The Roots of Heaven (1958) Reviews

• Huston's Epic Misfire a Better 'Making of' Story than Film...

  cariart2003-10-30

  THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, John Huston's 'Save the Elephant' African drama, based on Romain Gary's ponderous novel, was a costly, torturous misfire about which even Huston himself had little positive to say ("The pictures that turn out to be the most difficult to make, usually turn out to be the worst - like ROOTS OF HEAVEN.") While the story, of an almost fanatical idealist and his international band of rag-tag followers, fighting against the poachers who were hunting the species to near extinction, was a timely one, the production suffered so many calamities and setbacks that what finally reached the screen bore little resemblance to the initial concept. But what a back story it had! Originally intended to star was William Holden, who was, in real life, an impassioned activist concerning Africa and it's wildlife. With Holden and Huston attached to the project, an all-star supporting cast was easily recruited, including Errol Flynn, Eddie Albert, Orson Welles, Paul Lukas, and Darryl Zanuck's newest 'protégé', Juliette Greco. Then Paramount politely informed Holden that he had unfulfilled obligations to the studio, and they would not release him to make the 20th Century Fox production. With the other talent under contract, and an inflexible location 'start' date, Fox faced the dilemma of no acceptable 'leading man' being available at short notice...and ended up casting British character actor Trevor Howard in Holden's role. Howard, however, had no 'marquee' value, so Errol Flynn, in a decidedly secondary role, found himself the 'star' of the movie! Huston arrived in Africa with Darryl Zanuck (the often jealous producer may have been a bit nervous having Juliette Greco working with world-class lotharios Huston and Flynn), and the 140-degree inferno quickly took a heavy toll on the cast and crew. Eddie Albert collapsed with sunstroke, and everyone except Huston and Flynn, who had each brought prodigious amounts of alcohol to consume, were soon suffering from amoebic dysentery. With the frequent production delays, Huston went big-game hunting, and philosophized to the world press. Flynn and Huston, both larger than life personalities, started arguing on set (considering the quantity of alcohol they consumed, it was not surprising!), and Flynn dared the director to fight him. While it might have been an interesting contest, twenty years before, when Flynn was in shape and a talented amateur boxer, he was long past his prime, and Huston, who had actually been a professional boxer in his youth, flattened the actor with one punch. It was NOT a happy production! The end result of all the suffering was a film that lacked cohesiveness, with unresolved subplots, and poorly defined characters. Huston would move on to a western with Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn, THE UNFORGIVEN; Zanuck dumped Greco and began preproduction on his epic, THE LONGEST DAY (featuring NEW 'protégé', Irina Demick); and Flynn, after a brief recurrence of malaria, would produce and star in the abysmal CUBAN REBEL GIRLS, and would be dead in less than a year. THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN was a disaster, for all involved!

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• Flynn as follower to the elephants' Robin Hood

  Igenlode Wordsmith2006-12-01

  "Turgid philosophising"... "raddled Flynn"... no-one seemed to have a good word for this film, known chiefly for the number and variety of ailments suffered during its filming, and I certainly wasn't expecting much. Nobody told me "The Roots of Heaven" could be funny. Nobody told me the script was ironic and self-aware, knowing what to say and what to leave unspoken and when to wear its passion on its sleeve with the straightforward and very English eccentricity of its leading character; tinged with idealism, with heroism, and with cynicism alike. No-one ever mentioned, oddly enough, that there were even any environmentalists in the 1950s -- with uncannily accurate prescience, the plot even ties in the anti-nuclear cause. Greenpeace would have had a retrospective field day! And as for Flynn, he is having the time of his life stealing every scene he is in, whether with a quizzical eyebrow or a moment of sudden intense sympathy; the part is a gift, but he makes it something more, with the old expressiveness that always underpinned the laughter and heroics of his days as Warner Brothers' leading man. His late-career performance in "The Sun Also Rises" (which, for my money, really is turgid philosophical stuff) has been proclaimed as 'Oscar-worthy' by those eager to prove he had straight acting talent, but to my mind he shows greater depths here. Trevor Howard is the undoubted star, carrying much of the film single-handed. He is superbly convincing in the linchpin role of the Englishman who sets out on an unfashionable one-man crusade, and -- in a tale whose wry sensibilities would not be out of place at Ealing Studios -- finds himself inadvertently the victim of human nature's instinct both to canonise and to desecrate. The character has convictions, but he is neither unworldly nor a fool, and Howard makes us believe against the odds that this unassuming type can change people. His performance is absolutely central to the film's credibility, and he makes Morel not only believable but likable. The main flaws of which I was aware are the way that several strands seem to disappear abruptly unexplained at the ending (what of all those journalists who were about to arrive? What of the American's photographs, surely valuable evidence?) and a handful of blue-screen shots against poorer-quality backgrounds that are very obvious when viewed at cinema scale -- it might have been better to have used quick cuts back and forth between the characters and the action, rather than attempting to project them into the picture. So far as the overall standard of the film was concerned, however, I was extremely favourably surprised; I've seen several turgid, would-be meaningful African epics, and this certainly isn't one of them. Intelligent, humorous, lightly ironic, but also genuinely stirring and mythical, the end product may have disappointed John Huston, but it was far better than I had been given -- even by the cinema's own programming material! -- to expect.

