Behind the Scenes With My Favorite Actors: Rutger Hauer in The Osterman Weekend

***Captured from the Anchor Bay Special Edition.***

The Art of the Movie Poster: Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

"Nobody loses all the time..."

Vadim's Prettiest Maid: Barbara Leigh

One of the great question marks in 1970's American cinema for me is how Barbara Leigh did not become a major star. Easily one of the most beautiful and charismatic women of the period her career was unfortunately made up of mostly supporting roles in smaller and sometimes forgettable films.
One of the major disappointments in Barbara Leigh's career was the unmade Hammer production VAMPIREllA, a part Leigh was born to play. Highlights of Leigh's career include VELVET VAMPIRE directors Stephanie Rothman's STUDENT NURSES and TERMINAL ISLAND, a small role opposite Steve Mcqueen in Sam Peckinpah's underrated JUNIOR BONNER, as Rock Hudson's wife in Roger Vadim's PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW and opposite Fred Williamson in BOSS MAN.
Leigh was also a wonderful model and her Native American themed Playboy appearance is one of the magazine's most memorable of the seventies.
Highly recommended is Leigh's autobiography entitled THE KING, MCQUEEN and THE LOVE MACHINE. Here she provides a compulsively readable book accounting her love affairs with Elvis Presley, Steve Mcqueen and James Aubrey as well as a fine account of a life in film that is filled with as much hope and disappointment as 300 or so pages can hold.
Leigh remains an extremely beautiful woman who has a fine website at http://www.barbaraleigh.com/
Here you can find many photos and info on how to get her book.

A Showdown With Dean Martin and Rock Hudson

Even though it contains the only screen teaming between two of the biggest stars in Hollywood history, George Seaton's 1973 feature SHOWDOWN has been largely forgotten. Starring Dean Martin and Rock Hudson, SHOWDOWN has been unjustly neglected since it opened and closed quickly back in June of 1973.
Seaton had been directing since the mid forties when he shot SHOWDOWN in 1972, and it would turn out to be his final feature film as director. A talented, if undervalued director, Seaton is probably most famous for the original version of MIRACLE ON 34th STREET. Other credits include the searing Clifford Odets adaptation, THE COUNTRY GIRL, the charming TEACHER'S PET and the best picture winning AIRPORT. A two time Oscar winner, Seaton would sadly die of cancer just a few years after finishing SHOWDOWN.
SHOWDOWN would mark one of the last major appearances by Dean Martin, who was said to be unhappy during the shoot due to the death of his favorite horse. SHOWDOWN also marked an end to the great Rock Hudson's prolific run of films that had started in the fifties and he would just work sporadically after 1973.
SHOWDOWN was a bit out of step for the early seventies. Directors like Sam Peckinpah and Monte Hellman had totally transformed the American Western and the fairly subdued and elegiac SHOWDOWN didn't stand much of a chance in mid 1973.
Seaton's film tells the fairly simple story of two men, Chuck and Billy, who grew up together but went very separate ways in their lives. Rock Hudson's Chuck settled down and became a lawman while Martin's Billy chose a life of crime. It is a story that had been told a countless number of times before and since but there is something so weary and sad about SHOWDOWN that I think it stands apart from them.
With it lovely, and at times, haunting score by David Shire and wisely shot 2.35 compositions, SHOWDOWN is a very effective film throughout it's fairly short running time of 99 minutes. There is something positively epic in this little film about two friends who chose the most different of lives but never stopped caring for each other or forgot where they came from.
The acting is fine throughout with Martin and Hudson surrounded by many top tier character actors including Donald Moffat and Ed Begley, Jr. in a smaller role. Susan Clark does a good job as Chuck's wife Kate but I always think of Tuesday Weld when I watch the film and can only imagine the multi-layered performance she would have given in the part. Hudson is at the top of his game here, middle aged and exhausted looking but still beautiful. He does a brilliant job at playing a man who has a job to do that he knows will ultimately ask him to make the hardest decision of his life. Martin is excellent as well and it is a performance that improves as the film goes along. At first it appears Dean will be giving one of his patented comic and winking performances but he does some really remarkable heavy dramatic work here as a man who knows what his destiny holds and that there isn't any escape from it.
Shot by prolific cinematographer, Ernest Laszlo, SHOWDOWN is gorgeous to look at and his photography is particularly good in the films many flashback scenes to the boys youth, when they were the closest of friends.

