Reflection in the golden eye

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Movie
German title Reflection in the golden eye
Original title Reflections in a Golden Eye
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1967
length 108 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director John Huston
script Gladys Hill based
on the novel of the same name by Carson McCullers
production Warner Brothers / Seven Arts
Producer: Ray Stark
music Mayuzumi Toshirō
camera Aldo Tonti
Oswald Morris (anonymous)
cut Russell Lloyd
occupation

Reflection in the Golden Eye is an American drama directed by John Huston from 1967. The plot is based on the novel of the same name by Carson McCullers .

action

The action is set in an American Army camp in the American South; time is the present. Major Weldon Penderton appears to be happily married to his wife, the beautiful and capricious Leonora. Behind a stabilizing framework of strict military discipline and grotesque male vanity, however, he is secretly tormented by doubts about his sexual identity. He keeps things in a hidden box that remind him of exciting encounters with other men. Underneath is a silver spoon that Weldon stole some time ago from Captain Weincheck, an outsider in the officer corps whom Weldon will later urge to leave the military when he loses interest in him .

As the story progresses, Leonora has, in addition to her charming features, also sadistic features and takes revenge for her husband's sexual indifference with mockery of his impotence. At the same time, she has a secret love affair with Colonel Morris Langdon. His wife Alison, an art-loving, sensitive, mentally disturbed woman who prefers to be in the company of her imaginative, unconventional Filipino servant Anacleto, discovers his infidelity.

Private Williams, an opaque, solitary, simple soldier who Leonora employs as a groom, penetrates this explosive square . Since Williams is in the habit of secretly riding Leonora's horses in the forest - bareback and stark naked - Weldon inevitably soon becomes aware of him. Weldon doesn't know that Williams is only interested in Leonora, sneaks around the house at night to watch her, and finally even gains access to her bedroom, where he sniffs at her perfume and laundry and watches the innocent sleeper for hours.

Leonora's continued squabbling about his manliness and especially his poor riding style arouses in Weldon an obsessive desire to ride and subjugate Leonora's unruly stallion Firebird. When the stallion throws him off, he loses all composure he had been able to force himself to, beats the horse and finally collapses in despair. Williams, who witnessed the whole scene, takes the injured horse from him and leads it back to the stable. When Leonora, who is having a party in her house at the same time, discovers what Penderten has done, she hits him with a riding crop in front of witnesses.

During a boxing event that Weldon attends with Leonora and Morris, Weldon and Williams exchange views that Weldon interprets as a homoerotic rapprochement. Then he goes after Williams, but does not dare to follow him to his quarters. Weldon pockets a chocolate paper that Williams carelessly drops on the way home and later puts it in his treasure chest.

At the same time, Alison, who lives in the next house, discovers a man in the garden who she takes to be Morris in the dark. She walks next door and tells Weldon that Leonora is having a relationship with Morris. Since Weldon does not believe her - like everyone else he thinks Alison is mentally deranged - she enters Leonora's bedroom to confront the adulterer, but does not find her husband there, but Williams, who has sneaked in again to see the sleeping Leonora consider. After Williams escapes, Alison returns home, telling her husband that his lover is cheating on him and that she, Alison, is going to get a divorce. Morris then has his wife admitted to a mental hospital, where she suddenly dies of a heart attack .

Finally, Weldon himself witnesses Williams sneaking through the garden at night. Sitting on his bed, he waits for Williams in the ambiguous hope that he himself is the target of Williams' desire. However, this hope is suddenly disappointed when Williams intrudes not into Weldon's bedroom but that of the sleeping Eleonora. Furious with jealousy, Weldon shoots the lover he cannot have.

Means of expression

In terms of film history, the mirror image in the golden eye is noteworthy, among other things, because of its formal peculiarities, especially because of the large number of window, gaze and mirror motifs used by director Huston. Many scenes are staged as a window through which the camera takes the position of a figure who is observing an event through a window. In the film, windows also serve as a link between the interior and the outside world: two areas that are assigned a symbolic character in many scenes (inside = conquering homosexual impulses; outside = unleashing homosexual impulses). Reflection in the Golden Eye is also a film about looks, especially dirty looks. In a key scene with strong symbolic content, Anacleto paints the picture of a green peacock, in whose oversized, yellow eye everything he sees is reflected in a tiny and grotesque way.

In the original version, which was later replaced by a normal color scheme, the entire film was dipped in a pale gold tone to underline this symbolism (“Filtracolor process”).

