Haiti has been suffering like no other part of the world for decades. "The Comedians" takes aim at one of its most awful periods, the late-1960s misrule of "Papa Doc" Duvalier. The heart is in the right place, but the film suffers from its commitment to bear witness to unrelieved misery and hopelessness at the expense of story or believable characterization.
Brown (Richard Burton) is trying futilely to offload his Haitian hotel and make a clean break from a life spent in furtive sex with Martha Pineda (Elizabeth Taylor), wife of a foreign ambassador (Peter Ustinov). Brown doesn't care about politics, but politics has a way of caring about him. Soon he finds himself pressed for help by noble rebels fighting a hopeless cause, as well as a shady arms salesman (Alec Guinness) who bites off more than he can chew.
One of the more misleadingly titled films ever, "The Comedians" has barely a laugh on offer, except for the risible sight of Guinness in drag and blackface somehow sneaking past a couple of suspicious black policemen. Its dire tone is a weight, and so is its 150-minute running time. With such a great cast and a script by Graham Greene adapted from his own novel, the film is never a complete bore, but it doesn't engage, either. As other reviewers here note, it comes off as a kind of muddy replay of "Casablanca," without that classic's snappy dialogue or sense of hope.
Burton and Taylor were of course the couple of the moment when "The Comedians" came out, and the film plays to this shamelessly. The film's first half focuses on their pathetic relationship. Burton's Brown is so jealous of Martha he can't even bear the thought of her spending time with her husband and son. Martha struggles with his growling idiocy because, well she's Taylor and he's Burton and it's what audiences were supposed to have wanted.
He seems to be coasting on his sullen, broody charm, while she wrestles with a dicey accent and lack of motivation. Poor Ustinov is reduced to a few moments of cow-eyed impotent sympathy. At least the film looks great, thanks to Henri Decaë's sharp cinematography and the sun-drenched splendor of Dahomey, today Benin, which stands in for Haiti rather well. Director Peter Glenville likes too much shots of people talking to each other for long stretches, but he works in some sharp transitions which cut the torpor factor down somewhat.
The main problem with the film is Greene. He does change the story up some from the novel, but leaves in a silly subplot about a couple staying at Brown's hotel who plan to export their vegetarian ideals to Haiti ("This could be the beginning of our greatest achievement" Greene has the husband say to the wife as they step off their ship, apropos of nothing) only to discover Haiti is a place where dreams go to die. Paul Ford and Lillian Gish add luster to the sterling cast, but they slow down the story for more grief about poor Haiti, a point the film presses at every turn.
Graham also saddles his cast with some bad lines in furtherance of this point. "Haiti means hate, hate!" yells one grieving widow when her husband's body is stolen by some Tontons Macoutes. "He lives for them, and they die for him," Brown muses about Papa Doc.
Guinness's character, H. O. Jones, is another odd duck. "If you can't be good, be careful," he tells Brown at the outset, before proceeding to be neither. We discover in time that he's a bit of a fraud as well as a cheat, yet for a globe-trotting bounder he has no apparent survival skills other than calling on Brown to bail him out on the basis of their shared Englishness. When he begins to win Martha's affections, Brown naturally finds new cause for his jealousy.
The best part of the movie, like others say here, is a scene late in the movie where Brown and Jones have a heart-to-heart and Jones shows real remorse over a misspent life. Here both actors manage some memorable work, and Glenville also keeps things interesting in an understated way by making us wonder about Brown's motives, which involves some clever misdirection. It's not quite enough to save the film, but it makes it feel like less of a waste.
Roscoe Lee Browne and Raymond St. Jacques are also notable in minor roles, Browne so minor as a journalist you might miss him except for the way he seems to gracefully speak for a better Haiti without committing himself to anything dangerous. St. Jacques, with his crisp bearing and hard glare, steals every scene he's in as a nasty captain, Concesseur, so much so you wish Greene gave him a bit of ambiguity. Instead, he just kills a lot and tells Brown white people disgust him because their skin reminds him of "a toad's belly."