SHOWDOWN isn't perfect, I don't think that anyone working on it realized that they had what was close to being a really great film on their hands. It could do with being about thirty minutes longer as more characterization is needed, especially with Kate and Chuck. It feels edited a bit tight also, although the cutting by DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER editor John W. Holmes is mostly well done throughout. SHOWDOWN feels like a film that the studio expected to fail but that somewhere along the way, Seaton and crew realized they might have a winner on their hands. I think had that thought been there at the beginning, SHOWDOWN would have turned out to be a small masterpiece. As it is, it is a solid and moving good film with more great moments than anyone might expect.
SHOWDOWN does indeed reach greatness in its final few minutes where we see both men reaching their individual destinies. There is a particular flashback scene and a line speaking of "the world spitting at you" that brings a tear to my eye every time I watch the film and the look on Rock Hudson's face at the end of this movie is the work of a master giving one of his last truly great performances.
SHOWDOWN would open and close quickly with very little critical or popular attention given to it. For most in the Summer of 1973, it was a product of a time that had slipped away. Ironically it was about two men who themselves were living in a world that had passed them by. SHOWDOWN would appear briefly on VHS in the mid nineties but has never been released on DVD. It is currently missing in action and is rarely mentioned in film circles.

SHOWDOWN reminds me of some of Jean-Pierre Melville's films. It, of course, doesn't achieve the greatness of Melville but in its own small way it has some of the same emotional resonance as the great French master's films.
Late in his life, Dean Martin was said to get great pleasure from watching old westerns on tv. I often think about the lovely man, sitting in his chair smoking, with perhaps a drink, and watching the flickering memories of his youth. I sometimes wonder if he ever happened to stumble across SHOWDOWN during one of those Western marathons he so enjoyed. Would he have flipped quickly by or would he have stopped, if only for a brief moment, and smiled at a film that is a lot better than anybody has ever given it credit for? There is no telling, we lost Dean as well as Rock years ago and I suppose in a way it is fitting, even if it is unjust, that SHOWDOWN has in its own way all but been lost to time also.

Watch Closely Now: Kris Kristofferson on Screen in the Seventies

There’s a moment towards the end of Frank Pierson’s often maligned 1976 big budget remake of A Star is Born that plays over and over in my head like the fragments of a favorite song or the memory of a long lost lover never to be seen again. It’s the bit where the aging and defeated rock star John Norman Howard is flying down his last lonely highway on the way to oblivion. While the scene is expertly handled in everyway possible, it isn’t the music, editing or direction that gets me but it is unbelievably moving way that Howard keeps glancing at his reflection in his rearview mirror as he tears down the road faster and faster. It's a remarkable moment and what really makes it great is the actor behind the wheel perfectly portraying all of the lonliness and frustration of a man well past his limit.



While I have celebrated the music of Texas born Kris Kristofferson here before, I haven’t really paid tribute to the fact that the man is one of my favorite actors as well. Kris has now been acting for more than forty years and he’s proven himself more than capable in any kind of role imaginable. He’s become one of America’s most dependable character actors but there was a period in the seventies where he was also one of the big screens great leading men. Projecting a potent mixture of vulnerability and ruggedness that has always separated him from his peers, Kris Kristofferson’s value as an actor has often been overlooked but his best wrork resonates and is ripe for rediscovery.
Before he was seen on the big screen Kris Kristofferson was heard, and his legendary voice and songwriting skills have played a major part in his film career. There is just something downright musical about the guy and his best roles as an actor reflect this. Before being considered as serious material as an actor, filmmakers like Tom Stern, Dennis Hopper and Monte Hellman incorporated Kris' songs and sound into their work, and Kristofferson’s distinctive view of America is stamped all over works like The Last Movie and Two Lane Blacktop.
After proving himself incredibly charismatic on the small screen in the early seventies, Kris Kristofferson made his feature-length debut in Dennis Hopper’s legendary The Last Movie in 1971. Billed as one of the ‘Minstrel Wranglers’ and just appearing briefly, Kris could have made it a one-off but he had ambitions that stretched beyond the black vinyl grooves his name was already stamped on. It would take just a year for those cinematic ambitions to come to fruition.



