MovieChat Forums > Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) Discussion > Anyone not like this film

Anyone not like this film

posted 17 years ago by Tashtago
28 replies | jump to latest

Being a big fan of both Brando and Huston I have given this film at least three or four viewings hoping I would like it more. I have to admit I cannot find much merit in it. The performances are good especially Brando, but for me there is just one freak too many in this movie. We have - the peeping Tom, the psychotic wife, her weirdo valet or whatever he is, Zorro David, so repulsive he is almost unwatchable, Brando the screwed up Seargent, and then Liz Taylor at here supremely bitchiest. Then there is the annoying color tint which makes the film look like it was shot in urine. I know Huston liked this movie perhaps for the risks he took but I think it is gothic overkill and if not for the honor that Brando brings to his role would probably be a camp classic if it isnt already.

[–] lightning_strike13 17 years ago

Agreed. Both I and my grandmother watched this film and normally things like this movie would be fodder for a long excellent discussion. That was one of the reasons we watched it. However at the end of the movie we both just turned to each other confused.

What was the point? I'm assume, I hope the book was better but it just seemed like a bundle of strange events strung together for no reason other than they shared a similar place and timeframe.

Have you ever seen a WTF? look shared by two women, one 21 yearsold and the other 64 over something as supposely simple as a movie? Trust me it's not funny from the inside.

To top the movie off the camara angles were horrible to say nothing of the horried gold tinge.

I know they removed the gold tinge because people had a hard time understanding the point but the gold tinge was the only thing I did understand.

The only one to show any growth at all in this film was the suicide's husband and the only two decent characters were the suicide and her houseboy (forgive I'm terrible with names though I believe I recall her's as Ann I didn't want to chance being wrong and even more confusing than the movie was.

The movie was horrible.

Love and Peace. Love and Peace! LOVE AND PEACE! -Vash the Stampede

[–] pyotr-3 17 years ago

"One freak too many in the film"??

Wow. I know lots of Army bases, and I have seen all of these characters on every Army base in America.

They are ALL there.

I don't know how anyone can fail to see that the point of this movie is that when we force conformity on people, we have insanity and violence. Brando's character was forced to be someone he was not... to go his entire life without love or sexual fulfillment. He thought the soldier might actually be coming to visit him, and he was so desperate for contact with him... that when he saw that the soldier came into his house to see his wife, he became enraged and shot him.

I have an 82-year old French friend who recommended that I see this film. She thought it was a masterpiece. When I told her that most Americans probably don't grasp that Brando thought the soldier was actually coming to see HIM, not his wife, she replied "IMPOSSIBLE! NOBODY could be that stupid!" I said, "Yes, actually I am quite sure that most American even TODAY still don't grasp that Brando was gay and was desperate to make contact with the soldier." She simply refused to believe that Americans could possibly be this naive and... well, DUMB. But Americans are so homophobic that they still don't see what is right before their eyes when it comes to anything relating to gay people.

[–] lightning_strike13 17 years ago

Actually I did grasp that Brando's character was hoping the boy was coming to see him. It was obvious in the way he started acting like a school girl (i.e. fixing his hair and acting all nervous before watching at the door) and the way his face fell when the soldier turned towards his wife's room.

I thought the soldier was coming to see Brando's charcter the first time he snuck in. And who knows maybe the solder was a closet drag queen and was just going into the wife's room to see her things and try to figure out what Brando's character liked. After all the soldier was leading him on I thought.

Love and Peace. Love and Peace! LOVE AND PEACE! -Vash the Stampede

[–] kirby-37 17 years ago

And after these interpetations, you think the characters were all freaks? Maybe they were but they were all pretty common freaks. The most unbelievable thing about the movie was the soldier. Didn't he realize what he was doing might get him killed? However, the fetish with the Liz's character''s things, though strange in itself, was not so rare. It was the idea that he could sit in the the wife's room night after night till morning and, not get caught, indeed, not killed. The other people, the crazed Alison, the fornicaors, the frustrated homosexual colonel, the effete and devoted man-servant, not at all hard to fathom. Yet to me the powerful performances lend humanity to their weirdness. Brando in particular is a pathetic figure but evokes genuine pathos despite his coldness, Liz, not so, because she so delights in her cruelty.

[–] lightning_strike13 17 years ago

I did not think of them as freaks. I recogize they're actions while now normal (by the general consesus of the word) fairly common and mostly harmless in their fetishes. What irked me in the movie was that they all colliaded at once. Which the law of averages tells us must happen at some point but beyond watching this collision happen there seemed to be no point to it all.

And likewise but my grandmother and me kept being confused at the soldier's continued feat of being undected by the colonel as at one point he even snuck in while the colonel was still awake.

