One Eyed Jacks (1961)
Betrayed by his partner and left to face capture alone after a bank robbery in Mexico, the outlaw Rio tracks the man down years later in Monterey, only to find him respectably remarried as the town's sheriff — and to fall for his stepdaughter along the way.
Marlon Brando’s only directing credit, One Eyed Jacks took over a year to shoot and edit after Brando replaced original director Stanley Kubrick, and spent decades circulating only in ragged public-domain prints before Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg backed a full 4K restoration in 2016.
Background
One Eyed Jacks is the only film Marlon Brando ever directed, a production with a famously difficult history: Brando took over directing duties after original director Stanley Kubrick departed during pre-production, and the shoot and editing process together stretched past a year, far longer than was typical for a studio Western of the period. The story follows an outlaw betrayed by his partner after a robbery in Mexico, who tracks the man down years later only to find him respectably remarried as a small town’s sheriff.
What to watch for
For decades the film circulated mainly in degraded public-domain prints, a result of its tangled production and distribution history, until filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg backed a full restoration completed in 2016 that returned the film’s visual quality closer to its original theatrical presentation. Watch for Brando’s performance as both actor and director, and for the way the film’s long, troubled production shaped its unusually personal, brooding tone compared to more conventional Westerns of its era.
