Reflections in a Golden Eye

Plot synopsis:
At an Army fort in Georgia, bordering a forest reserve, are Major Weldon Penderton (MARLON BRANDO) and his wife Leonora (ELIZABETH TAYLOR); their neighbors, Lt. Col. Morris Langdon (BRIAN KEITH), his wife Alison (JULIE HARRIS), and their Filipino houseboy, Anacleto (ZORRO DAVID); and Private Williams (ROBERT FORSTER), assigned to the post stables. One October 1948 morning, Major Penderton summons Private Williams to clean up the lawn of his house at the fort. Leonora is off riding on her stallion, Firebird, accompanied by Colonel Langdon. They romance in the woods. Returning home, Leonora finds Private Williams, who usually cares for her horse, has completed his yard task. She engages him in idle chatter as she writes invitations for an elaborate party she is giving That evening. the Pendertons entertain the Langdons. The atmosphere is strange: Penderton, who has no sexual relationship with his wife, seems to condone the obvious interest of his superior officer. Alison, who suffers through the evening's by-play, has been ill since the death, three years prior, of her malormed baby. Her chief consolation now is the companionship of her effete houseboy, Anacleto, who shares her cultural interests, while disdaining the crudities of her husband. Tonight, they are being observed by Private Williams, hovering in the darkness outside, fascinated by Leonora's attention that afternoon. The next morning, Leonora goes riding, accompanied by both Langdon and her husband. To their amazement, they see Private Williams, stark naked, also riding through the woods. When the Pendertons are asleep that night, in separate bedrooms, Williams returns, squats besides Leonora's bed, staring at her until dawn, then returns to his barracks. When he leaves the house, he is observed by Alison. Alison questions Leonora, next day, when she comes to borrow Anecleto to work at her party that night, but the idea strikes Leonora as being ridiculous. Penderton now decides to prove himself by secretly taking out his wife's horse. Firebird runs away, with Penderfon getting badly scratched by trees in the woods. He beats the horse before dropping with exhaustion. To his horror, Penderfon discovers that he has been observed by Private Williams, sunbathing on a rock. Leonora's party in progress, Penderton returns to the stable, stares, fascinated, at Williams caring for the horse's cuts, before tending to his own wounds. Penderfon returns home with a phony story that causes Leonora to go to the stables to learn the truth. She returns to the party and whips her husband across the face with a riding crop. Alison, meanwhile, is in her sickbed across the way, visited briefly by Captain Weincheck (IRVIN DUGAN), who is being forced into retirement by Penderton, for his lack of "leadership qualities." Unable to sleep, Alison again thinks she sees a figure standing near the Penderton house. Anacleto sits with her, after, and talks about his dreams. In the following days, Penderton's fascination with Williams grows more intense. The Major has difficulfy with his lectures, cutting one short to ride out in search of the sunbathing soldier. After a boxing match, Penderton sfalks the boy, picking up his discarded candy wrapper to add to his secret collection of fetishes, including an antique silver spoon stolen from Captain Weincheck. That night, Alison awakes and from her window sees somebody stealthily enter the Penderton house. She puts on a coat, rushes after the dark figure. Bursting into Penderton's study, she tells him her husband has gone up to Leonora's bedroom. She rushes upstairs, sees Williams instead. Not doubting her, but hoping to avoid a direct confrontation, Penderton eases her back to her own house, where they are greeted by her husband and Anacleto. Alison confronts her husband with the news that his mistress is deceiving him with an enlisted man. With the assistance of Anacleto, she begins packing, planning a separation and divorce. Langdon is convinced that Alison, gone mad, hasn't seen anybody in Leonora's bedroom. The doctors concur and the next day Alison is taken to a sanitarium in Virginia by Langdon and Anacleto. Before Langdon can return to the post, Alison dies of a heart attack and Anacleto vanishes. Langdon and Leonora have difficulty renewing their passion, with Alison dead. They go out to the woods, leaving Penderton to exercise with his barbells. Pressure mounts within Penderton. The strain finally shows on Private Williams, as well. He provokes a fight in the barracks latrine. Unable to control his voyeur instincts any longer, he later gets up from bed, makes his way through a thunderstorm to the Penderton house and Leonora's bedroom. This time, standing by an upstairs window, Penderton sees him. He takes his pistol and shoots the young soldier as he squats by Leonora's sleeping body. The shot startles her awake; Langdon rushes across from his house.

Tags: pornographic, murder, storytelling

Review:
If one comes to it cold, hearing only that it is only a movie about "a closeted homosexual in the military", which is true of the Brando character, and expects some kind of serious dramatic narrative experience - like for example in "The Sergeant" which also came out in 1968 - the approach of "Reflections", which I think is not unlike that of a Beckett play, will be a surprise, and one might say, "this is a weird movie - it's not a good drama." But I believe that would be a mistake.
