Reflections in a Golden Eye

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 1967, 108 min
Section: Tribute to John Huston (1906-1987)

Synopsis

In addition to films that saw immediate success upon release, there are a good many pictures in Huston´s voluminous filmography that were only appreciated years later. Reflections in a Golden Eye, one of the emblematic examples of an outsider film unjustly marginalised, tells the story of several individuals stricken with sexual (among other) frustrations in the confined environment of a military base in the American South. In a riveting performance by Marlon Brando, Major Penderton hides his suppressed homosexuality in a rigid façade of confusedly articulated masculinity, while his dominant wife (Elizabeth Taylor) takes her contempt for him into the arms of another man. Huston´s adaptation of the novel by Carson McCullers takes an intensive look at the atmosphere of deformed emotions in the claustrophobic reality of the military environment. The bewitching gloom is aided by the special sepia hue of the picture attained by reducing the colour to a minimum.