SPECULATION & CONFIRMATION: Marlon Brando's ONE EYED JACKS (dir by Marlon Brando, w/ Marlon Brando, Pina Pellicer, Karl Malden, Slim Pickens, Ben Johnson, Universal, 141mns, 1961)
A dynamite movie, even if the ending falters into a kind of conventionality the rest of the film miraculously avoids, ONE EYED JACKS is great for what it IS and an all-time movie "what if" for what it could have been.
For you see, dear readers, ONE EYED JACKS, a western about sensitive outlaw Rio (Brando) joining up with a bank robbery gang so he can get revenge on Sheriff Dad Longworth (Malden), the man who double crossed him five years ago, was originally supposed to be directed by Stanley Kubrick.
So let's start with that "what if" and then get to the "what is".
First, Kubrick spent 1+ years of pre-production on the movie. And it does feel like quite a bit of Kubrick made it into the final movie.
Kubrick brought on his Paths of Glory screenwriter, Calder Willingham, while Sam Peckinpah did an uncredited pass of the script along with The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling.
The movie is cast with Kubrick regulars Timothy Carrey and Elisha Cook Jr. and a future Kubrick all-star, Slim Pickens, as the slimy deputy, Lon.
Framing and vistas like this feel both Brando-esque and Kubrickian.
There's a filmmaking rigor to the storytelling as well up until the final scene which the studio mandated to lighten what was supposed to be a much darker finale. But until that moment, the story really does focus on the corrosive and blinding effects of hate and revenge
There's also a visual dynamism to the off the wall location (California's Monterey making this a western on the beach) that feels very Kubrickian.
Finally, the look and shot selection of the movie itself feels very much akin to Kubrick's next project, SPARTACUS, leaving this writer to wonder if some of the movie had been storyboarded and/or shot selected prior to Kubrick's departure.
Brando and Kubrick butted heads and Kubrick always suspected Brando secretly wanted to direct the picture himself. Also, as has been said in other articles, it's hard to think of two more difficult personalities trying to work together. Kubrick, Type A, OCD and Brando, a genius in his own prep and acting method, who certainly would not have loved countless takes and marionette like direction of actors.
Still, there must have been a mutual acknowledgement and respect of each other's clear talent and skills. The two did prep the movie together and the final project shows the fruits of that collaboration.
Now to the "What is".
Rio (Brando) and Dad Longworth (Malden) get surrounded by Federalis after a botched bank robbery. Scenes like this presage the rise of the spaghetti western just a few years away…
What is. . .is that ONE EYED JACKS is an incredible movie. A kind of bridge between Brando and Elia Kazan's 1950's work and the violent spaghetti westerns just around the corner. Brando brings the same kind of truth and spontaneity to his directing that he does to his acting.
Brando's Rio and Malden's Dad are bank robbers in Mexico who get trapped by circling Federalis on a hill in a sandstorm (an incredible sequence courtesy partially of DP Charles Lang) . Sensing certain death, Rio honorably tricks Dad into thinking Dad has won a bet and gained the ability to leave and get horses for the two of them.
But when Dad gets the horses, he realizes he also has the gold. . .and leaves Rio to die.
Five years later, having surrendered on that hill, Rio escapes a horrific Mexican prison with his cell mate, and makes his way back across the border. Looking for revenge.
Damn this man was beautiful.
Dad has gone "reputable" and is now the sheriff of the coastal Californian town Monterey. Dad has a beautiful wife and a beautiful stepdaughter Louisa (the incredible ethereal Mexican actress Pina Pellicer).
Rio has come to Monterrey with a bank robbing gang headed by a patient if mercenary Bob Emory (Ben Johnson, always amazing) to find out just why Dad never came back.
Though Rio and Dad act as if they've reconciled, they both know each wants the other dead. And Rio's romance with Dad's stepdaughter, Luisa, complicates everything that much more.
We could write a whole long piece about the layers of psycho-sexual strangeness in this movie. Brando notoriously had issues with his own father. And he produced this movie with his father with a main bad guy named "Dad".
It's hard to do justice to the movie with the synopsis. The movie is at turns brutal, mischievous, gorgeous, and deeply felt. A great bit involves Brando stealing or buying jewelry and claiming the trinkets are gifts from his dead mother when seducing women.
There are also sequences that play like SEQUENCES. The early trapped in a sandstorm with Federalis sequence. A sudden saloon showdown with a bestial Timothy Carrey. A drunken fiesta that gets out of control. A crucifixion like sadistic whipping. The vistas of tumultuous oceans makes ONE EYED JACKS play like a western VERTIGO sometimes.
And Brando's instinct to find truth and surprise in character extends to his approach with his entire ensemble.
Brando gets everyone to be truthful so that all the key performances are electric. Brando plays his Rio like a kind of THE WILD ONE of the west. Insolent. Sincere. If not exactly good, Rio is at least fair and not totally morally bankrupt like most of those around him.
There's also an acknowledgement of entitled racism (against the Mexicans) to the white characters that is near unheard of in a Hollywood western of that time.
The impossibly beautiful and poised Mexican actress Pina Pellicer as Luisa.
The central love story between Brando and Pellicer, if ultimately ending in conventionality due to the reshoots, is still powerful and moving. We'll not spoil what the original ending was meant to be. But if you look it up, you'll realize that may also have been another Kubrick touch as it would have driven home (brutally) the destructiveness of revenge.
Ultimately, while ONE EYED JACKS may have flaws at the edges (and it does) and may not rise to the level of total greatness, it is a kind of beautiful strange beast. Hell, it's a masterpiece in its own way. Even if it doesn't quite bullseye all its shots, it courses with so many eccentric touches of Kazan, Brando, Kubrick, classical Hollywood craftsmanship that it's one to study for sure.
Like so many of Brando's trail blazing qualities as a performer, he may have also trail blazed in genre here. For ONE EYED JACKS creates something unique and shocking enough to point the way for the dark brutal westerns of Leone and Peckinpah that are just around the corner.
Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club
ONE EYED JACKS can be streamed on Peacock as of this writing (June 2025). The movie was restored by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg through the Film Foundation and Universal Studios.