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• A superb film based on my all-time favorite novel.

  rtanner-62006-07-17

  This was an excellent film based on my all-time favorite novel of the same title. Both novel and film were ahead of their time in their concern for the fate of the African elephant specifically and the sustainability of the earth generally. The cast was superb; Trevor Howard and Juliette Greco were perfect. (But then, so was everyone else involved.) An important theme in both novel and film was the tendency for others to analyze Morel's motives through their own eyes. Thus some thought him politically ambitious, some supposed that he detested humankind, and others found other motives. I believe his actual motives were purer, simpler, more altruistic, and altogether as he stated them. I would like to have used this film in my university classes, but like an earlier reviewer I regret that it was not possible to find it. That's a great shame. Given the apparent unavailability of the film, I highly recommend the book - if you can find a copy! Occasionally I have challenged bright students to tell me why the character Father Tassin is so interested in learning everything he can about Morel. To help them, I have lent them not only the novel but a short book about the real-life "Tassin." One or two succeeded in making the connection and thus understanding the work at its most profound level. And it truly is profound, once you understand that connection. Incidentally, author (and screenplay writer) Romain Gary lived an adventurous, unique life which made him just about as interesting as Morel. War hero, winner of France's highest military and literary honors, literary prankster, tragic political victim, and much more.

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• See Orson Welles as Rush Limbaugh! (in a vastly underrated film)

  neal-572006-12-21

  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—!

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• One of the 'Sickest' Films of All Time

  bkoganbing2007-06-30

  When the original script of The Roots of Heaven was shown to John Huston, he had it in mind for William Holden to star in it. It seemed like a natural given Holden's interest in conservation. Errol Flynn remarked in his memoirs that he was looking forward to co-starring with Holden. But Bill Holden backed out of the project and not as big a movie name, Trevor Howard, was substituted. Flynn's part was then built up though clearly he's a supporting character. In any event all these guys were just there in support of Juliette Greco who was Darryl F. Zanuck's main squeeze at the time. Ms. Greco was a better actress than that other squeeze of Zanuck's Bella Darvi and she didn't come to a tragic end as poor Bella did. Huston maybe should have known better, after all he had done The African Queen on location in Africa already and knew the problems therein. The Roots of Heaven may have set some kind of record for illnesses among the cast, maybe rivaling The Conqueror. The most serious was Eddie Albert's nearly fatal case of sunstroke. It was reported that Errol Flynn kept the illness at bay by consuming large quantities of gin on location. He had the most to worry about as he had chronic malaria, acquired in his youth in the New Guinea jungles that kicked up on him every now and then. Of course right after the film, he was reported to suffer a major attack of it and was in hospital for weeks. The story never quite takes off. It's about Trevor Howard's efforts to save the elephant population and the lack of interest therein among most of the natives who depend on the ivory trade for a livelihood. Conservation is a noble cause, but it's usually talked about by those who've already plundered their area already for its resources and are now telling others what to do. Howard's cause never quite gets off the ground and sad to say, neither does the film. Maybe it could be made today with better results.

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