Review: Reflections in a Golden Eye


Story of a preening, self-absorbed, and repressed homosexual army officer in the South (Marlon Brando), his revolting, nympho wife (Elizabeth Taylor), her hard-drinking lover (Brian Keith, keeping a low-profile out of embarrassment no doubt), and her lover’s mentally unbalanced wife (Julie Harris, admittedly well-cast). Robert Forster plays the handsome, but very strange young officer Brando becomes obsessed with, who rides horses in his birthday suit, and is a bit of a Peeping Tom to boot. Zorro David plays Harris’ uber-flamboyant Filipino man servant, in a performance that has to be seen to be believed.

Truly foolish, sometimes laughable, but largely boring 1967 John Huston (the frustrating director of my favourite film “The Misfits”, the excellent “Asphalt Jungle” and “Maltese Falcon”, the popular “African Queen”, and the absolute stinker “Escape to Victory”) film has maddeningly unclear character motivation and bizarre and unrestrained performances. Chief among the offenders (and the film sure is offensive!) are outrageously hammy Brando (who should be ashamed, overdoing a part originally intended for the much more suited Clift, who sadly died before filming began) and the truly inexplicable David (whose oddball character is irritatingly ill-defined). A young Forster isn’t bad in an underwritten part (it was his first role and he does what he can with it), but the whole thing goes nowhere...really slowly.

Probably worth seeing once for the morbidly curious (Roger Ebert loves it. He must’ve been trippin’ a lot of acid back then!), but this film is twice as dull as it is crazy, and none of the characters (save maybe Keith’s, but he’s seldom sober) are at all likeable. The screenplay is by Chapman Mortimer and Gladys Hill (Huston’s “The Man Who Would Be King”), from a 1941 novel by Carson McCullers.

Rating: D+

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