Guilty Pleasures: Reflections in a Golden Eye

1967 Drama
From Warner Bros
Directed by John Huston

Starring
Elizabeth Taylor
Marlon Brando
Brian Keith
Julie Harris
Robert Forster
Zorro David


The novels of Carson McCullers are set in the south and focus on characters that are eccentric if not downright outcasts, misfits and/or psychologically disturbed.  Such is certainly the case in this film based on one of her more controversial works.  

A scrawl at the beginning of the film reveals there is a fort in the south where a few years ago a murder was committed.  That comment and an outstandingly talented cast and brilliant director should be enough for viewers to hang in there until the finale.

There is no doubt that several characters are downright unlikable and five of the six are certainly psychologically disturbed and the one who isn't habitually cheats on his wife with a family friend.

The actors mentioned above occupy the film's central roles.  McCullers brooding protagonist, Major Penderton (Brando), lives on a southern army post, circa 1948.  He is riddled with pain and self-loathing and dealing with a ball-busting wife, his impotence and his latent homosexuality.  He is driven mad by his unbridled lust for a handsome, young private who, in turn, has an unhealthy fascination for the major's wife.

His shrewish wife Leonora (Taylor) is rather infantile, ditsy and gauche, an officer's wife (and in this case, a general's daughter) of limited character, charm and imagination.  She mocks her husband's shortcomings.  She is beautiful, oversexed and an excellent horsewoman.  She often goes off on rides with a colonel and nextdoor neighbor with whom she cheats on a regular basis. 

Keith is Col. Langdon who is unhappily married to his semi-invalid wife with whom he is no longer intimate.  Since Leonora also no longer sleeps with her husband, her and Langdon's trysting provides them with the only romance they know.  Langdon spends far too much time with the Pendertons, drinking far too much and playing cards with his lady love while her husband sits nearby.

Harris brings Alison Langdon to life.  She is frail physically and emotionally and spends most of her life under a blanket.  She has never been the same after her young child's death.  Bizarrely, after she discovered that her husband was cheating, she cut off her nipples with darning shearers.  She is clearly not well and fully intends to leave her husband, going off somewhere, anywhere, with her houseboy in tow.  She is the character responsible for moving
the film into its dramatic conclusion.

Alison's relationship with her effeminate Filipino houseboy-companion, Anacleto, played by Zorro David, is a strange one.  They obviously adore and count on one other.  He sits at her feet and listens to her pity tales.  He brushes her long hair at night.  He brings her tea.  He fusses over her every whim and complaint.  He agrees with her when she badmouths her husband.  He prances around the house like a wounded ballerina.

Forster, dark and handsome as Pvt. Williams, is coveted by the major so much so that he is hired to do yard work at the major's residence so the major can watch him and he drives the major to distraction when he rides horses in the nude.  The major follows him around in the dark and picks up his discarded candy wrappers.

What the major doesn't know at first is that Williams, in  turn, covets Leonora.  He is a peeping Tom who has seen his quarry in all sorts of undress.  Ultimately he sneaks into her room night after night (don't they have bed checks back at the barracks?), sniffs her lingerie, often gets naked and stares at her sleeping body.

One early morning Alison, looking out her bedroom window, thinks she sees a man in the Penderton backyard.  She is not totally sure until she catches him again.  She hustles nextdoor in her nightgown to warn the major that someone is breaking into the house.

The major know it's Pvt. Williams but is delusional enough to think the hunky noncom is coming for him... at last.  As Williams quietly climbs the stairs for his umpteenth trip to Leonora's bedroom, the major, looks through a slit in his bedroom door in the darkened room, fussing with his hair in anticipation of the lustful meeting he's never going to experience.

There is a fort in the south where a few years ago a murder was committed.

A difficult scene to watch involves a Lipizzaner stallion that Huston borrowed from the Spanish Riding School in Austria.  It is Leonora's horse that supposedly no one else can ride.  To punish her and use the horse as her stand-in, the major ruthlessly rides the stallion at full gallop for miles, digging his spurs constantly into the animal's side.  When the horse is ready to collapse, the major is thrown off.  He grabs a large switch from a tree and holding onto the reins, beats the animal unmercifully.  (No animals were harmed during the making of this motion picture... not that it makes it any easier to watch.)  When Leonora discovers this during a party, she grabs a riding crop and beats her husband viciously and frequently across the face.  He seemed to enjoy it.  The guests are stunned.

The film was shot in Technicolor and then desaturated in the printing so that the color gold fills every frame of every scene.  It was not altogether understood by the studio or the public but Huston was insistent that this was a mood picture and the look that the gold produced was consistent with that mood.  This and the title are explained by Anacleto in a scene where he is showing Alison a drawing of a one-eyed peacock, stating that the world is just a reflection in the eye of a golden peacock.  That golden eye is also found in the soldier who secretively watches the behavior of others.


A number of actors were chatted up for the major's role.  Robert Mitchum, William Holden, Richard Burton, Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster were among them.  But Taylor, a friend of Huston's and the only one considered for Leonora, wanted her dear friend and three-time costar, Montgomery Clift, for the lead.  He was very sick and not expected to live a lot longer.

As it turned out, Warner Bros discovered it would not be able to insure him.  Clift had not worked for four years and his uninsurability was mostly why.  Finally Taylor agreed to cover such costs.  For her dear friend she wanted him to work again alongside her.  His inclusion would have been pretty damned interesting.  For one thing he and Huston had a bad relationship while making The Misfits and a disastrous one while making Freud.  Could they try to mend fences and make this movie?  They said they'd try.