You get the point long ago. Haiti is a bad place. Unfortunately, "The Comedians" never advances much from that position, and the result is too often labored, if never entirely as hopeless as its message.
Brown (Richard Burton) is trying futilely to offload his Haitian hotel and make a clean break from a life spent in furtive sex with Martha Pineda (Elizabeth Taylor), wife of a foreign ambassador (Peter Ustinov). Brown doesn't care about politics, but politics has a way of caring about him. Soon he finds himself pressed for help by noble rebels fighting a hopeless cause, as well as a shady arms salesman (Alec Guinness) who bites off more than he can chew.
One of the more misleadingly titled films ever, "The Comedians" has barely a laugh on offer, except for the risible sight of Guinness in drag and blackface somehow sneaking past a couple of suspicious black policemen. Its dire tone is a weight, and so is its 150-minute running time. With such a great cast and a script by Graham Greene adapted from his own novel, the film is never a complete bore, but it doesn't engage, either. As other reviewers here note, it comes off as a kind of muddy replay of "Casablanca," without that classic's snappy dialogue or sense of hope.
Burton and Taylor were of course the couple of the moment when "The Comedians" came out, and the film plays to this shamelessly. The film's first half focuses on their pathetic relationship. Burton's Brown is so jealous of Martha he can't even bear the thought of her spending time with her husband and son. Martha struggles with his growling idiocy because, well she's Taylor and he's Burton and it's what audiences were supposed to have wanted.
He seems to be coasting on his sullen, broody charm, while she wrestles with a dicey accent and lack of motivation. Poor Ustinov is reduced to a few moments of cow-eyed impotent sympathy. At least the film looks great, thanks to Henri Decaë's sharp cinematography and the sun-drenched splendor of Dahomey, today Benin, which stands in for Haiti rather well. Director Peter Glenville likes too much shots of people talking to each other for long stretches, but he works in some sharp transitions which cut the torpor factor down somewhat.
The main problem with the film is Greene. He does change the story up some from the novel, but leaves in a silly subplot about a couple staying at Brown's hotel who plan to export their vegetarian ideals to Haiti ("This could be the beginning of our greatest achievement" Greene has the husband say to the wife as they step off their ship, apropos of nothing) only to discover Haiti is a place where dreams go to die. Paul Ford and Lillian Gish add luster to the sterling cast, but they slow down the story for more grief about poor Haiti, a point the film presses at every turn.
Graham also saddles his cast with some bad lines in furtherance of this point. "Haiti means hate, hate!" yells one grieving widow when her husband's body is stolen by some Tontons Macoutes. "He lives for them, and they die for him," Brown muses about Papa Doc.
Guinness's character, H. O. Jones, is another odd duck. "If you can't be good, be careful," he tells Brown at the outset, before proceeding to be neither. We discover in time that he's a bit of a fraud as well as a cheat, yet for a globe-trotting bounder he has no apparent survival skills other than calling on Brown to bail him out on the basis of their shared Englishness. When he begins to win Martha's affections, Brown naturally finds new cause for his jealousy.
The best part of the movie, like others say here, is a scene late in the movie where Brown and Jones have a heart-to-heart and Jones shows real remorse over a misspent life. Here both actors manage some memorable work, and Glenville also keeps things interesting in an understated way by making us wonder about Brown's motives, which involves some clever misdirection. It's not quite enough to save the film, but it makes it feel like less of a waste.
Roscoe Lee Browne and Raymond St. Jacques are also notable in minor roles, Browne so minor as a journalist you might miss him except for the way he seems to gracefully speak for a better Haiti without committing himself to anything dangerous. St. Jacques, with his crisp bearing and hard glare, steals every scene he's in as a nasty captain, Concesseur, so much so you wish Greene gave him a bit of ambiguity. Instead, he just kills a lot and tells Brown white people disgust him because their skin reminds him of "a toad's belly."
You get the point long ago. Haiti is a bad place. Unfortunately, "The Comedians" never advances much from that position, and the result is too often labored, if never entirely as hopeless as its message.