Marlon Brando took his place and in my opinion gave a very underrated performance as the repressed latent homosexual Major married to Elizabeth Taylor.Brando and Taylor dusted off a couple of southern accents previously used in films, Brando from Sayonara and Taylor from Raintree County.
What we have here is a good drama whose story is based on a book by Carson McCullers, featuring superb performances from Marlon Brando who plays a U.S. Army Major in an isolated military fort somewhere in the south, who gradually discovers his homosexuallity and Liz Taylor, simply great here in the role of his cheating wife.
There have probably never been two more incompatible married couples in the movies than the brooding introverted officer played by Brando and his bawdy, outgoing wife, a fine part for Elizabeth Taylor at her funniest and most natural.
The time is late 1948 and the setting is a U.S. Army post in Georgia, bordering on a forest preserve A Southern amoral wife called Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) finds a way for her stream desire in an adulterous affair with Lt. Col.
Langdon (Brian Keith), carried on almost openlyLeonora gives aperture to her forcefulness and vigor in a passion for horses and riding She is attached to a handsome white horse she calls Firebird and she provokes her husband by telling him that the animal is indeed a stallion with the emotional nature of man...Leonora's husband (Marlon Brando) is a devious, insecure, impotent Army major, a hidden homosexual preoccupied with an unsociable, lonely rider who canters around the field in the nude and whose sexual emotional stress is diminished, secretively, at the bedside of the major's wife holding her clothes and looking fixedly at her marvelous hot bodyPrivate Williams (Robert Forster) is another lonely man fascinated by the fiery Leonora and her thoughtful and gentle comments to him He takes to visiting the Penderton house at night looking attentively in the windows, observing with total recall and complete joy Leonora's nakedness, but also watching the Major in his study Keith's neurotic wife (Julie Harris) is well aware of her husband's affair with Leonora but she only feels well from her close friendship with her houseboy, Anacleto (Zorro David), an affected companion who shares her penchant for the arts and is in every way the opposite of her abrupt, strong husband Flavored with bitter insinuations and insulting sarcasms, Brando and Taylor's few scenes have enough flames to burn the silver screen He's a tormented human being while she's delicious but shrill and insensitive Aware of her physical beauty she fights back when she's rejected, instigating him with her impudent, insolent, shameless manner that offend his very being.
Marlon Brando as the macho Major she calls "prissy" does an amazing job with a role that requires him to be all emotionally buttoned up while just barely keeping a lid on an obsession he has with a serviceman (Robert Forster).The real standout in the cast is Brian Keith.
It's really about Marlon Brando as a sexually-repressed major, married to flirtatious belle Taylor but secretly lusting for stud-soldier Robert Forster (who rides his horse "barebacked and bare-assed").
She is married to a major (Marlon Brando) but has an established affair with a colonel (Brian Keith) since her husband seems not to accomplish with his marital duties, being a repressed homosexual feeling himself attracted against his will to a private soldier (Robert Forster).
Pseudo-smut can come off quite boring, sometimes laughable, if not handled properly.Set on an army base in the Deep South, the story revolves around Captain Penderton (Marlon Brando), a morose high-commanding officer and pent-up homosexual who disguises his humiliation with sadomasochistic acts.
Meanwhile, the Captain's shrewish, adulterous wife, Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor), a spoiled slob of a socialite who, after the death of her son, decides to make life a living hell for her husband, sexual distraction with Major Langdon (Brian Keith), her neighbor, while his crackpot invalid wife, Alison (Julie Harris), a walking suicide just waiting to happen, seems to find her only source of joy in the company of her devoted, extremely prissy houseboy who gets off on spouting poetry passages and flouncing around the room like `Tinkerbell.'   God, love it-- is this America or what?The first and foremost problem with Huston's film is that its interest is derived not from the sordid characters but from the high-profile stars who play them.
A totally bizarre miscalculation on his part to achieve the shocking effect he was going for.You WILL stay with `Reflections in a Golden Eye' but be warned:  it will leave you as empty as the film's characters, and you'll probably hate yourself in the end for caving in to your primitive, prurient curiosity.
Married major, Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando), realises that he is actually a homosexual and his marriage to the beautiful but cruel Leonora (Liz Taylor) is nothing short of a sham.
