One-Eyed Jacks (1961) | Dual format release

Dir: Marlon Brando | Writer: Guy Trosper | Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Pina Pellicer, Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson | 142min | Western | US

ONE-EYED JACKS Marlon Brando’s directorial debut – in which he also stars – has a moody sensuous Baroque appeal thanks to a superb and sultry-looking superb Mexican female cast and Charles Lang’s burnished visuals and magnificent Monterey ‘mises en scene’. It was also nearly Stanley Kubrick’s only Western until Brando took over the controls. He plays Rio, an exotic-looking outlaw who was double-crossed his partner in crime, Dad Longworth (Malden), after the two robbed a bank. Some years later he emerges to avenge Dad who has now become a respectable pillar of the community. Based on the novel by Charles Neider, which was a re-telling of the story of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Brando made further changes to the script with Rio now killing Dad rather than the other way round. The crashing waves and wild coastlines seem to echo the restless imagery and complex inter-personal conflicts and Brando himself smoulders as a cowboy who’s not only easy on the eye but intriguing as a Romantic hero. MT

OUT ON 12 JUNE 2017 | COURTESY OF ARROW ACADEMY | SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS