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SilentDawn5.0

92 "You've been tryin' to get yourself hung for the last fifteen years kid. This time I think you might have made it."A melodrama of scoundrels.

Richard Chandler4.5

"A man can't stay angry for five years, can he?"The only film ever directed by the inimitable Marlon Brando is this admittedly baggy yet woefully underrated 1961 Technicolor Western. One-Eyed Jacks follows the revengeful "Kid" Rio (a roguishly charming Brando) as he undertakes an involved, tripartite stratagem of reprisal against his erstwhile criminal mentor Dad Longworth (a typically zealous Karl Malden). Having betrayed Rio—owing more to cowardliness than to malice—after a Mexican bank heist a half-decade prior, Longworth has since made a cushy new life in Monterey, California where he has married and now presides as sheriff. Rio escapes from his forced servitude in a Sonoran lead mine and (with some acquaintances gathered along the way) immediately sets out to find Longworth in order to 1) seduce and defile his virginal stepdaughter, Louisa (a very poignant Pina Pellicer who would tragically take her own life three years later) 2) rob the town's bank and 3) murder Longworth. All of these things end up happening more or less but in satisfyingly unforeseen ways.The original script was written by none other than Sam Peckinpah, but he was fired when Stanley Kubrick signed with Paramount to direct and brought his novelist friend Calder Willingham along with him. After weeks of rewrites they agreed that the script wasn't working, leading to Willingham's eventual firing and Kubrick's increasing lack of interest in the project. Brando and Kubrick clashed over the casting of Malden (to whom Brando had already promised the role), with Kubrick vying for Spencer Tracy. Eventually Kubrick was dismissed from the project, though accounts vary on the nature of his firing. Brando claimed that Kubrick was dragging his feet and essentially quit, while producer Frank P. Rosenberg averred that Brando had always harbored an undisclosed desire to direct the film. In any event, the extensive preproduction period and the eventual shoot were hectic and costly.While Brando, Kubrick and the production team were wrangling well past the point at which production was set to begin, Malden was already being paid and would have his contract renewed repeatedly before shooting commenced. As such, he made significantly more money from One-Eyed Jacks than for any other film in which he appeared and went so far as to refer to his West Los Angeles home as "the house that Jacks built." The ensuing shoot was a chaotic experience. To begin with, the script was still unfinished. Because he was unsure how the story would end and thus required maximum flexibility in the editing room, Brando shot an insane amount of coverage (Brando's biographer Peter Manso claims that an average of 11,000 feet of film were exposed per day). Lastly there was Brando's ever-turbulent personal life. The first-time director was being divorced by Anna Kashfi while simultaneously engaging in affairs with ex-girlfriend France Nuyen and cast-mates Katy Jurado and Pina Pellicer (in addition to unsuccessful attempts to bed interviewer Lisa Lu and cast-mate Míriam Colón). Friction with Paramount grandees coupled with his acrimonious divorce proceedings led Brando to binge eating, entailing costume designer Yvonne Woods to fashion Brando's outfits with elasticized material. Set photographer Sam Shaw acted as Brando's on-set "fat coach", advising him on how to conceal double chins and the like. On a less amusing note, Brando was also reputedly abusing Seconals in order to sleep at the time. Postproduction was just as problematic, lasting twenty-one months in all. After months of shuttling back and forth between weeks in New York shooting The Fugitive Kind and weekends in California editing the mountain of footage with cutter Archie Marshek, Brando emerged with an eight-hour rough cut. This was later edited down to a four-and-a-half-hour director's cut and finally a three-hour version which Brando hoped would satisfy Paramount. It didn't and bigwig D.A. Doran took the picture from Brando, at which point he threw up his hands. It's an understatement to say that I find Paramount's resultant two-and-a-half-hour cut a lot more pleasing than Brando did, "Now, it's a good picture for them, but it's not the picture I made. In my film everybody lied, even the girl…Now the characters in the film are black and white, not gray and human as I planned them." Of course I'd love to see Brando's cut, but Paramount destroyed the unused footage to retain the costly nitrate. Incidentally One-Eyed Jacks was the last film to be shot in the gorgeous but short-lived VistaVision format.Additional points for an untranslated joke in Spanish regarding the size of Karl Malden's nose (thanks to my superior partner for the on-the-spot translation). Many additional points for nasty, top-level character turns by Slim Pickens and Ben Johnson. Some stray notes:-YOU'RE GETTIN' TOO FAT TO RUN-I'LL SEE YA RIGHT QUICK-BETTER DIG SOMETHING YOU CAN EAT, BUB-I WOULDN'T WANNA LOSE ME A HANDFUL OF BRAINS TRYIN' TO FIND OUT NOW-HE'S JUST PUMPED UP A LITTLE-I ASKED YOU POLITE-I GOT A LOT OF FUNNY THINGS TO DO TODAY, BUT LIPPIN' WITH YOU AIN'T ONE OF 'EM-YOU'RE LOOKIN' TO GET YOUR BACK BUSTED, SONNY-WE WAS KINDA HAIRY IN THEM DAYS-A COUPLE OF COCKLEBURS-WE DON'T HARDLY RUN INTO STUDS LIKE YOU ANYMORE-ONE MORE AIN'T GONNA MAKE NO DIFFERENCE-LOOKIN' KINDA MESSY TOO-MISTER, YOU REALLY KILLED HIM-HE DIDN'T GIVE ME NO SELECTION-LOOK HERE WHAT'S HAPPENIN' TO ROMEO-I WANT YOU STANDIN' WHEN I OPEN YOU UP-LET'S SEE YOU PULL IT, LON-YOU AIN'T GETTIN' NO OLDER THAN TOMORROW-YOU GOB OF SPIT!

Cinemonster3.5

An unevenly directed and edited film, One-Eyed Jacks shows Marlon Brando at both his best and worst. A lovely unsung performance by Karl Malden and solid cinematography from Charles Lang are the highlights. Supporting cast, including Slim Pickens and Ben Johnson, are also solid. No one takes a beating onscreen like Brando. David Webb Peoples clearly saw this film before writing Unforgiven. Not too many projects can claim to have canned talent the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham and Sam Peckinpah.