Meanwhile, Leonora has been having an affair with another C.O, Lt-Col Langdon (Brian Keith), whose wife Alison Langdon (Julie Harris) recently miscarried during pregnancy and, in a bout of depression, mutilated her own breasts with a pair of garden shears (!) This complex situation comes to a head when Weldon starts to fantasise about a gay relationship with a young private, Williams (Robert Forster).
A homosexually repressed major (Marlon Brando) is unhappily married to his fun-loving wife (Elizabeth Taylor).
Since mostly everyone involved in this film is either dead or retired, I think it is safe to say that looking back, Reflections in a Golden Eye can be seen as the turning point in many of the careers of those involved, particularly director John Huston and actor Marlon Brando.
There are also some nice supporting roles from Julie Harris as the sick wife of a loveless husband and a young Robert Forster as a mysterious private with a fetish for horses.Again, this is a very bizarre tale and perhaps a second viewing is required to understand exactly what is trying to be said here.
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.
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.
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.
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..
The film is full of sexual titillation and deeply erotic suggestion to tickle everyone, and presents us with striking and memorable visual imagery here and there.Marlon Brando's performance is not as masterful as some of his other roles, and I found his dialect, in this film, almost impenetrable in spots, but in the more violent emotional scenes, he delivers all the intensity you expect from him.The story itself concerns a web of related people, all trapped in relations where none of them get what they really want--husbands who look for sex outside of their marriages, youths and men who seek sexual satisfaction in fetishistic attachments to the belongings of a desired woman or man, and everybody wanting something from some person who cannot provide it--and somehow not finding companionship and fulfillment.
There is some attempt at an irony, setting these messy relationships in the context of an army-base, where (presumably) all people have clear roles to play within an efficient super-organism, in turn echoed in an early scene in which Major Penderton orders Private Williams to trim the woods near his home--and is then dismayed that his wishes are not carried out as he wishes--however, one doesn't get the feeling that the drama is well-crafted and organic.
Marlon Brando is just amazing in this intelligent film.Most people don't understand Brando's career choices during the sixties.But I think that as years go by,they will.His ideas were way ahead of his time.His talent and range were unbelievable.Every actor tries to imitate his intensity (deniro,penn,nolte,.....) with no success.Definitely the king of acting..
Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor have a right old time, he as an army major at a fort in the Deep South where, the prologue tells us, a murder has taken place and she as his Southern Belle wife whose affair with another officer, (Brian Keith, brilliant), has lead his wife, (a stunning Julie Harris), to cut off her nipples with garden shears.
'You call that normal', says Taylor, 'with garden shears?' Brando is latently gay and lusts after Private Robert Forster who likes to go riding naked through the woods, while Forster likes to climb into Taylor's bedroom and watch her sleep.Huston also knows how close to being preposterous it all was and tried to give it a softer, more poetic edge by filming it in 'desaturated' colours but the studio felt that would put audiences off and released it in a full-colour print.
A mysterious young soldier named Pvt. Williams (Robert Forster), who rides naked on horseback, and who stealthily creeps into Leonora's bedroom at night to contemplate who knows what, is the object of Major Penderton's implied fantasies.What makes this film so maddening is the unspoken passion, the tacitly erotic obsessions that drive the entire narrative.
Marlon Brando, as Major Penderton, nasally mumbles his lines, as if he had marbles in his mouth.Best remembered perhaps as one of the 1960's films that brought about the MPAA ratings system, "Reflections In A Golden Eye" is stodgy and dull by today's standards.
Elizabeth Taylor delivered the performance of her life the previous year with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and this feels like a reversion to a more classical, palatable Liz (palatable in looks and style; the character is a bitch, but it's nothing new).
Elizabeth Taylor, (Leonora Penderton) is married to Marlon Brando,(Major Weldon Penderton) who has trouble trying to please his wife in their bedroom so Leonora gets into bed with Brian Keith,(Lt. Col Morris Langdon) who's wife, Julie Harris,(Alison Langdon) is gone a bit mental after losing their first child.
Then there's the strange, voyeuristic, repressed Private Williams (Robert Forster)...Directed by John Huston, starring Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.
Interesting enough, but not overly engaging or satisfying.Solid performances by Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Brian Keith, Julie Harris and Robert Forster.
"Reflections in a Golden Eye" begins with a quote from the original novel's author Carson McCullers, "There is a fort in the south where a few years ago a murder was committed." Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando and Murder!
He reflects the title with a peacock's eye, and Forster brings it home by being both an exhibitionist and a Peeping Tom. Whew...All of the above sounds better than it appears.**** Reflections in a Golden Eye (10/11/67) John Huston ~ Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Forster, Julie Harris.
Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando play a married couple and so do Brian Keith and Julie Harris.
