This review refers to the BCI Eclipse(Brentwood Home Video) DVD edition of "One Eyed Jacks"(1961).....
"One Eyed Jacks", is the first and only film directed by Marlon Brando.It's a great western adventure with lots of action, romance and some great scenery.The story is a captivating one. Brando("Rio") stars with Karl Malden("Dad Longworth") as two bank robbers on the run from the Federales in Mexico, They are pinned down and only one can get away to get fresh horses for their escape. Dad is the one to go, but greed gets the best of him. He takes off with the loot and leaves Rio to be captured, and sent to a Mexican Jail for 5 long years. He escapes and goes looking for Dad, finally finding him in Monterey, California, where "Dad" is now a tough Sheriff and has a beautiful step-daughter, Louisa. The action and the romance heat up along the beautiful California coastline as Rio is bent on revenge and falls for the beautiful Louisa.
Pina Pellicer won a Best Actress for her role as Louisa at the Sebastion International Film Festival, and Charles Lang was nominated for the exquiste cinematography. The film also stars Katy Jurado(always wonderful), and western legends Slim Pickens and Ben Johnson.The music by Hugo Friedhofer is beautiful and captures the essence of the story.
This DVD by BCI is a decent transfer of this 42 year old film.There is not much sign of age. It's not as pristeen as you would expect from a big studio release, but you can't go wrong for the price. The colors are nice(although a bit dated) and dialouge clear.The California coastline looks very inviting.
This film may also be purchased in a 4 film set of western legends. "Legends of the West"(also BCI) includes this one with "The Sundowners" starring Robert Preston and Robert Sterling,"The Big Trees" starring Kirk Douglas, and "Vengeance Valley" with Burt Lancaster and Robert Walker.
This is classic Brando...enjoy...Laurie
HORRENDOUS DVD QUALITY
I bought this 2003 Westlake Entertainment Group release of One-Eyed Jacks thinking that because of the price, it was the best version of the movie available on DVD. If it is, I'm disgusted. It is not in widescreen and the image is not sharp, much less crisp. I paid about $14.95 for this disc. To my great disappointment it's a horrible transfer. And I don't think I'm being picky. Granted, it is only my opinion, but I was not satisfied with the quality at all. I'm going to wait for the studio that made the film to eventually (hopefully) release a more acceptable version. I give this DVD version one star because zero stars is not an option.
terrific directorial debut
Brando fine as director. He does excellent turn as the Rio character in the film. Malden, as usual, top notch as menacing heavy. Beautifully photographed. It's too bad Brando didn't direct a few more films.
One of the most thoughtful films about World War II, this 1958 Edward Dmytryk (The Left Hand of God) drama, based on a novel by Irwin Shaw, tells parallel stories of two American soldiers (Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin) and one German officer (Marlon Brando), whose war experiences we follow until they intersect outside a concentration camp. Martin plays what he calls "a likable coward," Clift is intense as a Jewish GI, and Brando experiments with the limits of his part as a Nazi reevaluating his beliefs. Legend has it that Clift accused Brando of bleeding-heart excessiveness. Interestingly, the two Method actors share no scenes together. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Marlon Brando - Montgomery Clift Director(s): Edward Dmytryk DVD Release Date: Released the 06 November 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Marlon Brando's famous "I coulda been a contenda" speech is such a warhorse by now that a lot of people probably feel they've seen this picture already, even if they haven't. And many of those who have seen it may have forgotten how flat-out thrilling it is. For all its great dramatic and cinematic qualities, and its fiery social criticism, Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront is also one of the most gripping melodramas of political corruption and individual heroism ever made in the United States, a five-star gut-grabber. Shot on location around the docks of Hoboken, New Jersey, in the mid-1950s, it tells the fact-based story of a longshoreman (Brando's Terry Malloy) who is blackballed and savagely beaten for informing against the mobsters who have taken over his union and sold it out to... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 23 October 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial 1973 film stars Marlon Brando as an expatriate American in Paris reeling from his wife's suicide and entering into a nihilistic sexual relationship with a young woman (Maria Schneider). The film is still shocking, not simply because of its (sometime unconventional) sexual sequences, but because Brando's protagonist needs his liaison with Schneider's character to remain anonymous, an experience not to be shared but indulged on either end. Bertolucci is also operating on subtext here: in a way, Brando's nonengaging engagement is a metaphor for a certain attitude toward directing movies. Jean-Pierre Léaud costars, but the film is more than anything a vehicle for a great performance by Brando. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Marlon Brando - Maria Schneider Director(s): Bernardo Bertolucci DVD Release Date: Released the 15 August 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Looking for a benchmark in movie acting? Breakthrough performances don't come much more electrifying than Marlon Brando's animalistic turn as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Sweaty, brutish, mumbling, yet with the balanced grace of a prizefighter, Brando storms through the role--a role he had originated in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Stanley and his wife, Stella (as in Brando's oft-mimicked line, "Hey, Stellaaaaaa!"), are the earthy couple in New Orleans's French Quarter whose lives are upended by the arrival of Stella's sister, Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). Blanche, a disturbed, lyrical, faded Southern belle, is immediately drawn into a battle of wills with Stanley, beautifully captured in the differing styles of the two actors.... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vivien Leigh - Marlon Brando Director(s): Elia Kazan DVD Release Date: Released the 18 May 1999 Usually ships in 8 to 10 days
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Although The Men was Marlon Brando's first movie, all the elements of his acting style were in place for the viewers to see. The supporting cast is effective, particularly a young Jack Webb, who shows an acting range beyond that seen in his most famous role as Sgt. Joe Friday in the TV series Dragnet. A Streetcar Named Desire may have made Brando a movie star, but The Men put him on the map. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Marlon Brando - Teresa Wright Director(s): Fred Zinnemann DVD Release Date: Released the 16 December 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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