Kristofferson’s first starring role did indeed come in 1972 opposite acting heavyweight Gene Hackman in the very intriguing and undervalued Cisco Pike for director Bill L. Norton. This strange but effective film featuring Kris and Gene along with Harry Dean Stanton, Karen Black and Viva immediately shows Kristofferson as a force to be reckoned with. Remarkably natural and poised on the screen, Kris proved himself as and actor to watch with star power in Cisco Pike.
Among the filmmakers who took notice of Kristofferson’s early screen work was Sam Peckinpah, a director whose films reflected the bruised and wearied worldview of many of Kris’ greatest songs. Peckinpah gave Kris one of his greatest roles in the beautiful and unforgettable Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. While the way the film was handled by the studio was tragic, Kris’ moving performance as the kid was a triumph in any version and it remains one of the seventies most iconic and haunting turns in front of the camera.



Had Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid been released with Peckinpah’s original vision completely intact, the film career of Kris Kristofferson would have gone ever further than it did. The film seemed to cement Kris as a talented actor customed made for director’s more personal and often less commercial visions. Such was the case with Paul Mazursky’s flawed but valuable Blume in Love, a film that hinted at Kris potential as a possible romantic lead.



After his brief but menacing moments in Peckinpah’s Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, Kris would deliver one of his most effective performances in Martin Scorsese’s surprising and heartfelt drama Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in 1974. Holding his own with powerhouse Ellen Burstyn, Kris once again proved himself as an actor capable of delivering a performance as nuanced and skilled as his more experienced and trained costars.
After his marriage to Rita Coolidge just before Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Kris took a break from his film career to refocus on his music. He would return in 1976 with a whopping three films, two of which would prove to be among the most important and controversial of his career.
Ironically of the three films he starred in in 1976, it is the lesser of the three that would have perhaps the biggest impact on his later career. George Armitage’s enetertaining but less than stellar Vigilante Force might have been a failure critically and commercially but it planted the seed for later works like Semi-Tough and Songwriter, films that seeked to capitalize on Kris’ status as a ‘country icon’. Much more interesting though was the film that opened 1976 for Kris Kristofferson, an erotic drama adapted from a famed Japanese novel by Yukio Mishima.



Overshadowed by a steamy Playboy spread featuring Kris and costar Sarah Miles used to promote the film, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea is a strange and eerie work that was pulverized critical upon its release and has never really found its audience. It’s an interesting if flawed work though and Kris is mesmerizing as the complicated lead Jim Cameron. While both The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea and Vigilante Force failed to make much of an impact, Kris’ third film in 1976 would prove to be the biggest hit of his career.
While it is hard to imagine anyone else as John Norman Howard in the still exciting and wonderfully overdone 1976 version of A Star is Born, star, composer and producer Barbra Streisand had originally wanted and pursued Elvis Presley for the role Kris Kristofferson would eventually fill. After Presley turned down the plum role of the boozing and aging rock star in the midst of a spiritual crisis, Streisand offered the role to Kristofferson and he turned out to be the perfect choice for the uber-talented singer. Kristofferson actually steals the film from Streisand and it remains my favorite performance by the man, a powerful and beautiful turn that is simultaneously tragic and triumphant.



A Star is Born would prove to be the mega-hit that had evaded Kris up until that point and its soundtrack would musically be his biggest seller as well. For his work, Kris would win the Golden Globe as best actor but both he and fellow winner Streisand were ignored at the Oscars. Sadly though the film wouldn’t immediately lead Kris Kristofferson to greater roles as both Semi-Tough and Convoy were disappointing despite the talent involved in front of and behind the cameras. As the seventies came to a close, Kris Kristofferson’s career on the big screen had lost its momentum but there would be one more film that would prove to be both his biggest disaster and most powerful moment.



While it was released in 1980, Michael Cimino’s absolutely masterful and unforgettable Heaven’s Gate is very much a film from the seventies. Along with Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, Heaven’s Gate can be looked upon as the last movie of the seventies, and it is fitting that Kris would close the decade with it considering that he had opened the decade with a similarly controversial work.
Heaven’s Gate is one of the most powerful films I have ever seen and Kris Kristofferson’s unfairly maligned performance as James Averill is extraordinary. Kris would later recall the irony in the fact that it would take a role in a film that he had believed in to ruin his career, which is precisely what Cimino’s powerful epic did.
Kris had already filmed Alan Pakula’s disappointing 1981 film Rollover with Jane Fonda when he was all but blackballed in Hollywood due to his involvement with Cimino and Heaven’s Gate. He would return his focus to his musical career but that lanscape had sadly changed as well and there was little room for someone as intelligent and challenging as Kris Kristofferson.
Kris Kristofferson would return to the screen in the mid eighties but the films would prove to be typically not worthy of his considerable talents. He would continue on though and would finally become one of America’s most dependable character actors, even though ultimately he was deserving of much more.



When I think about the film career of Kris Kristofferson in the seventies, I am always reminded of Heaven’s Gate famous promotional tagline, “What one loves about life are the things that fade.” Indeed, Kris Kristofferson’s place as one of Hollywood’s most distinctive leading men has very much faded but for many, myself included, the memory of it remains. To paraphrase another famous quote from a film that bears the iconic Kristofferson stamp, the satisfactions of Kris Kristofferson's film career in the seventies are permanent.

Paying Tribute To The Little Big Man

I must say that all of the recent cinema related deaths have caused me to really want to look at some of my favorites who were among my heroes growing up and who are still around. One of my favorite actors is turning an incredible seventy years old today so it seemed a perfect opportunity to pay tribute to him.

I sometimes wonder if younger film fans truly understand just how amazing and important the great Dustin Hoffman is. He is certainly still a very visible actor but he has basically turned into one of our great character actors and rarely appears as the lead anymore. He remains though, along with much more often mentioned names like Pacino, De Niro, Hackman and Nicholson, one of the premiere and finest American actors that came out of the mid sixties.

The Los Angeles native Hoffman was born in 1937 to a Jazz pianist and set decorator. Interested in theatre from a very young age, Hoffman met Gene Hackman and in their early twenties they travelled to New York together for theater work.
After working a number of odd jobs and studying at the Actor's Studio, Hoffman began landing roles in a variety of TV shows, including NAKED CITY and THE DEFENDERS. After a minor role in THE TIGER MAKES OUT (1966) Hoffman became an overnight sensation with his work in Mike Nichols THE GRADUATE (1967). This award winning film, with it's Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, would help define a generation and Hoffman quickly became one of the most important actor's in American film. It was perfect timing too as American cinema was getting ready to undergo some major changes and Hoffman was the perfect actor and star for the New Hollywood.

After getting an Oscar nomination for THE GRADUATE and winning many other notable awards, a few lean years and minor roles followed as Hoffman was trying to plan his next move. In 1968 director John Schlesinger offered him the role of Enrico 'Ratso' Rizzo in the astonishing MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) and Hoffman accepted the brave and difficult role after some hesitation. While Hoffman has admitted some disappointment in certain aspects of his performance, Ratso Rizzo is one of the most famous characters in screen history and Hoffman is brilliant in the part. MIDNIGHT COWBOY would go on to win best picture and Hoffman's performance should have won the Oscar that was given to John Wayne in TRUE GRIT. He did, however, win many other film awards for the iconic Rizzo.
Dustin would follow up the intense MIDNIGHT COWBOY with a surprising and underrated turn in JOHN AND MARY (1969) opposite a lovely Mia Farrow. He won a well deserved BAFTA award for that film and was also honored with another Golden Globe nomination.
One of his greatest and most interesting roles followed in 1970 with Arthur Penn's audacious and moving LITTLE BIG MAN. Hoffman's performance as the elderly Jack Crabb looking back over his life in the Old West is incredible and the film remains one of the most moving and sympathetic accounts of Native American life ever caught on film. Hoffman would receive another BAFTA nomination for his brave work in this undervalued American classic.
After the strange WHO IS HARRY KELLERMAN AND WHY IS HE SAYING THOSE TERRIBLE THINGS ABOUT ME? (1970) Hoffman would deliver a performance of staggering intensity in a film that would make him absolutely miserable in his personal life.

