Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Great Film overall

The acting in this movie is really good.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

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.

The Comedians is a film best enjoyed by those who are 30 years or older and who enjoy the wonderful stars of the 1960s. This movie is worth watching for the wonderful stars of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Alec Guinness, James Earl Jones, and Peter Ustinov. These alone make the movie. I enjoy watching the on-screen romance between the Burton and Taylor, knowing that off screen they were also in love. The movie is a prime time movie, even competing with today's movies. The biggest problems with this movie is that it is too long and too predictable. The movie is a bit slow at many points. However, I still enjoy watching and listening to the stars in the film. Enjoy the film with any snack or even with a TV dinner. I give it 4 thumbs up.

After three months in New York, English-accented Richard Burton (as Brown) returns to Haiti. He has been unable to sell his luxury hotel to the Americans. Also arriving on the boat are three friendly travelers; Mr. Burton has offered each of them rooms in his Haitian hotel. Unexpectedly, nice Alec Guinness (as Jones) is arrested and thrown into jail. The other two guests, elderly vegetarians Paul Ford (as Smith) and Lillian Gish (as Mrs. Smith) arrive safely and take Burton's "John Barrymore Suite"...In a possibly pre-arranged meeting, Mr. Burton meets French, then German-accented Elizabeth Taylor (as Martha) for sex in a car; the lovers must sneak around because she is married to Ambassador Peter Ustinov (as Pineda). Later, they are able to find a bed...Upon arriving at his hotel, Burton finds a dead body in his drained swimming pool. Haiti is under the iron-fisted rule of dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier; this explains the dead body, abduction of Mr. Guinness, and other things. The decision to adapt Graham Greene's novel is commendable, and the location convincing; however, the film is too long and fails to sustain interest. Many in "The Comedians" contribute engaging work, but Burton, Ms. Taylor and Mr. Ustinov often appear bored - and it's contagious.***** The Comedians (10/31/67) Peter Glenville ~ Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor find themselves together just a year after arguably their best film together, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Sadly, The Comedians is not one of the best films they ever made as a pair, nor is it one of the best film adaptations of a Graham Greene novel (even though Greene himself penned the screenplay). There are still pleasures to be had from a viewing of The Comedians, such as some very strong acting and amazing photography by the great Henri Decae. Plus, of course, the film is set in a time and place that have been very rarely visited in cinematic terms, so the political turmoil of 1960s Haiti lends the film a sense of freshness. Alas, the story takes too long to unfold and is done is such a low-key style that it frequently lapses into tedium. No Graham Greene story should ever be looked upon as tedious.A disillusioned white hotelier named Brown (Richard Burton) returns to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to save his troubled hotel business. But the ruthless regime of Papa Doc Duvalier has strangled the life out of Haiti, and Brown finds himself returning to a country in dire political turmoil. As he steps off the boat, Brown witnesses a British visitor named Jones (Alec Guiness) being seized by officials and dragged away to be beaten. Then a dead body turns up in his hotel swimming pool – a local politician who has made a drunken rant against Papa Doc's regime and been killed by the Tonton (Haitian secret police). Brown is determined to keep out of the political troubles but events conspire to drag him into the struggle. The deterioration of his affair with married woman Martha Pineda (Elizabeth Taylor) has Brown looking for adventure, perhaps to impress her, but more likely to find something to fill the void in his life when they inevitably break up. He helps the British guy Jones, who introduces himself as a soldier-of-fortune/arms dealer and seems to be playing the Haitian government soldiers off against the island's guerillas. Jones is eventually exposed as a compulsive liar, a 'nobody' without a shred of military experience. His tall tales have put him in a real dilemma – Papa Doc's men want him dead because they perceive him as a threat, the guerrillas want him to supply them with arms (something he can't do) in their fight for freedom! Brown's involvement with Jones drags him deeper into the struggle, forcing him to take a political standpoint and face up to his inner demons.The Comedians suffers from a lot of inter-related subplots that don't work cinematically. In the book these subplots added layers to the story, but on film they slow down an already heavy-going narrative, making it very hard to plough through the movie. A good example of this is the American couple played by Paul Ford and Lillian Gish – key players in the novel, but so peripheral in the film that they might as well have been omitted for the sake of narrative drive. Taylor is also flawed in this film – she flits in and outs of accents, her love scenes with Burton seem stifled, and her character makes no sense. Burton and Guiness emerge with the acting honours here, especially in the fabulously acted scene where Jones confesses his various lies and connivances. The film has memorable music by Laurence Rosenthal, and looks terrific throughout thanks to the afore-mentioned Henri Decae cinematography. But Peter Glenville's direction is remarkably staid, and seems virtually at odds with the powerful and urgent themes than underpin the story. Worth a look, but it's unlikely you'll come back to the film once you've satisfied your curiosity.