Omnipresent in the film are also voyeuristic glances: Williams considered secretly sometimes sleeping, sometimes naked through the house running Leonora; Leonora provokes the impotent Weldon with a striptease, which he considers incapable of action; both Leonora and Weldon secretly look at Williams riding naked. In many scenes, the repulsively vain Weldon looks at himself in the mirror , another central component of the film's formal language, which also owes its title to the reflection in the golden eye . Almost all the interiors of the scene are equipped with mirrors; in many shots the camera is aimed at a mirror and shows the people acting as a reflection. While the emotionally completely isolated Weldon only ever encounters his own reflection, the warm-hearted, lovable Alison finds her “reflection” in another person: her loyal friend Anacleto. One of the most impressive scenes in the film shows Alison taking a bitter medicine - but the picture does not show Alison's face at all, but the face of Anacletos, who spoon Alison in and makes her bitterly contorted face visible to the viewer by reflecting it - supplemented by the nuance of deep compassion - with his own face. In the course of a sequence in which Weldon and Leonora have an argument, the camera is focused on the eye of Williams in a close-up shot, who is secretly observing the argument and in whose eyes Weldon and Leonora are now reflected.

Mirror image in the golden eye owes part of its unsettling character to the dissonant, sometimes atonal music of the multi-award-winning Japanese composer Mayuzumi Toshirō.

Production and reception

The Warner Bros. were planning a film adaptation of Carson McCuller's 1941 novel Mirror Image in the Golden Eye since the early 1960s. Preparations were delayed again and again, however, because firstly the issue raised concerns - the film was supposed to be the first Hollywood to openly deal with homosexuality - and secondly because Montgomery Clift , who was slated for the role of Weldon Penderton, had a drinking problem and was in represented a considerable economic risk in the eyes of the producers. Elizabeth Taylor , who had been selected for the female lead, feared that Clift, her longtime boyfriend, would not survive if he didn't get back to work soon, so stood up for him and personally paid for an insurance policy that the producers made would relieve in the event of Clift's failure.

When Clift died unexpectedly of a heart attack on July 23, 1966, the Warner Bros. initially considered Richard Burton and Lee Marvin as replacements, but they declined the delicate role. Marlon Brando also initially refused, fearing that he would damage his already damaged image even further by portraying an unsympathetic homosexual, but changed his mind after a detailed conversation with John Huston, whom Taylor had selected as director, and realized that the portrayal of the sophisticated and complex character of Weldon would give him the opportunity to show his talent again - which he had hardly made use of since the late 1950s.

The shooting took place in the fall of 1966 in Mineola on Long Island and - for the most part - in the Dino-De-Laurentiis -Studios in Rome . Italy was chosen because the country offered Taylor and Huston tax advantages and because recording staff and extras could be hired there more cheaply than in the USA. Brando's portrayal benefited greatly from the fact that Huston was in the habit of giving his performers plenty of room for artistic development. While Taylor usually prepared himself perfectly for every scene and got by with a single take , Brando, who always played “gut instinct”, needed freedom to improvise and often asked to have a scene recorded over and over again until he was ready with the Result was satisfied. Huston, glad Brando found his way back to method acting while working on this film , willingly agreed. Richard Burton, who had accompanied his wife to Rome, took the opportunity to study Brando's work in front of the camera. Taylor had a nude scene in the film, but basically did not act like that and had himself doubled.

When Mirror Image in the Golden Eye premiered in the USA on October 11, 1967, the critics received the work coolly. The demand from the public was also so low that the production costs were not covered. Producer Ray Stark concluded that the audience and the press weren't ready for a film about homosexuality. John Huston thought the film was his best to date. However, reflection in the golden eye was rightly also accused of conceptual weaknesses, such as B. the unfinished elaboration of the figure of Private Williams, in which it remains completely unclear whether he is really bisexual.

Reviews

"Film adaptation of a novel by Carson McCullers, psychologically superficial, but impressively and cautiously staged and well played."

- Lexicon of international film

"The film adaptation of the novel by the American writer Carson McCullers in this Hollywood production turned out to be very true to the original, but in comparison to the psychological mastery of the author, it was much coarsened and simplified."

- Protestant film observer

Further information

The 28-year-old Harvey Keitel appears in the film, unnamed, in a small role as a soldier .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reflection in the golden eye. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 473/1967