Sam Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS (1971) is one of the most controversial and greatest films in Peckinpah's extraordinary canon. A difficult and cold film that has been mis-read by many, including famously by Pauline Kael, Criterion's DVD is one of the most essential sets ever released as far as containing eye opening supplemental material. Hoffman and Peckinpah had major problems on the set and unfortunately this is a role Dustin doesn't talk about much. His work as David Sumner is masterful though and one of the key performances of the early seventies, it is a shame Hoffman doesn't have warmer feelings for the film.
A role in Pietro Germi's ALFREDO ALFREDO (1972) would give him the chance to work opposite the exquisite Stefania Sandrelli but it would be PAPILLON (1973) that would give him his best role since STRAW DOGS. Playing opposite a wonderful Steve Mcqueen, Hoffman is great as Louis Degain in Franklin J. Schaffner's exciting and moving escape film.
The years following PAPILLON would give Dustin some of his greatest roles ever. Starting with Bob Fosse's brutal LENNY (1974), a film in which he would receive yet another Oscar nomination, Hoffman became along with Al Pacino probably the best all around young actor America had. After exhausting himself inhabiting the great Lenny Bruce, Hoffman took a little time off but would return with a bang in 1976 with not one, but two, of the Seventies best films.
Alan J. Pakula's ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN (1976) isn't just a great film but it is one of a handful that can be truly called important. Producer and star Robert Redford spent two years doing exhaustive research to make sure the film would be accurate and it remains not only of the great political films this country has ever seen but one of the best looks at American Journalism in history. Hoffman's Carl Bernstein is another totally unique and memorable creation and he would click so well with Redford's Bob Woodward. The two of them are both so solid in this film that it still baffles me how their performances were ignored by the Academy.

Even better, performance wise, for Hoffman, was John Schlesinger's MARATHON MAN (1976). In perhaps his greatest role, Hoffman plays a student who is unexpectedly caught up in a very deadly conspiracy. Along with THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1973) and PARALLAX VIEW (1974), MARATHON MAN is one of the greatest paranoid thrillers of the Seventies and Hoffman gives one of the most convincing portrayals of fear and confusion ever committed to celluloid. Once again Hoffman was ignored by the Academy, although he did receive several other honors for this major film.
Ulu Grosbard's STRAIGHT TIME (1978) is a real buried treasure. Working with the young, intense and incredibly talented Theresa Russell in a film he originally wanted to direct, Dustin's work as the persecuted thief Max Dembo is along with STRAW DOGS his most underrated performance. Grosbard's great film is in need of a major re-appraisal and hopefully its recent appearance on DVD will bring that about. With the possible exception of Michael Mann's THIEF (1980) it is the most honest look at the consequences of crime in an American film of the seventies.
After the relative failure of STRAIGHT TIME and the flawed AGATHA (1979), Hoffman scored a major hit and finally won the Oscar for Robert Benton's KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979). Benton's film, focusing on a husband who has been abandoned by his wife leaving him to take care of his son alone, struck a major chord in 1979. If it seems a bit dated today it is more the fault of how many times the subject has been covered since rather than the film itself. Benton's sensitive direction is punctuated by Hoffman's down to earth and inspiring performance. A young Meryl Streep is also excellent as is eight year old Justin Henry as the son caught in the middle. The film all but swept the 1980 Academy Awards and would prove one of the biggest hits of Dustin Hoffman's career.
Taking another well deserved break Hoffman returned in 1982 in Sydney Pollack's masterful and hugely popular TOOTSIE. In another Oscar nominated turn, Hoffman plays out of work actor Michael Dorsey who lands a gig as a woman on a weekly soap opera. Hoffman is simply astonishing in the role and the film remains one of the funniest and best of the eighties. His scenes with Jessica Lange are among the best of his career and the film is a real highpoint in American Comedy history.

