Saturday

On Tuesday, Sunshine joined me in Maryland for John Huston's exploration of rupturing domesticity, Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967),* adapted from the Carson McCullers novel. Apparently, this movie comes in two color schemes: one in artfully muted warm tones with controlled blazes of color, and one in traditional Technicolor. I'm unsure which one we saw, our print being so scratchy and moldered the colors seemed unrepresentative. This didn't limit the raw psychological tension of the movie, however. Leonora Penderton (Elizabeth Taylor) is frustrated with her husband, the Major Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando). While Leonora frequently dallies with the neighbor during escapist horseback excursions, the Major seems more interested in sturdy NCOs stationed down at the base. Leonora takes the Major's disinterest as an attack on her personal charms, lashing out at his impotent repression at every opportunity. For his own part, the Major seems to be oblivious to, or relieved by, Leonora's indiscretions, but her incessant taunting is pushing him closer to the nervous edge of his own sexual identity. Plus, he's begun spying a naked Private (Robert Forrester) riding out in the woods, where his attraction seems to put paid to many of his wife's assertions. But the Private, a stable boy for Leonora, has developed his own infatuation with the Major's wife, breaking into their house nightly to fondle her things. A voyeuristic standoff begins around Leonora, who busies herself with neighborly infidelities and her social and equestrian hobbies, pausing occasionally to dote on her boyfriend's troubled wife or mock her husband. Brando is fascinating as the explosively ticking Major, pinched and withdrawn. Taylor is, if anything, even better. I would like to make special mention of the solid Brian Keith, often overlooked in his flashless and pitch perfect turn as Leonora's boy next door. [Cavin]