irishcoffee630 Review of Reflections in a Golden Eye

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)

A Chilling Descent into Dark Sexuality and Madness

[10/10 · 8 April 2005]

This highly disturbing look at sexuality was way,way,way ahead of it's time in 1952 when Carson McCullers wrote the novel, let alone in 1967 when John Huston was bold enough to bring this to the screen. It concerns a group of people on a Southern army base in the 50's on the verge of sexual discovery and insanity. Marlon Brando plays a repressed homosexual married to the slatternly over sexed dimwit daughter(Elizabeth Taylor)of the army post General. She teases him with taunts over his "lack of interest in her" while she is having an affair with another officer Brian Keith. Brian is married to Julie Harris who has cut of her nipples with garden shears after a miscarriage (symbolically ending her female identification and interest in sex)and now lives in her bedroom, entertained by her effeminate Filipino houseboy as they watercolor, dream of escaping reality and listening to classical music. Meanwhile Brando becomes crazily obsessed with a handsome enlisted (and psychotic) man (Robert Foster) who rides naked on a horse in the woods and eventually begins to tease Brando with sexual nuances. But Foster also is sneaking into Taylor's room at night and doing something (I can not say it here, but it is solo and involves her panties) by her bed while she is in her usual drunken/pills induced stupors. Eventually all this Fruedian psychosis ends in the final explosive scene, a murder. I liked this film because it delves into dark subjects we rarely see on film, the actors are amazing (especially Brando), the photography is top notch and the extremely well written script drips in Southern Gothic guilt, symbolism and remorse (but no redemption). Two scenes that sent chills up my spine was Brando standing in the pouring rain caressing the secretly picked up candy wrapper Foster dropped, as he stares aggressively at Foster entering the barracks to take a shower and the final scene as the camera madly jumps around the room accompanied by one character's horrified screams and another literally gone insane. One of the most fascinating psychological films I have ever seen. NOTE: This film along with another Taylor vehicle "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" I've been told by a film scholar,were the catalysts for the rating system that emerged in 1968.