TOOTSIE was a massive hit but it would mark an end to Dustin Hoffman's reign as one of America's leading actors. He took a five year break from the screen, with only a solid DEATH OF A SALESMAN TV production keeping him in the film goer's eyes.
He returned in 1987 with ISHTAR opposite Warren Beatty and Isabelle Adjani. While the film isn't the disaster many made it out to be, it hurt Hoffman. He would garner another Oscar with RAIN MAN (1988) which isn't a film I like much. Tom Cruise hadn't come into his own as an actor yet and the film has not aged well in my eyes. More disappointing films followed including FAMILY BUSINESS (1989) and BILLY BATHGATE (1991) (which at least had a great early Nicole Kidman performance). His small role in Beatty's DICK TRACY (1990) did give him the one opportunity to work briefly with Pacino but the period is otherwise a low point in his career.
Several high profile roles followed but it wasn't until the audacious and compelling WAG THE DOG in 1997 that Dustin would find another truly great role. As the smarmy Hollywood producer Stanley Motss in Barry Levinson's sharp satire, Hoffman gives his best performance since TOOTSIE and easily steals the film from Robert De Niro's mannered and self conscious performance.
Hoffman would receive another well deserved Oscar Nomination for the role but WAG THE DOG wasn't the hit it should have been. The last ten years have been a busy time for Hoffman even though he typically just pops up in supporting roles. His best work from the past decade has been opposite Rachel Weisz twice in 2003's CONFIDENCE and RUNAWAY JURY, a film that finally matched him with Hackman, and a scene stealing role in David Russell's masterful I HEART HUCKABEES (2004). He also easily stole another film from Robert De Niro in the hugely popular MEET THE FOCKERS (2005). He has several films on the horizon and it doesn't look like he is going to slow down anytime soon. I wish someone would give him at least one more great leading role though as there are still few actors who are capable of delivery such emotionally devastating and honest work as Dustin Hoffman.

I really want to embrace the heroes of my youth who are still around while I can. The mere idea of world without a Hoffman, Eastwood, Pacino, De Niro, Hackman, Nicholson and so on just kills me. Dustin Hoffman is one of our great actors and an honorable man who has managed to get through 40 years in the public eye without any major scandal or controversy, and a career made up of some of the greatest performances in screen history. We should all send him the best wishes on his seventieth birthday.

