Reflections In A Golden Eye

For a film about latent homosexuality, adultery, and various forms of human perversion, Reflections in a Golden Eye moves pretty slowly. John Huston's latest offering glides languidly through a series of loosely-tied scenes, punctuated by flashes of nudity (male and female) and spasms of sudden violence. The movie's general torpor is heightened by someone's decision, presumably Huston's to shoot through a filter that allowed only forms of red to record properly. All other colors show up black and white but red all over. It is difficult to go through the film without idly wondering if you'll recognize the color blue if you ever see it again.

The episodic nature of Reflections in a Golden Eye apparently results from its attempt to include the substance of the Carson McCullers novel on which it is based. The movie skips from point to point, initially dwelling on the female lead's (Elizabeth Taylor) affair with her husband's immediate superior at a Georgia army base. It swoops in on an enlisted man's strange infatuation with Miss Taylor, swipes briefly at the mental illness of the superior officer's wife, and finally lands on the theme it ends with, the even stranger, growing infatuation of Miss Taylor's husband (Marlon Brando) with the enlisted man. Reflections even injects a slight dose of anti-Semitism, in much the way that Mort Sahl used to ask if there were any groups he had not offended. A sort of something-for-everyone approach to film-making in the new era.

It is said that Miss Taylor intentionally gained weight to play Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? If so, she must have gone into this film too fast to trim it off. Huston wisely spends most of the time presenting Miss Taylor in unbuttoned blouses, but a full-length nude shot of her (or her stand-in) climbing a stair simply fails to justify the spying enlisted man's sudden fixation for her. Her performance is, on the other hand, quite thin, with Miss Taylor's most affecting scenes those with her horse.

Brando as usual plays with vocal characterization, coming up with his version of the clipped speech pattern of a southern army major. Brando's performance comes off well, his face mirroring the tensions of a man first discovering then stoking an attraction for another man. The enlisted man (Robert Forster) doesn't say much more than two words during the entire film. He spends most of the time riding around naked on an old mare, and the rest sniffing Miss Taylor's clothes in her room at night while she lies sleeping nearby.

Brian Keith's performance as the colonel Miss Taylor plays around with, is Reflections' strongest, perhaps because he plays the only obstensibly normal person in the film. Keith's bafflement after the death of his wife, his expressions of confused regret at the loss of a woman whom he betrayed every day and who was repelled by him, is honest and touching. Keith's character is a satisfying medium between the shrill simpleness of Miss Taylor and the obvious complexity of Brando, and he attracts most of the audience sympathy.

Reflections in a Golden Eye ends suddenly and violently. Its final image, an extended shot, is the one the audience carries away with it. But as a whole, the movie is unsatisfying. It is challenging and aggressive in theme, but fitfully welded together and occasionally downright dull.