One-Eyed Jacks

For other uses, see One-eyed jack (disambiguation)

One-Eyed Jacks
One Eyed Jacks promotional poster
Directed by	Marlon Brando
Produced by	George Glass Walter Seltzer Frank P. Rosenberg
Written by	Charles Neider (novel) Guy Trosper Sam Peckinpah (uncredited) Calder Willingham Rod Serling (early draft)
Starring	Marlon Brando Karl Malden Katy Jurado Pina Pellicer Ben Johnson Slim Pickens
Music by	Hugo Friedhofer
Cinematography	Charles Lang
Editing by	Archie Marshek
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	1961
Running time	Theatrical cut: 141 minutes Director's cut: 300 minutes (Has been destroyed, original cut footage does not exist anymore)
Country	United States
Language	English

One-Eyed Jacks, a 1961 Western, is the only film directed by actor Marlon Brando, who also played its lead character, Rio.

The film was originally to be directed by Stanley Kubrick and Sam Peckinpah. Other members of the cast include Karl Malden, Slim Pickens, Katy Jurado and Ben Johnson.

Plot

Rio (also called "The Kid"), his partner Dad Longworth, and a third man named Doc, rob a bank. The robbery is successful, but some Mexican Rurales attack and kill Doc. Dad and Rio manage to escape in the desert followed by a posse.

Rio figures the Rurales will be "swarming all over us inside an hour." One partner might take the remaining pony and ride to a little jacalito down the canyon about five miles and return with fresh mounts. They shake for it, with Rio fixing the deal so his pal Dad can be the one to go.

Dad gets to a corral, strapping the swag bag onto a fresh pony, but he gets second thoughts. He casts one eye towards a point on the ridge sure to be taken by the Rurales, and with the other he gazes off in the opposite direction out past a low-lying treeline towards the border and safety. One way leads to danger and a poor chance at surviving with half the booty, the other towards a virtual certainty with all of it. After a decidedly short moment of reflection, he takes the latter and leaves his friend to be taken by Rurales. Rio is arrested, and is transported to prison by way of the jacalito, where he learns firsthand of Dad's betrayal from the owner.

Rio spends five years in a "stinkin' Sonora prison," which allows him to concentrate on Dad's having abandoned him. When he locates his former partner in crime, Longworth has become the sheriff of Monterey, California. Dad finally gets a chance to "explain" why he left his friend back in Mexico but tries again to deceive Rio by lying about why he never returned.

Rio plans a bank robbery in Monterey with his new partners Chico Modesto and Bob Emory. But his plans are sidetracked when he falls in love with Longworth's stepdaughter, Louisa, and when Dad administers a vicious beating with a whip in front of the entire town.

While recovering from his wounds near the ocean, Rio struggles with his conflicting desires to love the girl and to kill her stepfather for revenge. He decides to forgo vengeance, fetch Louisa and leave, but Emory kills Chico and pulls off the bank job. However, the heist goes wrong and a bystander is killed. Rio is falsely accused and locked up by Longworth, who desperately wants to kill Rio in an attempt to absolve his own guilt over the earlier betrayal. Rio is due to be hanged in two days.

Louisa visits Rio in jail, first to confess that she is going to have his baby, and then to attempt to smuggle a miniature pistol. Rio bluffs his way out of jail with the unloaded pistol, and helps himself to the revolver of sadistic deputy Lon Dedrick. In the center of town, under fire and left with no choice, he kills Longworth in a final showdown.

In the closing scene, Rio and Louisa ride out to the dunes and say a sentimental farewell. Rio will now be a hunted man and Louisa realizes that they have no future together.

Cast

• Marlon Brando as Rio
• Karl Malden as Dad Longworth
• Ben Johnson as Bob Emory
• Katy Jurado as Maria Longworth
• Pina Pellicer as Louisa
• Slim Pickens as Lon Dedrick
• Larry Duran as Chico Modesto

Adaptation and development

Rod Serling, already famed as the creator of The Twilight Zone series, wrote an adaptation of the novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider (1956) — which was itself simply a novelization of the career of Billy the Kid relocated to Monterey, California — at the request of producer Frank P. Rosenberg. The treatment was rejected.

Rosenberg next hired Sam Peckinpah, who finished his first script on 11 November 1957. Marlon Brando's Pennebaker Productions had paid $40,000 for the rights to Authentic Death and then signed a contract with Stanley Kubrick to direct for Paramount Pictures. Peckinpah handed in a revised screenplay on 6 May 1959. Later, Brando fired Peckinpah and hired Calder Willingham, but he and Brando stalled, so both Willingham and Kubrick were fired. Guy Trosper became the new screenwriter and worked on the story with Brando, who hired himself as director.

The movie had very little resemblance to the Neider novel, and what remains has much more resonance with history than fiction. At various times, the two credited screenwriters and the uncredited Peckinpah have claimed (or had claimed for them) a majority of the responsibility for the film. When Karl Malden answered the query about who really wrote the story he said: "There is one answer to your question — Marlon Brando, a genius in our time."Stuart Mitchner. ^[1]

Production

The film was Paramount Pictures' last feature released in VistaVision. Cinematographer Charles Lang received an Academy Award nomination in the Best Cinematography, Color category that year. Upon release, it made no money, leading to Brando turning out unsuccessful films, leading to the disastrous remake of Mutiny On The Bounty.

Brando shot five hours of additional footage that was later destroyed. Later, other directors worked on the rest of the film after Brando "walked away" from the production. He did not direct another film in his later years, but he did continue to act, and the film would lead to mixed reaction from the critics and some like from Brando fans over the years.

It was the first American film for Pina Pellicer, who died in 1964 at age 30, a presumed suicide.

Release

Critical reception

One-Eyed Jacks received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 46% critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 6.2/10. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, favourably influenced by Brando's efforts, noted: "... Directed and played with the kind of vicious style that Mr. Brando has put into so many of his skulking, scabrous roles. Realism is redolent in them, as it is in many details of the film. But, at the same time, it is curiously surrounded by elements of creamed-cliché romance and a kind of pictorial extravagance that you usually see in South Sea island films."^[2] Variety, on the other hand, wrote: "It is an oddity of this film that both its strength and its weakness lie in the area of characterization. Brando's concept calls, above all, for depth of character, for human figures endowed with overlapping good and bad sides to their nature."^[3] Dave Kehr of The Chicago Reader wrote: "There is a strong Freudian pull to the situation (the partner's name is “Dad”) that is more ritualized than dramatized: the most memorable scenes have a fierce masochistic intensity, as if Brando were taking the opportunity to punish himself for some unknown crime."^[4]

In popular culture

One-Eyed Jacks is the name of a brothel in the t.v. series Twin Peaks created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. That it shares the same name as this film is acknowledged in dialogue between Donna Hayward and Audrey Horne, where Audrey asks Donna if she has heard of One-Eyed Jacks and Donna responds "Isn't that that western with Marlon Brando?"

References

1. ^ Karl Malden and Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks: “We Had the Very Best of Each Other”. Retrieved November 6, 2011.
2. ^ Movie Review: One-Eyed Jacks (1961).
3. ^ One-Eyed Jacks.
4. ^ One-Eyed Jacks.

External links

• One-Eyed Jacks at the Internet Movie Database
• One-Eyed Jacks is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• TCM Database page