354 - One-Eyed Jacks, United States, 1961. Dir. Marlon Brando.

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

354 - One-Eyed Jacks, United States, 1961.  Dir. Marlon Brando.

A one-eyed Jack is a playing card of the Jack (Knight, Knave) value where the face of the Jack is shown in profile.  These are the Jack of Spades and the Jack of Hearts.  Because the Jack of Spades and the Jack of Hearts are shown in profile, we see only one eye.  The Jack of Clubs and the Jack of Diamonds are shown facing forwards, and we see both eyes.

In certain card games, the one-eyed Jacks hold special value.  In some forms of poker, the dealer may also call one-eyed Jacks as being special.

So what does it mean when you call someone a One-Eyed Jack?

He is two-faced.  Like the moon, you can only ever see the side of him that is facing you.  The other side of his face is hidden.  Dark.  And possibly different.  He shows you his friendly side.  He hides his true side.

Rio and Dad are partners.  Bank robbers.  They are in the middle of robbing a bank in Mexico.  They are successful.  They get away.

But they stop to enjoy the company of women.

Dad is upstairs in a woman's room.  He takes off his shoes.  He woos her.

Rio is in the enclosed porch area of a building.  He tells his woman how good she makes him feel.  He gives her a ring that used to be his mother's.  He actually took it off a girl in the bank earlier in the day.  But his story touches the woman, and she begins to fall for him.

The posse catches up to them.  They leave in a hurry.  Rio takes his ring back.  Dad runs out without his shoes.

They ride their horses to the top of a bluff.  They succeed in defending themselves for now.  But the chasers go back to get help.  In a few hours the men will be surrounded on all sides.  They have lost one horse.  Their other horse is tired.  They cannot run.

Rio remembers a stick town with a corral about four miles down the canyon.  One of them could ride their horse there and get two fresh horses.  He could come back and they could mount and then ride off and continue their flight.

They draw to see who goes.  Dad picks one of Rio's fists.  The one with the bullet in it goes.  Dad picks the one with the bullet in it.  Dad goes.  Rio has palmed a bullet in both fists.  Rio rigged it so that Dad would go.  It is not obvious why Rio would want Dad to go.  Is he just tired?  Because the one who goes has the two bags of gold and the horse.  And he might not come back.

What happens next?

You guessed it.

Dad does not come back.

In his defense he is riding barefoot on a tired horse.  And when he gets to the corral in the stick town it takes longer than expected to buy the horses.  And the boy, the son of the man who sells them, accidentally knocks over his saddle bag.  And all the gold spills out.  Dad has to get on his knees and pick it all up.  In front of the man and his son.  Now, that is awkward.  He tosses them a couple gold coins and rides off.

By now the posse is back and surrounding Rio up on the bluff.  And the man and the boy from the corral in the stick town may be reporting Dad to their local authorities.

Dad cuts and runs.

Is he justified?  Not really.  He has abandoned his friend.  Dad goes free with two bags of gold as Rio goes to prison in the Sonora, Mexico pen.

And over the next five years he never looks back.  Never looks for his friend.  Never tries to find out what happened.  Never tries to help him.  He does not even know he was captured and put in jail.  He simply starts life anew.

When Rio gets out of the pen five years later, he has one thing on his mind.  Find Dad.  Exact vengeance.  Dad is a One-Eyed Jack.  A man who betrayed his lifelong friend.

Rio and Dad are played by lifelong acting friends Marlon Brando and Karl Malden.

They first appeared together on screen in Elia Kazan's film version of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) as Stanley Kowalski and Harold Mitch Mitchell.  ("Stella!")

Then they made history, again, in Kazan's classic On the Waterfront (1954), as Terry Malloy and Father Barry.  ("I coulda been a contender.")

Malden is a strong foil to Brando.  He is the straight-laced good guy to Brando's wild man.  So here they give us a fresh variation on the theme.  Malden's character Dad becomes the honorable Sheriff of Monterey, with a wife and step-daughter, but he begins life as a bank robber and a traitor to his own friend, the embodiment of no honor among thieves.  And he disguises his prominent appearance with both accoutrement and character work.

Who is the director of this film?

None other than Marlon Brando himself.  In the only film he directed.

How does he do?  Just fine.  He is smart enough to have at his side an outstanding DP, eighteen-time Oscar-nominated and one-time winner Charles Lang, who was nominated for this one and who won for A Farewell to Arms (1932).  One-Eyed Jacks celebrates the open expanses of the real locations, from Sonora to Durango to Monterey to Death Valley to Pebble Beach.

It is a two-hour, twenty-one minute film that never seems long.

Rio's revenge does not come easily, if at all.  There is that step-daughter.  And another man, the deputy Lon Dedrick, played by Slim Pickens.  And his own gang, Bob and Harvey (Ben Johnson and Sam Gilman).  And his own conflicted feelings.

Maybe he could let it go.  Maybe he could forgive.

Or maybe it is too late.