and a leader of men, who turns out to be weak, cowardly, hag- ridden, and unsure of his sexual orientation. It was one of his best, most creative and least likely performances, and shocking to audiences of the time. If anybody but Brando had played that character it would have scarred his career and maybe ended it. Just taking on the role was a brave move, but he did so much with it to bring out the man's un- Brando nature. Bold, brilliant and daring as a lead performance, he plays off wonderfully against Taylor in one of her patented bitch queen roles as an unsatisfied man-eater stifled by the regimentation of living as an army wife. The scene in which she flogs him for a weakling in front of dinner guests is shocking to watch but wonderfully evocative of the nature of their relationship roles. Taylor's infidelity and Brando's weakness become two sides of the same co-dependent coin.

Reflections was a watershed film in its day but at the same time years ahead of its day. It flopped at the box-office because the mid-60s were just not ready for it.

"Reflections in a Golden Eye" was recognized by John Huston himself as his most important film of his late period along with "The Man who would be a King". While generally the later is accepted as his masterpiece "Reflections in a Golden Eye" is misunderstood as Huston's "misfire", as a "flop", an opinion with which I tend to disagree. What we have here is a good drama whose story is based on a book by Carson McCullers, featuring superb performances from Marlon Brando who plays a U.S. Army Major in an isolated military fort somewhere in the south, who gradually discovers his homosexuallity and Liz Taylor, simply great here in the role of his cheating wife. The film, which is basically a serious drama, turns out to be something of a cynical human comedy, due to "ridiculousness" of all of it's characters and the way the story is told by film's director - John Huston. Overall it's an intelligent film whose main theme is repression and ultimate frustration of desire with it's tragic consequences. 8/10

Apart from the barely discernible homosexual subtext, there really isn't much to this sudsy cinematic soap opera. The film provides a glimpse into the neurotic lives of two couples (Major Weldon Penderton and his pampered, beautiful wife Leonora; and Lt. Col. Morris Langdon and his spaced-out wife Alison). The four of them live at a military fort in the American South. A mysterious young soldier named Pvt. Williams (Robert Forster), who rides naked on horseback, and who stealthily creeps into Leonora's bedroom at night to contemplate who knows what, is the object of Major Penderton's implied fantasies.

What makes this film so maddening is the unspoken passion, the tacitly erotic obsessions that drive the entire narrative. It's all beneath the surface. The dialogue is largely irrelevant. It's what is not said that's important.

Even though this is a character study, we actually learn very little about the characters. Does Pvt. Williams even have a back-story? All of the characters seem to be in their own fog, their own delusional world, divorced from reality. Indeed, except for one sequence at an institution for the mentally ill, all the scenes take place at the military fort, isolated from the rest of the world.

The film's lighting is neither B&W nor color; it is a dingy, yellowish sepia tone with occasional splats of color. Background music is intermittent and nondescript. The pace of the plot is excruciatingly slow, with very long camera "takes".

The film's acting is acceptable. Elizabeth Taylor and her Cleopatra eyebrows give a nice performance, as does Brian Keith. Marlon Brando, as Major Penderton, nasally mumbles his lines, as if he had marbles in his mouth.

Best remembered perhaps as one of the 1960's films that brought about the MPAA ratings system, "Reflections In A Golden Eye" is stodgy and dull by today's standards. But in its day, this film was bold and daring in its depiction of a topic that was all hush-hush. For that reason, even though its entertainment value is questionable, the film is historically significant.

Marlon Brando's career was on a downward slide when he appeared in "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (***1/2). His previous film was Charles Chaplain's disastrous "A Countess from Hong Kong" in which he gave one of his worst performances. In "Eye" he proved that as an actor he was still capable of being as daring and surprising as he once was as a sexually repressed Army Major. Widely misunderstood at the time of its release, John Huston's adaptation of the Carson McCullers novel is a witty and provocative tragicomedy in which none of the characters succeeds in escaping from their own self-imposed prisons. There have probably never been two more incompatible married couples in the movies than the brooding introverted officer played by Brando and his bawdy, outgoing wife, a fine part for Elizabeth Taylor at her funniest and most natural. Complementing them are Brian Keith as a rather dim but basically good-natured fellow officer who is having an affair with Taylor, and Julie Harris as his hypersensitive invalid wife. Zorro David also scores as her pretentiously effete Filopino houseboy. One of the many fascinating things about this film is watching how these characters interrelate without ever making a real connection. Director Huston finds a great deal of humor (most of it intentional, I'm convinced) in this sometimes hard-to-take, but fascinating film.

Reflections in a Golden Eye came out at an interesting transitional period for gay people. The Code that had dominated what could and could not be shown on the screen was just being lifted. That Code had succeeded in making gay people all but invisible by Hollywood standards. But it was two years before the Stonewall Rebellion which gave the gay rights movement a political voice.

Originally Montgomery Clift was scheduled to do this film with three time screen partner Elizabeth Taylor, but Clift died before the film started shooting. Marlon Brando took his place and in my opinion gave a very underrated performance as the repressed latent homosexual Major married to Elizabeth Taylor.

Brando and Taylor dusted off a couple of southern accents previously used in films, Brando from Sayonara and Taylor from Raintree County. But the characters here are vastly different from the characters portrayed in both of those other films.

Although certainly given Clift's background he was eminently qualified to play a repressed gay man, I'm not sure he would have been the type to have played an authority figure like Major Penderton here. Brando was far more the type. The part of the wife was Taylor made for Liz and she went to town with it.

I wonder what those people who want to keep gays out of the military would say about Brando. Brando's burgeoning homosexuality is finding an outlet in a raging crush on a handsome private played by Robert Forster. Forster during his off hours likes to walk and ride horses in the buff and sneaks into Brando's house to play with Liz Taylor's lingerie. Liz is having an affair with Brando's immediate superior Brian Keith who has an invalid and mentally disturbed wife in Julie Harris. And Harris spends most of her time with her very effeminate Filipino houseboy, Zorro David.

Of course this is a recipe for tragedy and tragedy does come. Author Carson McCullers, herself a lesbian, created some unforgettable characters here.

Reflections in a Golden Eye was way before its time. Today the film and Director John Huston would have gotten far better reviews than the film did in 1967.