Love and Peace. Love and Peace! LOVE AND PEACE! -Vash the Stampede

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] onepotato2 16 years ago

Oy vey. What a trainwreck. It's about twelve mint juleps past Tennessee Williams at his most delirious. Namely, his most over-the-top plot point was cannibalism. But this has insufferable Julie Harris cutting her nipples off with garden shears, and a fawning, epicene filipino servant. So in terms of pure camp value it's a toss-up.

it reminds me of a comment Ebert made about Chris Walken. I'll paraphrase... This movie is so over the top it leaves no material left with which to satirize it.

I would personally feed Julie Harris through a woodchipper given the chance, for her offenses to both acting, and all of my sense organs, She overacts her way through an army of high-maintenance drag/flake roles. She is the worst part of these movies, ruining most of them, or at least contributing to the negative column:
The Member of the Wedding, The Haunting, Harper, East of Eden, RIAGE

[–] Aqua-2 16 years ago

I hated the film so much that I walked out of the cinema long before the end.

[–] bosnian_flatdog 16 years ago

You people obviuosly don´t get it. This film was probably ahead of its time, take a look at "American Beauty" and you'll get what all the wierdo-fuss is all about. It's about people, feelings and sexuality under the picture perfect surface. Now maybe you'll see it in a different color.

And I'm sure some of you are homophobic too since you refer to homosexuals as "freaks", so your opinions donät really count here (this being partially a movie about homosexuality).

[–] onepotato2 16 years ago

You people obviuosly don´t get it. It's about people, feelings and sexuality under the picture perfect surface. Now maybe you'll see it in a different color.

And I'm sure some of you are homophobic too since you refer to homosexuals as "freaks", so your opinions donät really count here (this being partially a movie about homosexuality).

by - bosnian_flatdog on Wed Mar 5 2008 11:52:59
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Well, it's a theory. But I'm a big homo. AND I HAAAAAAATE THIS MOVIE.

Can you name me a movie that isn't about "people?"

[–] edward-miller-1 16 years ago

I'm a big homo. And I LOVE this movie!

"Don't worry. I'm not on the side of the saints yet."

[–] onepotato2 16 years ago

Battle of the big homos! Oh yeah.

[–] edward-miller-1 16 years ago

LOLOLOLOL! Does your name have anything to do with the restaurant on Hudson Street in Manhattan? If so, we MUST talk!

"Don't worry. I'm not on the side of the saints yet."

[–] onepotato2 16 years ago

No, it came from my own goofy sense of humor. I'm not in the East.

[–] edward-miller-1 16 years ago

Okay! There was a legendary restaurant-bar in Greenwich Village in the 70s called "One Potato". Then they opened another one at a different location and called it.......you guessed it! "Two Potato".

"Don't worry. I'm not on the side of the saints yet."

[–] bruce73 13 years ago

There was a legendary restaurant-bar in Greenwich Village in the 70s called "One Potato".

OMG. Memories. I remember eating at the One Potato in '74. Christ, I feel old ...

[–] timmy-bear 16 years ago

I'm an ENORMOUS homo, and I was equivocal about the movie. :) (I will say that I always thought Brando was cuter than the soldier - and, yes, I think Old Sean Connery is sexier than young Sean Connery...).

[–] edward-miller-1 16 years ago

What is this, "Can you top this?"....LMAO!

"Don't worry. I'm not on the side of the saints yet."

[–] timmy-bear 16 years ago

Heh heh...heh heh...he said 'top this'. ;)

[–] edward-miller-1 16 years ago

You've got to watch EVERY word around here, LOL!

"Don't worry. I'm not on the side of the saints yet."

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] timmy-bear 16 years ago

Oh, let's not get started (I'm more king-sized than economy-sized - or Baloo sized, to be more bearish...). Let's just say my taste in music has often led people who know NOTHING about music history to accuse it of being homophobic (such people really ought to look more closely into the lives of Lou Reed, Dusty Springfield, Lesley Gore, etc.).

I prefered Heath to Jake in BROKEBACK. My ideal movie icons are people like Paul Giamatti, Nick Frost, Jack Black, Kevin Smith, etc.

[–] joanieh1937 16 years ago

I thought the movie was excellent and Liz was her usual southern belle self that you wanted to choke..Marlon as always great.

[–] boxerrebellion 8 years ago

I preferred Heath in his Roar days, and Jake in Prince of Persia, or Love and Other Drugs (definitely don't like him bearded).... but I'm a hetero 50 something woman, so what do I know?

[–] onepotato2 15 years ago

Brando looks scorching hot with platinum hair in The Young Lions (a very average movie). I can't decide if RiaGE is a camp schlockfest, or a shlock campfest. I think it's awful, but it would probably be fun to watch with a room full of witty people mocking it.

[–] boxerrebellion 8 years ago

Ok, young Connery was sexy, but in Last Crusade, he was cute as a button... just a big Teddy Bear.

[–] Zuider_Zee 9 years ago

It was dreadful and difficult to finish. Great cast, bizarre story, abysmal plot.

[–] robertoahhh 9 years ago

I 100% agree. Nothing seemed to happen either. The ending was one of the worst endings I have seen also.