Overlooked Classics: One Eyed Jacks

It has been hailed by Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, it is the only film directed by one of the most famous actors in film history and it signaled the rise of a more violent and cynical cinema, but for some reason Marlon Brando's One Eyed Jacks has never really gotten its due.
The main reason for its continuing dismissal in some circles is that it remains a compromised film. After a gruelling six months worth of shooting Marlon Brando either ran out of steam while editing, or the film was finally just taken away from him or most likely, both. It is known for sure that Brando's original five hour cut was whittled down to the 141 minutes we have now and the incredibly bleak ending was changed. Brando would comment on it's release that it was no longer his film but he would still get a Director's Guild nomination, which he would lose to Robert Wise.
Even in it's compromised state One Eyed Jacks remains a visionary film and a totally unique one. It's impact can be felt in the American Westerns that followed by Sam Peckinpah, Monte Hellman and Arthur Penn; and also in the European westerns that would gain such prominence just a few years later. One Eyed Jacks seems like a clear precursor, not only to Sergio Leone, to a breed of mystical European Westerns like Sergio Corbucci's The Grand Silence and Enzo Castellari's Keoma.
It all started out as a novel called The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider. Sam Peckinpah optioned the book and wrote the original script, much of which made its way into the final product. Peckinpah was soon replaced after not seeing eye to eye with Brando, as was original director Stanley Kubrick. Brando decided to take the film on himself and he set out to create a piece of art that was 'gray and human'.
Brando surrounded himself with some of the finest character actors in Hollywood, including his friend Karl Malden. The astonishing cast would feature Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Larry Duran and Timothy Carey. Talented Mexican actors Katy Jurado and Pina Pellicer also signed up.
Shooting was originally scheduled for just a month in California's beautiful Big Sur but six months later Brando had shot almost seven times as much footage as most films. This was said to have shown his inexperience but when you watch the film you can see what Brando had in mind. The film is filled with multi-shot and multi-angled takes, as though Brando wanted to conceivably get every bit of emotion out of his actors that he could. Watching One Eyed Jacks now, even in its mutilated state, one always feels they are watching something very controlled and thought out. The production is fascinating in it's obsessive detail, but it's easy to see that this would have been a hard shoot for everyone (doubly so for Brando as he was subjecting himself as an actor to his obsessiveness as director).
The film's plot is simple, Brando is Rio and he is best friends with his robbing buddy Dad (Karl Malden in one of his great performances). Dad betrays Rio and Rio is sent to prison for five years. In that time Dad becomes a sheriff and Rio becomes more and more obsessed with revenge. The film could have played like a simple revenge tale but Brando turns it into a haunting, existential and masochistic nightmare.
Brando gives one of his loneliest and intense performances as Rio. Often shooting himself positioned slightly away from the other cast and often in close up to heighten the sense of isolation his character is going through. This is a man who never really gets out of the prison he was stuck in for five years. Much like Soderbergh's The Limey we are presented with a character essentially seeking revenge on himself and the audience follows him down his path knowing he'll never find the justice necessary to ease his pain.
The film's most famous moment is undoubtedly the whipping scene. Easily one of the most brutal scenes filmed up to that point in American cinema, the prolonged whipping literally brings Brando and the audience to it's knees. The film is also uncommonly tender at times and the scenes between Brando and the young Pina Pellicer are unforgettable. The moment when Brando admits that he lied to her and took her virtue just as part of his revenge on her stepfather (Malden) is one of his great moments and Pina's comment of, "You only shame yourself" is heartbreaking.
The lovely Pina Pellicer would take her own life just three years after shooting this film. It was a tragic loss and her performance in One Eyed Jacks is splendidly vulnerable and she would be awarded the best actress award at the San Sebastian film festival. She brings a tenderness out in Brando that few other actresses ever could.
Brando is magnificent throughout the entire film. His Rio is one of the most complex and multi-layered parts he ever played. He was also at the peak of his physical beauty here and the slightly added weight he had put on only adds to it. He cuts an imposing, muscular figure throughout the film and along with Elvis he remains the most masculine and beautiful man that ever appeared in front of a camera.
The film falls apart at the end. This is where the studio interference really hurt it and the last shot feels cheap and hollow, like it's from a different film.
It would perform decently at the box office but the wonderful cinematography of Charles Lang got the film its only Oscar nomination.
Brando was reportedly deeply disturbed by the studio interference and would never direct again. He was entering into ten years of some of his most underrated and sincere work, even if the films were often nowhere near as good as he was.
Ten years after One Eyed Jacks Brando would get the roles in The Godfather and Last Tango In Paris that would solidify him as the greatest of all actors. After Tango he stopped giving his heart to us and I often think of his later career and life in comparison to the shot in One Eyed Jacks when he realizes Dad has betrayed him. He's alone on top of a hill and a dust storm is developing around him, the wind is blowing and we see him looking and then we see the realization on his face that he's been left behind. It is one of the loneliest and most isolating moments in all of American cinema, and the look on Brando's face tells us more about the man than any mumbled interview or biography could ever hope to.

Just a few years after One Eyed Jacks left theaters Monte Hellman would deliver Ride In The Whirlwind and Sergio Leone would unleash A Fistful Of Dollars. Sam Peckinpah finally got to make something resembling his version of The Authentic Death Of Hendry Jones in 1973. Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid would share similar traits and scenes with One Eyed Jacks, have a troubled shooting and also be taken away and recut by the studio.

And the missing One Eyed Jacks footage? Legend has it that it was destroyed by Brando himself but I hold out a hope that it's still out there just waiting for someone to discover it. Chances are that if Brando said he destroyed it, then it is still around. This was a man who chose to tell us the truth only in his films and he was never more honest than he was in One Eyed Jacks.

Images From My All Time Favorite Films: Sam Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

"Something inside me tells me you won't show.
I know you're carrying heat
What for God only knows.
Cable why'd you leave me,
Cable Hogue where've you been?
I just wanted to say goodbye,
So much to say goodbye.
Wanted to say goodbye to all my friends in case I die."
-John Cale, "Cable Hogue"-












***The first of several Peckinpah films that will eventually appear in this series.***