***SPOLIERS*** Ground-breaking performances by not only the films top stars Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando as the beautiful southern belle Leonora Penderton and her tortured and sexually suppressed husband Maj. Weldon Penderton but its supporting cast of Brian Keith and Julie Harris as the adulterous Lt. Col Morris Langdon and his neurotic wife Alison who's slowly losing her mind as well as her life.The film starts out with Maj. Penderton working out with bar bells and later giving a lecture to his students at the military school about the great men, Caesar Hannibal Napoleon Rommel and McArthur, in military history.
To this viewer, "Reflections In A Golden Eye"  is nothing more than a wanna-be pretentious character study (based on what I thought a rather boring novel by literary great Carson McCullers)with eponymously cast actors (Elizabeth Taylor as Leonora, Marlon Brando as Weldon, and so forth...) and a fairly well-known director.
Elizabeth Taylor is the shrill, buxom wife of Major Weldon Penderton (Brando), and Brian Keith plays the Colonel, with whom she is carrying on a torrid affair.
Marlon Brando One Of Hollywood's Veteran Actor Star Of "The Godfather", "On The Waterfront", "The Wild One" And "A Streetcar Named Desired" Now Plays a Role Like No Other in An Deeply And Powerful Performance As Army Officer Who's Battling With His Own Demons And Hollywood Actress The Beautiful Elizabeth Taylor in a Strong And Excellent Performance Who Stars And Plays The Wife Of Marlon Brando's Character Who's Also Having An Love Affair With Another Character Played By Brian Keith And introducing a Young Robert Forster in a Strange And Odd Of a Character That He Plays.
Homosexuality is not what dooms Penderton, but in fact it is his inability to accept who he is that dooms him right from the start.Reflections in a Golden Eye, 1967, Starring: Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and Julie Harris.
Morris Langdon (Brian Keith) and Leonora Penderton (Elizabeth Taylor) and one non-conformist spouse, e.g, Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando) and Alison Langdon (Julie Harris).
Huston and the cast made a good job out of difficult material, but the mediocre box-office should not have surprised anyone; audiences brought up on films filtered by the production code simply weren't ready for the themes portrayed.Liz Taylor does a master turn as a a southern virago penned up in a patently unsatisfactory marriage with Marlon Brando's insipid Major Wendel.
You co-star with Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor and you're directed by John Huston!
Reflections in a Golden Eye. Major Weldon Penderton(Marlon Brando)is grappling with buried homosexuality that awakens lustfully when he becomes enamored with an enlisted soldier(Robert Forster) working as a stable-hand for his horses.
they balance each other out perfectly and fit like pieces in a puzzle.The movie is filmed with a golden tone, in muted colors that reflect Brando's repressed sexuality, giving it a dreamy, hallucinatory look...
Brando is an Army Major married to Liz Taylor who is having an affair with Brian Keith whose wife cut off her nipples with garden shears after her baby died.
Take a look at how life truly is.Liz Taylor (Leonora Penderton), Brian Keith (Col. Langdon) and Robert Forster (Pvt. Williams) were genuinely convincing in their roles....all highlighted by the mastery of Brando.
There's big trouble at a southern Army base: The colonel (Marlon Brando) is a closeted wacko married to a beautiful but cruel woman (Elizabeth Taylor); she's having an affair with his best friend (Brian Keith) while a mysterious, horse-loving, enlisted man is a freaky prowler.This story of endless domestic turmoil is in the style of Tennessee Williams' work, but the script is confusing, shallow, and pointless with no likable characters to root for.
That filmization would have to wait for the newly liberating mores of 1967, when famed director John Huston brought Carson's controversial novel to theatres, and with most winning results.In the film, we make the acquaintance of six fairly befuddled characters who are living on an army base in the Deep South, in what we must infer is the early 1940s: Major Wendel Penderton (extremely well portrayed by the great Marlon Brando), who becomes obsessed with a young private on the base; his wife Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor), who is having an affair with Colonel Morris Langdon (Brian Keith, who had just started his five-year run on TV's "Family Affair," and who underplays his role nicely here); Alison Langdon, the colonel's wife (Julie Harris), who had recently cut off her nipples with a garden shears (ouch!) after losing her infant; Anacleto, her effeminate Filipino houseboy and nursemaid (Zorro Davis; whotta great name!); and the soldier who is the object of the major's sublimated lust, and who had recently taken to sneaking into Leonora's bedroom to watch her sleep, Private Elgee Williams (Robert Forster, here in his first role, and strongly resembling the young Charles Bronson, back when he was called Charles Buchinsky).Huston's film is a fairly slow-moving affair, but a fascinating one, and trying to puzzle out the various characters' motivations is a stimulating challenge.