RELEASED BY WARNER BROS. ON OCTOBER 13,1967, TWO WEEKS AFTER THE DEATH OF ITS AUTHOR, CARSON MCCULLERS, THIS FILM IS OFTEN CITED AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE WEAKING OF THE HAYS CODE. A FEW WEEKS LATER THE HAYS CODE WOULD CAESE TO EXIST. IT IS FITTING, THERFORE, THAT REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE IS THE FINAL CHAPTER IN MY ESSAY ENTITLED SEVENTY QUEER FILMS MADE UNDER THE HAYS CODE (1934-1967) – SEE THE MULTIPLE LINKS BELOW.
BOTTOM LINE: In an army garrison, somewhere in the South, we make the acquittance of Major Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando) a repressed, closeted officer who struggles with his masculinity and desires. His marriage to Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) is passionless and strained. Lenora openly flaunts her affair with his best friend Col. Langdon (Brian Keith) humiliating her husband. Langdon’s wife Alison (Julie Harris) emotionally fragile, mutilates herself by chopping off her nipples with the garden shears, in despair, and finds solace only in her flamboyant Filipino houseboy, Anacleto. Meanwhile, a young soldier, Private Williams (Robert Foster), becomes a voyeur, secretly watching Lenora asleep in her bedroom at night and stirring Penderton’s suppressed desires. If you think that you have just entered Carson McCullers’ country, you are correct.
John Huston’s favorite of all his movies, “Reflections in a Golden Eye” is not for everyone, but if it’s to your taste, it’s spellbinding. Marlon Brando does something unique with his closeted gay character; it’s one of his truly great performances right up there with his Stanley Kowalski. Elizabeth Taylor gives one of her best, most relaxed performances in years. She was just beginning to pile on the weight at this time in her life and she uses her body fearlessly, like a weapon. Harris, who made very few movies for an actress of her caliber became a star interpreting McCullers in ‘”The Member of the Wedding” and she is transcendent here. Her scenes with Anacleto (gay actor Zorro David, mesmerizing, transcending his gay archetype) are at once girly flirtatious and unspeakably sad. And then there is Brian Keith. Always an underrated actor, he gave a quiet strength to every role he played. Here he underplays beautifully. His Col. Langdon is not a bad man yet he is clueless to the suffering of all those surrounding him and oblivious to the multiple storylines that are rapidly converging toward a tragedy.
Finally, there is Robert Forster (“Jackie Brown”), making his film debut as Private Williams. In contrast to the aging physiques of the other actors he is mighty pleasing on the eye spending most of the movie buck naked while riding Lenora/Taylor’s prized horse! It’s a tribute to the complexity of the narrative that until the fateful closing scene, she never even knew he existed.
Reflections in a Golden Eye was originally released with a gold-tinted filter applied to all scenes. The desaturated, golden hue was a specific artistic choice by director John Huston and cinematographer Aldo Tonti.
The intended effect was to reference a drawing made by the houseboy Anacleto, in which a golden peacock’s eye reflects the entire world, and to create a specific, dreamlike, and “heated, otherworldly quality” that matched the tone of the story. Only certain shades of red and green were allowed to show through the filter.
