The Comedians (1967)

So much average

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

People are voting emotionally.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Director Glenville's fondness for TV-style close-ups seems deliberately designed to emphasize the inadequacies in Elizabeth Taylor's performance. The scenes between Taylor and Burton are particularly slow and tedious. At least two of their clinches have even been step-printed to make them run longer! When they have a chance to strut their stuff, the support players fare much better. True, they all have far more interesting material to work with, although Elizabeth even manages to make one of her scenes with Peter Ustinov boring. Fortunately, Guinness delivers one of his best performances. Lillian Gish and Paul Ford are along mainly for laughs and exit halfway through. After their departure, the film literally staggers to an inconclusive and unsatisfying conclusion. An effective use of natural locations is about the only strong feature in this dull, uninteresting, long-winded effort.

Readers of Graham Greene will fall for this movie, and in particular the portrayal of Brown by the late Richard Burton, who may well play the perfect Greene anti-hero. Burton brings a subtlety to the role which may well be beyond the skill level of any actor working today. His is a haunting, yet totally convincing performance of a cynic, sinner, and dissolute sort searching for an excuse to remain alive, and initially finding that excuse only in pleasures of the flesh.The film seems to have been lost in the shuffle, and that is unfair. While not easy to grasp---at least for those unfamiliar with the works of Greene---it is full of outstanding performances by some of the industry's former greats. Amongst Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, James Earl Jones, Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the only one who comes up short---delivering a wooden and uninteresting performance that makes an elicit romance unattractive out of boredom rather than sin--- is Taylor. Everyone else is superb, including the sidebars played for both a touch of humor and moral rectitude by Paul Ford and Lillian Gish.Action junkies will be unimpressed with the pace of the film and its low key approach to the violence, but anyone who has experienced a land where brutality and oppression rule the day will find the seeming banality of evil, as portrayed in the film, remarkably realistic and properly underplayed.

Not one reviewer noted the effective performance of perennial comic straight man Paul Ford, here cast against type in the only serious movie part he ever played. As the naive but heroic Smith, Ford projects all the better attributes imputed to the American character by the notoriously anti-American Graham GreeneSmith and his wife--portrayed by the still elegant Lilian Gish who actually was a star in silent films--are veterans of the civil rights movement in the U.S.A. They like and respect Black people and want to help them, which is why they have come to Haiti with money to invest. They are idealists whose ideals are shattered by what they see in Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti. Ignorant, even deluded, when they arrive, they learn fast. And the Smiths are not intimidated by the regime's thugs, the infamous **Tonton Macoutes**, who have everyone in the country terrorized.For those who grew up seeing Paul Ford as the perennially befuddled Col. Hall on the old Phil Silvers comedy TV show, or in movie parts as some blow-hard figure of ridicule, this very surprising performance is worth renting this movie for.

(There are Spoilers) Set in the brutal and impoverish dictatorship of 1960's Haiti where President Papa Doc Duvaliers notorious secret police the Tonton Macoute had eyes and ears in every wall and under every rock in the country.British Major Jones, Alec Guinness, thinking that he's in with the Haitian government gets the surprise of his life as he's grabbed beaten and humiliated by the Tonton as soon as he stepped off the boat. His crime? having received some $300,000.00 back in Miami for arms from the Haitian military and not delivering the goods. It turned out the major had no idea that his contact back in Miami a brigadier Pike took off with the cash. Yet he like the Haitian Col. Bische, who was the Majors contact here on the island, had to pay for Pike's crimes.While Jones in cooling off in a hot Tonton prison cell Brown, Richard Burton, who came off the same boat with the Major is back on the island to run his bankrupt hotel in downtown Port-au-Prince. Brown had been away on business in New York for three months and now can't wait to get back to Martha Pineda (Elizbeath Taylor), his not so secret love. Martha just happens to be the wife of the America Ambassador Mr. Pineda, Peter Ustinov, to Haiti. Brown is a bit taken up when he comes back home to his hotel to find the dead body a a friend and local politician Philipot in the hotel's empty swimming pool. Brown is told by the butler Joseph that he was murdered by the Tonton for saying unkindly things about Papa Doc after he got himself drunk in a seafront bar.The movie goes into a number of unrelated and boring stories with an elderly American couple the Smiths, Paul Ford & Lilian Gish,showing up at the hotel. They turned out to be the only guest there with Mr. Smith now trying to get the Papa Doc regime to buy his natural and healthy food products that he's pushing . There's also a number of bloody and stomach churning Voodoo ceremonies including the biting off the head of a live chicken and some of the people present drinking themselves blind drunk on 150% plus proof rum. This drinking orgy is done in order to conjure up the ancient spirits to do battle against the brutal Papa Doc regime.Brown even though he's having an affair with a married woman, Martha, is extremely jealous of anyone who as much as even talks to her, even Martha's Teddy Bear husband the ambassador. Which makes him anything but likable or sympathetic but a low down and creepy sleaze-ball to the audience. Even Major Jones is later seen selling out by going along with the Papa Doc boys to gain his freedom. It takes the bravery of young Henri Philopot, George Stanford, and his good friend and the Brown and Pineda family physician Dr. Magiot, James Earl Jones, to bring whatever good and courageousness there's still left in both Brown and Jones out into the open to get them to take off in the hills and mountains to do battle.Overly long, two and a half hours, movie with a lot of meaningless scenes in it that if cut out would have actually improved the film instead of water-logging it. Dick & Liz, Burton & Taylor, try to get it on all throughout the film without any real sparks flying in the some half dozen scenes that they were in together. Brown was so psychotic in his jealousy of Martha having an affair, with anyone but himself, even fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book. Martha's lying to him about having an affair with that stuffy and obnoxious BS artist Major Jones, hardy her type of man to spend a evening in bed with. This was done just to snap that cranky nut-job out of his self-induced depression.Major Jones gets high on rum and drives out into the hills, with Brown behind the Wheel, to join the anti-Papa Doc Haitian resistance tells Brown, not knowing that Martha is his main squeeze, that he had it on with Martha which was just harmless juvenile-like or locker room boasting on the Major's part. It almost cost both his and Brown's life as the insanely jealous Mister Brown, hearing of the Major's imaginary conquest, stepped down hard on the gas peddle as if he wanted to drive his car off a cliff and almost ended up doing so!