The exciting part... and Taylor thought so, too... was having Clift play a tortured, closeted homosexual when that's exactly what he was.  Might he have brought something magnificent to the part or would his emotional illness and paranoia prevent it?  He was also frail and haunted-looking.  What kind of an army major is that?  Well, we can wonder and speculate but Clift put the kibosh to all of it when he suddenly died at 43 years of age.

Brando's name had also come up but had largely been dismissed when suddenly he was at the forefront again.  He was originally resistant because he wasn't sure he wanted to step into a part originally offered to Clift who was the only actor Brando ever considered as a rival.

This was a film largely about a forward glimpse into sex and sexuality, and closeted gayness in particular, and he wasn't sure he wanted to tackle this on screen.  Sex was something Brando knew about and it was close to being all he thought about as well.  It was well-known among his crowd that he needed sex constantly or black moods prevailed.  What he kept a little closer to the vest was that sex included men as well.  His decades-long relationship with comedian Wally Cox was more than they wanted the public to know.

So he was largely in the closet himself and now comes an offer to play such a person on the screen.  Could he?  Should he?  The answer didn't come easily and he fully acknowledged that he was dying to work with Huston and Taylor, as well.  He said yes.  He was even willing to give up top billing to Taylor despite the fact that his character is the lead.

I've never particularly cared for him on or off screen.  I'll keep mum on the latter but on the screen I just never tuned in to all the accolades (best American actor ever... no kidding) but I know there are enough of them to fill the Grand Canyon.  I respect that.  You know the expression less is more?  I get that but I saw doing next to nothing is more.  I usually thought he just showed up and delivered his lines without emotion.  And he mumbled... spoke like he had marbles in the mouth.  Is that what Lee Strasberg taught him?

Furthermore the great actor made lots of junk.  He made more bad movies than good ones.  Many would include this one as one of the bad ones.  I would not.  In fact, Reflections in a Golden Eye may be the best performance he ever gave.  Yeah, I'm thinking of those two Oscar-winning performances, and they were awesome, but he dug deep to play the major because it was closer to home than Terry Malloy or Don Corleone.  

Still with all this praise it must be said that he had one scene where he addresses a roomful of soldiers and there should have been subtitles to decipher his mumbling.  Another time, screaming up the stairs at Taylor, he lapses into this weird falsetto.  Huston, who oddly didn't like to tell actors what to do, should have had Brando dub over embarrassing scenes.  Hey MB, what would Clift have done?  Brando gets an A+ from me, however, for numerous facial expressions showing conflict, pain, rage, hope and tenderness.  Maybe he just shouldn't speak at all.

This is not one of Taylor's best performances although she's fine.  There are closeups of her face as Forster is inches away from it that leaves no doubt why his character gets so sidetracked from reality or why the world considered the actress to be so beautiful.  As for the rest of her, she had moved into a middle-aged look, a little dumpy, and probably no one had the nerve to tell her.  The tight riding pants she shouldn't have worn.  Her high, squeaky voice and that witch's cackle would have been curbed by her best directors.  Too bad Huston didn't like to tell actors what to do... or not do.

Keith is always the same... reliable and as good as he needs to be.  And as said earlier, despite his near-daily romp with Leonora he is the most normal one in the story.   After his wife dies, he wants her houseboy, whom he hated, to return to his household.  No explanation.  Someone was asleep at the controls.

Harris, David and Keith

In the above scene, the colonel, shaking his head as the houseboy prances around, says you're a rare bird, you are.  What I would give to get you in my battalion for just a day.

Harris, a most talented actress, was pleased to be working with Brando, although they, as Actors' Studio members at the same time, had done scenes together there.  Alison is clearly the character based on McCullers herself.  In 1952 another McCullers' novel, The Member of the Wedding has a lead character also based on her and also played by Harris.

In his only film role it is abundantly clear that David is a force of nature... one almost has to brace for it.  After Huston found him and
hired him, he got a bit embarrassed explaining something he wanted to the neophyte actor do.  Finally David said... you saying you want me to play it gayer?  Huston was relieved. 

I found Forster, in his film debut, to also be a force of nature but in a different way.  Most of the action concerns him in one way or another.  Someone was clearly needed to be hot enough to drive Brando batty and yet quiet, unaffected and spooky enough to sit in her dark bedroom all night, naked and sniffing.

These scenes alone got folks all stirred up, whether you liked them or not... you were stirred.  I've loved Forster ever since and have seen most of his work.

Early filming took place in New York City and a lion's share of exterior shooting was on the Long Island campus of Nassau Community College where former army barracks were still standing.  Most of the interior shots were filmed in Italy due to the tax problems of some of the film's participants.

In his autobiography Huston rhapsodizes about the film, calling it one of his favorites ever.  Some have claimed that he told them it was his favorite.  How odd that this strange film with its oddball characters was elevated in Huston's mind over his The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The African Queen, among many others.

The MPPA (Motion Picture Producers' Association) called it a dirty and morbid movie, a combination of lust, impotency, vulgarity, nudity, neurosis, brutality, voyeurism, hatred and insanity.  Time Magazine said that Huston spills the novel's poetry on the way to the screen, leaving only its gothic husk and a gallery of grotesques.  I guess they didn't like it, eh?  Well, I get it.  It is most definitely not for everyone.

I particularly liked the handling of the latent homosexuality, all full of pain, anguish, fear and recrimination.  I suspect it's the first or one of the first American films to have handled the subject this intelligently.  Overall I liked the script... it is taut and moves along at a breezy pace.  The voyeurism is fascinating, bizarre as it certainly is.   The characters are larger than life although there's no denying these are unwell people.  And of course it's the film's  deeply psychological trajectory that kept my attention.

It didn't particularly do anything for anyone's career except for Forster.  Critics loved it or reviled it and I expect much of the same could be said for the public.  It deserves its place among guilty pleasures.

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