“Any fulfillment at the expense of normality is wrong and should not be allowed to bring happiness,” observes frustrated U.S. Army Maj. Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando) in Reflections in a Golden Eye. “In short,” he continues, “it’s better, because it’s morally honorable for the square peg to keep scraping about in a round hole rather than to discover and use the unorthodox one that would fit it.” Full of self-loathing, Penderton is an officer and teacher at a base in the American South, where he lives with and largely ignores his equally frustrated and occasionally abusive wife, Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor). Leonora is fiercely engaged in a sexual affair with a neighboring officer, Lt. Col. Langdon (Brian Keith). Langdon, unhappily married to the frigid and emotionally disturbed Alison (Julie Harris), is torn between his feelings of responsibility for his fragile wife’s condition and the growing passion he holds for Leonora. As the days go by during an unusually warm autumn, tensions rise when the mysterious Pvt. Wilson (Robert Forster) begins to pay clandestine visits to the Penderton household in the night. Conflicted by his closeted desires, Penderton assumes that Wilson has come for him, but it soon becomes painfully clear that Wilson has designs on Leonora. Before the season ends, the complicated and deceitful relationships between these two homes erupt with cataclysmic results.

John Huston’s peculiar and absorbing adaptation of Carson McCuller’s Reflections in a Golden Eye has long been an obscure cult title, available only in an out-of-print VHS edition and through rare showings on cable television. The movie was shot in Italy by cinematographer Aldo Tonti, and his work on the picture has two distinct traits: wide-open exteriors of fields and forests that surround the base, and tight, dramatically lit interiors of the homes in which the main characters fester. The exterior sequences especially highlight the various characters’ penchant for horseback riding, and are all cleverly character-specific — Penderton’s riding is shot tightly and fragmented; Leonora and Langdon are passionate and competitive as they jump hurdles; and Wilson brazenly rides naked through the forest.

The most controversial aspect of the film’s look was Huston’s decision to use a special lab process to desaturate the colors and leave a sepia, golden sheen. As reported in AC in December 1967, Italy’s Technicolor lab worked for several months to create a process of desaturation that would meld Tonti’s images into Huston’s vision. After assessing the polarized responses of audiences and critics during the first week of release, Warner Bros. recalled all the “gold” prints and replaced them, against Huston’s wishes, with standard color prints that featured a more pedestrian palette.

Warner Home Video recently released Reflections in a Golden Eye as a stand-alone DVD and as part of the Marlon Brando Collection boxed set, and the picture looks the way Huston originally intended. The anamorphically enhanced presentation restores the picture’s widescreen aspect ratio, and Warner Home Video has seen fit to add the golden sheen back to the image — a disquieting visual detail that only adds to the film’s strange, tension-filled narrative. The crisp, well-balanced transfer is very good and features exceptional detail. The monaural sound is clean and solid, with emphasis on composer Toshio Mayuzumi’s fluid, occasionally jarring score.

The supplements include an array of trailers for the Brando vehicles featured in the boxed set, including the bizarre trailer for Reflections in a Golden Eye, which offers a glimpse of the picture’s original color balances. The DVD also features a 23-minute segment of silent, behind-the-scenes footage of the principal performers and creative team shooting the film. Presented full frame, this 16mm black-and-white footage is fascinating to watch and is backed by Mayuzumi’s score.

Forty years after its theatrical release, Reflections in a Golden Eye remains an enigmatic and worthwhile dramatic piece. It’s easy to understand why the taboo topics of homosexuality, adultery and mood disorders might have been off-putting to audiences in 1967, but the film’s frank depiction of marital despair and self loathing was certainly ahead of its time for American cinema. Passionately made by an excellent director who was trying to etch something new into commercial cinema, the movie features outstanding work by its four principal performers, particularly Taylor and Brando. Whether you’re a first-time viewer or a fan of the film, it’s difficult to deny the powerful dramatic tension that lies at the heart of it.