REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE

Despite the recorded instances of his own bisexuality and a tendency to act 'fey' on occasion, Marlon Brando might have seemed an unlikely candidate to play the bisexual major going nuts over Robert Forester's young soldier in John Huston's film of Carson McCullers' novel "Reflections in a Golden Eye", any more than Huston, usually associated with more 'macho' enterprises, might have seemed the obvious director for this sort of material but then if we consider Huston's penchant for adapting literary 'classics' it may not seem so odd after all. As it is,"Reflections in a Golden Eye" is one of Huston's finest films; highly literate, extremely bizarre and visually remarkable, though Huston's original version, filmed in scenes of desaturated colour, is all but lost to us and we must make do with this more conventional looking Panavision version.

It's set in a fort in the deep South. Brando is the major married to Elizabeth Taylor's Southern Belle but lusting after Robert Forester. Forester likes to ride naked in the woods and lusts after Taylor, (he sneaks into her room at night to watch her sleep), while Taylor is screwing Brian Keith who is married to Julie Harris who cut off her nipples with a pair of garden shears. "You call that normal," asks Taylor, "...with garden shears!" Of course, no-one is 'normal' in any conventional sense with the possible exception of Keith, (and he thinks homosexuality can be cured by turning an effeminate houseboy into a soldier!), but then we are in McCullers' territory and McCullers deep South was an even steamier hothouse than that of either Tennessee Williams or William Inge.


The cast, of course, are superb, particularly Brando who at one stage has to endure a whipping from Taylor and who applies face-cream as he awaits the arrival of a gentleman caller. Unfortunately the gentleman caller is actually calling on Taylor which pisses Brando off no end. Indeed so completely over-the-top are proceedings that the film plays like a horror movie. There is an unsettling, clammy quality to it that you don't find in other Huston films. But in 1967 this wasn't what audiences wanted and critics were equally dismissive of the film; it flopped, though a new generation have discovered its myriad delights and while not often revived it remains an absolutely essential part of the Huston canon.