ONE-EYED JACKS
Tit. it.: “I due volti della vendetta”; Scen.: Guy Trosper, Calder Willingham, dal romanzo “The Authentic Death of Henry Jones” di Charles Neider; F.: Charles Lang Jr;M.: Archie Marshek; Scgf.: Hal Pereira, J. McMillan Johnson; Cost.: Yvonne Wood; Trucco: Wally Westmore, Phil Rhodes (per Marlon Brando); Mu.: Hugo Friedhofer; Int.: Marlon Brando (Rio), Karl Malden (Dad Longworth), Pina Pellicer (Louisa), Katy Jurado (Maria), Ben Johnson (Bob Amory), Slim Pickens (Lon), Larry Duran (Modesto), Sam Gilman (Harvey Johnson), Timothy Carey (Howard Tetley), Miriam Colon (“Redhead”), Elisha Cook, Jr. (cassiera della banca), Rudolph Acosta (capo dei “rurales”), Ray Teal (barista); Prod.: Frank O. Rosenberg per Pennebaker/Paramount 35mm. D.: 141’ Col.
Film Notes
This is the last film to be shot in VistaVision. One-Eyed Jacks updates a traditional genre, like the western, with an individual autonomy of research and language. It is a fascinating and very personal film. One can notice Japanese models and a bizarre take on realism, before they became clichés, with the village of Chinese fishermen, the Mexican prison and the Californian town with its fiesta, that straddles two cultures, one deep-rooted and ancient and the other developing but already the “master”. Brando’s performance is on a par with the film. He is so into the character and the film, his character and his film, that he wins over any incompetence and excess in one. More like William S. Hart, the silent “Rio Jim”, than John Wayne or Gary Cooper of the talking pictures, his Rio rouses a romantic and obscure adolescence.
Goffredo Fofi, Tony Thomas, Marlon Brando, Roma 1982