Sunday, October 14, 2012

Reflections in a Golden Eye

A rigid, sexually repressed officer (Marlon Brando) stationed pines after a peculiar enlistee (Robert Forster), while his boozy wife (Elizabeth Taylor) takes up with a fellow functionary (Brian Keith) whose wife (Julie Harris) has just undergone a bizarre bout of psychosis. John Huston's "Reflections in a Golden Eye" is a strange, disturbing, and compulsively engaging adaptation of Carson McCullers' 1944 novel, which is filmed in an unusual color tint with great gusto by the legendary master. Brando delivers a keen and unexpected performance as the homosexual army man, which must have been a shock for 1967 audiences, and Taylor is his match playing his bratty, domineering wife. I also am really fond of Keith's work here, trying to keep a level head and caught in between devotion to his wife, his superior officer, and his lover.