Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This movie hits all the Southern Gothic marks and then some.Elizabeth Taylor playing a shrill (strike that, she always played shrill) unfaithful wife, and daughter of an Army officer she's always referring to, is in 'Well, Daddy said..." Gotta have a Daddy- obsessed cheater. Bonus points: This is her one and only late career role where she's not playing the craziest person in the room. So there's that.Marlon Brando. He always brought at least a soupçon of crazy to the table, so he's well-placed here. Unfortunately, you can barely understand what he's saying most of the time, so you have to go on the occasional flicker in his wooden expression. This has been interpreted by critics as homosexual desire. (is the naked guy on the horse he keeps seeing real? If he's real, is he really naked? Is he really riding a horse?) Bonus points: he fills out that uniform very well.Julie Harris: according to the script, she's the craziest in the bunch, having chopped off her nipples with garden shears when her baby died. (Only in the South...) But her character seems WAY more sane than...Zorro David as Anacleto, her cray cray Filipino houseboy. He makes Rip Taylor look like... well, I can't come up with anyone. But compared to Anacleto, Rip Taylor is normal and serious. Speaking of which,Brian Keith, who seems to have wandered in from another movie entirely. Something with a good script, directed by Fred Zinnemann or someone similar. He plays Julie Harris's husband, Liz's adulterous honey. The tally: three crazy people, one of whom with a semi-disturbing back story (33 hours in labor, with her houseboy playing doula. Only in the South.) One adulterous affair. One Daddy's girl. One naked guy riding a horse. One of the crazy people beating a horse. (Feel free to turn away, or go to the fridge for a soda during that scene. I wish I had.) Two deaths, on on-screen. One of those was not the horse, otherwise, I'd give this movie an even lower rating.

During the mid 1960s there was a movie called "The Love One" that was billed as "The Movie With Something to Offend Everyone". Released during that same era, "Reflections in a Golden Eye" might well have been billed as "The Movie With Something to Disgust Everyone". That is because there is undoubtedly something in this jaw-dropping movie that will make every single member of the viewing audience squirm in their seats at some point or other, regardless of their age, gender or sexual proclivities. Adultery, homosexuality, sadomasochism, bestiality, voyeurism, self-mutilation, cruelty to animals, murder, those are just a few of the things that go on here. Ostensibly the story takes place on an Army base somewhere in the southern United States. Actually, however, it takes place in some bizarre and perverse parallel universe where Tennessee Williams meets The Twilight Zone. Certainly if the U.S. Army bears even the slightest resemblance to what is depicted in this movie than the country is in a whole lot of trouble.The plot revolves around two Army officers and their respective wives, who are best friends and next-door neighbors on an Army Base. By far the most normal of the four characters is that played by Brian Kieth, who is merely committing adultery with his best friend and next-door neighbors's wife. But hey, can you blame him when his friend's wife is a very-willing Elizabeth Taylor? Besides, Kieth's own wife, who had suffered a miscarriage a few years earlier, hasn't had any use for him since. Played by Julie Harris, Kieth's wife is definitely what a Harley Street Psychiatrist would label, clinically speaking, "Barmy". For her role Liz comes across like a combination of Scarlett O'Hara and Martha from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". It's not very surprising that she is having an affair with her neighbor because her own husband, played by Brando, is a closet case, and she obviously knows it. They're just your typical well-adjusted American couple; she has complete contempt for him while he absolutely loathes her. So, while Liz is having it off with Kieth while Brando is out stalking enlisted men around the Army Base. Watching this movie one can't help wondering, if this is how things are in the Army, what can it possibly be like in the Marine Corps?"Reflections in a Golden Eye" is meant to be an adult drama. However, everything about the film is so extremely over-the-top that the only way to enjoy it at all is to view it as if it were some sort of parody. In that sense it is somewhat reminiscent of "The Fountainhead", another dramatic movie that can only really be enjoyed if it is viewed as a comedy.

Welcome to the world of Southern Gothic, a genre in its own right as director John Huston adapts Carson McCullers novel.The breakdown of the Hays Code only allowed such a picture to be released in the mid 1960s with a daring depiction of sexual mores and sexuality in an army base along with some nudity and repressed emotions.The film deals with a group of grotesques in a Southern army base after the second world war. Elizabeth Taylor plays the slutty wife, Leonora of Major Penderton (Marlon Brando) who loves her horse, Firebird and as an affair with her neighbour Lt Colonel Langdon (Brian Keith.) There is a touch of the Cat on the Hot Tin Roof about Taylor's character, very much a spoilt rich girl on heat.A more subtle but also visceral performance is given by Brando. Left embarrassed by his wife's antics, in awe with army life and culture. Just look at the way he works out with weights, gives the lecture to a class and talks about the army at a dinner party. Yet Penderton is a repressed homosexual maybe why he is prepared to turn a blind eye to Leonora's infidelity.Langdon's only solace is his time with Leonora, his own wife played by Julie Harris has had a traumatic breakdown resulting in self harm and he also has to deal with an effeminate Filipino houseboy who brings great comfort to his wife.Robert Forster is the final piece in the jigsaw. His Private Williams cares for the horses in the army stables and has the habit of riding the horses naked in the fields. He becomes an object of Penderton's lust but Williams is also a creep himself. A voyeur who has a perverted desire for Leonora and sneaks into her bedroom and watches her.Huston uses subtle use of light and visual tricks such as reflection in Private Williams golden eye to infuse the film with some artistic pretensions as well as various symbolisms.Its a steamy, hothouse melodrama from the south, it imbues carnage, a tragic ending. Forster says few words in this film and his character has a dark edge, Brando despite a few heated argumentative scenes is more subtle here. He brings machismo and sympathy to a complicated character.The film just feels too pretentious though, Taylor is kind of replaying A Cat in a Hot Tin Roof and would go on to play a more better known role a year later dealing with the breakdown of a twisted, bitter married couple in Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf.Its Brando thats makes the film watchable and gives it a sort of quirkiness but I felt that this adaptation never gained full steam.

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.