Reflections in a Golden Eye

1967
Approved
1h 48m

IMDb RATING

6.7/10

8.3K

YOUR RATING

Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)

Trailer for this epic starring Marlon Brando

Play trailer2:42

1 Video

50 Photos

Drama Romance Thriller

Bizarre tale of sex, betrayal, and perversion at a military post.Bizarre tale of sex, betrayal, and perversion at a military post.Bizarre tale of sex, betrayal, and perversion at a military post.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.7/10

8.3K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 1 nomination

Videos1

Trailer 2:42

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Top cast22

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Elizabeth Taylor

Leonora Penderton

Marlon Brando

Maj. Weldon Penderton

Brian Keith

Lt. Col. Morris Langdon

Julie Harris

Alison Langdon

Zorro David

Anacleto

Gordon Mitchell

Stables Sergeant

Irvin Dugan

Capt. Murray Weincheck

Fay Sparks

Susie

Robert Forster

Pvt. L.G. Williams

Ed Metzger

Pvt. Frank Brian

Ted Beniades

Sergeant
(uncredited)

Mary Boylan

Woman in Mental Institution
(uncredited)

John Callaghan

Private
(uncredited)

Jed Curtis

Accordionist
(uncredited)

Frank Flanagan

General Sugar
(uncredited)

Trent Gough

Soldier
(uncredited)

Harvey Keitel

Soldier
(uncredited)

Alice Marchak

Woman
(uncredited)

Director
- John Huston
Writers
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
Originally released in a version in which all scenes were suffused with the color gold and one object in each scene (such as a rose) appeared normally colored. This was done in reference to the houseboy's statement regarding the golden peacock in a drawing that he shows to Alison: he states that the world is just a reflection in the eye of the golden peacock. However, that version puzzled audiences so it was withdrawn and a normal color version released. The DVD issued in 2020 by Warner Archive includes both versions.

Goofs
Although movie is set in 1940s, all of Elizabeth Taylor's hairstyles, makeup and wardrobe are of the mid-1960s.

Quotes
Maj. Weldon Penderton: I'm sorry, Leonora. It's just all this clutter is...
Leonora: What's the matter with clutter? I like it.
Maj. Weldon Penderton: I'd rather live without it. Bare floors. Plain white walls. No window curtains. Nothing but essentials.
Leonora: If that's the way you feel about it, why don't you resign your commission and start all over again as an enlisted man?
Maj. Weldon Penderton: Of course you're laughing at it, but there's much to be said for the life of men among men... with no... luxuries, no ornamentation. Utter simplicity. It's rough and it's coarse, perhaps, but it's also clean - it's clean as a rifle. There's no speck of dust inside or out... and it's immaculate in its hard young fitness... its chivalry. They're seldom out of one another's sight. They eat, and they train, and they shower, and they play jokes... and go to the brothel together. They sleep side by side. The barracks room offers many a lesson in courtesy and how not to give offense. They guard the next man's privacy as though it was their own. And the friendships, my lord. There are friendships formed that are stronger than... stronger than the fear of death. And - they're never lonely. They're never lonely. And sometimes I envy them... well, good night.

Alternate versions
In the version of the film released in Brazil's cinemas in the late 1960s, it was Anacleto who announced that Mrs. Alison had cut off her nipples with the garden shears. But in the later VHS version, it is Leonora who makes the remark to Lt. Col. Langdon while they are playing cards.

Connections
Featured in Apocalypse Now (1979)

Soundtracks
Elegie Op. 3, No.1
(uncredited)
Music by Sergei Rachmaninoff

Admirable in many ways, beautifully staged and photographed and splendidly acted

The time is late 1948 and the setting is a U.S. Army post in Georgia, bordering on a forest preserve

A Southern amoral wife called Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) finds a way for her stream desire in an adulterous affair with Lt. Col. Langdon (Brian Keith), carried on almost openly

Leonora gives aperture to her forcefulness and vigor in a passion for horses and riding She is attached to a handsome white horse she calls Firebird and she provokes her husband by telling him that the animal is indeed a stallion with the emotional nature of man...

Leonora's husband (Marlon Brando) is a devious, insecure, impotent Army major, a hidden homosexual preoccupied with an unsociable, lonely rider who canters around the field in the nude and whose sexual emotional stress is diminished, secretively, at the bedside of the major's wife holding her clothes and looking fixedly at her marvelous hot body

Private Williams (Robert Forster) is another lonely man fascinated by the fiery Leonora and her thoughtful and gentle comments to him He takes to visiting the Penderton house at night looking attentively in the windows, observing with total recall and complete joy Leonora's nakedness, but also watching the Major in his study

Keith's neurotic wife (Julie Harris) is well aware of her husband's affair with Leonora but she only feels well from her close friendship with her houseboy, Anacleto (Zorro David), an affected companion who shares her penchant for the arts and is in every way the opposite of her abrupt, strong husband

Flavored with bitter insinuations and insulting sarcasms, Brando and Taylor's few scenes have enough flames to burn the silver screen He's a tormented human being while she's delicious but shrill and insensitive Aware of her physical beauty she fights back when she's rejected, instigating him with her impudent, insolent, shameless manner that offend his very being