Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

dbrown-77 This is not a classic film, but I found it very worthwhile to make the effort to find it and watch it.The issues of wildlife conservation, specifically African elephant conservation, that it raises are still very relevant. The film seems at least 30 years ahead of its time in this respect, as we are still struggling to find ways for elephants and humans to co-exist. The conflicts between poachers, elephants, and well-meaning people trying to make the world better for humans AND elephants depicted here are playing out in the real world very much as depicted here.John Huston made several timeless movies. While this is not one of his best movies, it is an interesting companion piece to "African Queen" and is thought-provoking about issues of wildlife conservation and the effects of colonialism on African and world politics.

neal-57 Had it been released just a few years later—say, about the time of 1966's "Born Free"—this film might have achieved icon status in the environmental movement. As it stands, it's best known for the appalling difficulties of its location shoot in what was then French Equatorial Africa, and as the last major film appearance of Errol Flynn—who, although playing a distinctly supporting part, was accidentally catapulted into first-place billing when William Holden dropped out of the lead role of Morel, to be replaced by an equally skilled, but less "box-office-boffo," Trevor Howard.Actually, the book, by the wry ex-diplomat Romain Gary, is a sharp satire of dry, tongue-in-cheek delights, gentle but telling jabs at both the increasingly impotent colonial masters and the wild-eyed, stout-hearted African revolutionaries who have learned all the wrong lessons from their European masters. Some of this attitude survives to inform the film—though not enough.One character who does NOT spring from the pages of the book is on-screen for all of four minutes and forty-five seconds, yet he's a colorful springboard for all that is to come: Rush Limbaugh! Okay, El Rushbo had barely been born in 1958, but Cy Sedgwick, American broadcaster and columnist, as etched with relish by Orson Welles, predicts him with pinpoint accuracy: his girth, his pompous self-righteous, and his confident command of the opinions of "right-thinking Americans." Before Sedgwick's attempted safari, the misanthropic Morel's attempts to preserve the African elephants have made him a laughingstock; Sedgwick's broadcasts transform him into a cause celibre— —and set the stage for the colorful characters who will follow: the haunted "hostess" (Juliette Greco), the "ancient" Danish naturalist (Friedrich von Ledebur), the Baron who has foresworn human speech (Olivier Hussenot), the colonial administrator who has arranged to be reincarnated as a tree (Paul Lukas), the opportunistic Arab (Gregoire Aslan), the would-be "African Napoleon" (Edric Connor), and the alcoholic, disgraced British officer (Errol Flynn, completing the trio of screen drunks that comprised his late-career "comeback" as a character actor.) And one point that all Flynn biographers have missed is that his character is actually a composite of TWO from the book: Johnny Forsythe, the American who broadcast for the Communists during the Korean War—and Colonel Babcock, the "convivial English military man" whose only companion is a Mexican jumping bean named Toto.Forgotten films CAN be rescued from obscurity: Universal just recently (December, 2OO6) released the cult classic The Spiral Road (1962) on DVD. Now, if Fox would only follow suit with The Roots of Heaven—!

loydmooney-1 Actually this is one of my favorite neglected films, Huston having one more of the same ilk, Kremlin Letter. Just why it and the other film have fallen so low is part of the usual blindness of the unwashed masses, often the best taking time to sift out the flashy from the good. There are very many interesting moments in this one, a lively cast, great theme, all the way from Trevor Howard to Juliette Greco. Everything is overdone in it and it makes for pretty good watching. The worst thing about it in fact is its astonishing unavailability. There has never been a film quite like it, and coming from Huston, well, it borders on the criminal that it is almost impossible to find. We can only hope that all its negatives are not also lost.

Robert J. Maxwell Spoilers. It's always convenient for scientists to treat the brains -- not to say the "minds" -- of animals as black boxes. We know what goes in ("stimuli") and we know what comes out ("responses") but we don't know what's inside. But anyone who has owned a pet knows that the black box has a good deal of personality inside it. (I once had the world's nastiest canary.) The study of animal consciousness is beginning to take form. Elephants in particular have curious traits that are difficult to interpret without being "anthropomorphic", a bad word in science. But Jeffrey Masson's "Why Elephants Cry" provides a good survey of their quirks. As described in this movie, one of the characters pumps shot after shot into an elephant before killing it. There was just such an historical event in which a hunter, having wounded an elephant and caused it to lean against a tree, put several deliberate bullets into it as an experiment, to see which one would most effectively bring it down. Observers noted that as the animal absorbed these shots he was weeping. They are curious indeed. They take care of their ill or disabled offspring. That much we can identify with. But when a group comes across a long-dead elephant carcass, thoroughly skeletonized, they get extremely excited and noisy, and they try to actually pick up the scattered bones and carry them away. And this we cannot understand -- not you, not me, and not ethologists. But we WILL go on killing them, and other "game" animals, for the most trivial of reasons -- trophies, money, folk medicine. Morrell, the idealist in this film, says of elephants that they are the largest land animals on earth, but nothing fears them, and they fear nothing. They eat only tender greens and are harmless. The movie makes Morrell and his followers look like loonies in the context of what was then French Equatorial Africa. And sometimes the movie makers turn him into a rabid visionary, the John Brown of the environmentalists. But he's right of course and the rest of Homo sapiens who do not recognize this are self-destructive fools. The movie doesn't come together as it should. The plot outlines are clear enough. Morrell is waging a lonely battle to save the beasts. Cheswick, a famous American hunter and journalist popularizes his cause. Morrell is then joined by other figures, some idealists and some exploiters who need the notoriety. A number of his valuable colleagues are killed in a shootout with ivory poachers. Morrell and the few survivors march off to carry on their fight. We don't find out what happens to them. And there is a girl, Juliet Greco, whose place in the narrative is uncertain. If we think about it, it seems as if Morrell may go on, but that his cause is lost, which means that the elephants lose as well. The director, John Huston, has inserted some welcome humor. A snobby boastful and very tall white huntress, Madame Orsini, gets thoroughly spanked on her bare bottom for having killed so many elephants. The funniest episode is Cheswick's visit. Orson Welles struts around his well-appointed African camp, that sonorous baritone more pompous than ever -- "Oh, it's dangerous," he tells the audience through his microphone, "and it's tough". (Here he grabs a bottle of Vat 69 scotch with his free hand.) "But I like the danger. I'd rather be here than in the crumbling ruins of Greece. Because here is where you stand face to face with the big ones. Yes, they're big alright." (Here, he bends over a table, exposing his broad-beamed rear, which then receives a blast of shotgun pellets.) The performances are pretty uniformly good. It's nice that Trevor Howard, as Morrell, wasn't chosen because of his prettiness but because his face has character. On the whole, despite the humor, and the open-ended final scene, designed to maintain hope, it's a sad movie. It's a shame that, in going about making their livings, human beings can't confine themselves to eating water lillies and green shoots.