Brando's Magnificent Failure

    In 1961 Paramount Pictures released One-Eyed Jacks, a western starring and directed by Marlon Brando. A film of great beauty, bitterness, and explosive violence, it received mixed notices from critics at the time. Budgeted at $1.8 million, it eventually cost around $6 million due to Brando's perfectionism. One story has it that while filming on location in Monterey, California, Brando insisted on holding up filming until the perfect wave could be captured from the Pacific Ocean. These are the things that will drive a producer and studio not only up a wall, but wonder why that wall was built in the first place.

    The production began life at Brando's own production company, Pennebaker, named for his late mother's maiden name. Originally a young upstart named Stanley Kubrick, fresh off his WWI anti-war flick Paths of Glory, was inked to direct, but conflicts over casting during script conferences at Brando's home high atop Mullholland Drive, drove Stanley away to accept another troubled picture, Spartacus which star and producer {do you see a trend?} Kirk Douglas was filming in the nearby hills at Universal. One of the conflicts was over who should play the character of Dad Longworth, partner and father-figure to Brando's Rio {nicknamed Kid} in the movie. Kubrick wanted Spencer Tracy {imagine that potential screen team !}, while Brando wanted his friend and former co-star Karl Malden. Well it was Marlon's company so Marlon won and Stanley walked.

    So without a director and time - which, as they say, is money - running out, Brando took over as director himself. Before this Brando had shown no signs of wanting to helm a film other than pretty much directing himself in his last several performances. Fact is, except for Elia Kazan and maybe Joe Mankiewicz, he pretty much held Hollywood directors in contempt as little more that traffic cops. He had trouble with either his director or co-star or both in almost every film he had made since 1954's On The Waterfront. In 1954's Desiree, he played a puffed up Napoleon - with Claude Rains' accent - and had conflicts with director Henry Koster, who was more at home in the far away land of Deanna Durbin musicals. On the set of Guys & Dolls, Brando famously clashed with another titanic "my way or the highway" guy, Frank Sinatra. On Sayonara he questioned director Joshua Logan until he was nearly sent back running to the asylum (Logan had spent some time in a home for mental health years earlier). 1958's Young Lions had Brando in pretty much open conflict with Montgomery {there is only one Christ on this film!} Clift while filming that World War 2 epic.

    It must have been the story of One-Eyed Jacks that intrigued Brando, as it deals with the conflict of Dad's character with the Kid's, who start out as outlaws together and end up as bitter rivals as a result of Malden leaving Brando on top a mountain ridge to face the music after they are chased by the law for robbing banks. Brando's Kid does time in a Mexican jail, escapes, and goes looking for the man who left him high and dry. When he gets to where Malden had been hiding for several years, he finds that Dad is sheriff of a small northern California town. He has married a Mexican woman with a young daughter by a previous marriage, but Brando's Kid not only wants his revenge on Malden's Dad, he wants the young step-daughter as well. It is no secret that Brando had little use for his own father, a bullying sort, when young Bud {as Brando was known to family and friends} was in his wonder years in the midwest. In Last Tango In Paris there is a moment when Maria Schnieder's Jeanne asks him why he doesn't go back to America, and Brando recalls bad family relations. Or as his character Paul says "I can't remember many good things." Neither could Bud Brando in real or reel life.

    One of One-Eyed Jacks' { the title deals with man's duplicity } virtues is it's expert casting of supporting parts. Ben Johnson, one of John Ford's stable of cowpokes, is excellent as Bob Amory, Slim Pickens is wonderfully slimy as Dad's deputy, Lon. And a nasty bit by Timothy Carey as a bad drunk tormenting a saloon girl. The movie is full of interesting set pieces: Brando waiting on that mountain for Malden with the sand storm blowing is an amazing bit of imagery; the scene where The Kid, being taken prisoner by Dad, spits in his face and Dad decides to make him an example by not only whipping him in front of the whole town, but by crushing his shooting hand with a rifle butt.

    When filming was finally finished 6 months late and some $4-5 million over budget, Brando's cut was four hours and forty two minutes. Unable to cut further, Brando walked away from the cutting and Paramount took over and released the film at two hours and twenty one minutes in March 1961. As producer Frank Rosenberg said "It wasn't a movie, it was a way of life." By that time Brando's The Fugitive Kind {filmed after, but released before One-Eyed Jacks} had flopped. It would be Brando's first. Jacks would be his second financial failure in a row with Mutiny on the Bounty looming next. In fact, Brando would go from flop to flop all through the '60s, and it was not until a little movie called The Godfather that Brando would bring him back from bankable oblivion and return him to Oscar glory. The photography by Charles Lang, Jr was Oscar nominated and is truly stunning. The bad thing about any print one see's of this film {it is in the public domain} is that it doesn't do the cinematography justice. It may be the most beautiful western this side of Shane. The music score by Hugo Friedhofer is first rate with nice motifs for individual characters and a touch of authenticity in it's flavor. And Bud the director was nominated for a Directors' Guild award. This I find may be the most remarkable thing about this damned, neglected western. That other directors would recognize the fine work this method actor, who at various times had driven their own to distraction, had accomplished. It didn't recover it's costs. Brando never attempted directing again.