The most common criticism of the book and the film among Haitian intellectuals who were able to read the novel and view the film overseas was that the love story took up too much time, which is against the tradition of Haitian fiction, where politics reigns supreme. Moreover, many non-Duvalierist Haitians resented the scenes in the movie in which Brown addresses a band of anti-Duvalier insurgents.
Brown has finally been persuaded by the young Philipot to join the guerrillas in the hills after Captain Concasseur kills Major Jones and is in turn killed by the guerrillas. Forced at last to make a commitment, Brown says, ‘I’m cornered’, and the young artist—guerrilla says, ‘My men are waiting … For some reason they believe that white men are the only true experts in killing.’
With Philipot and barman Joseph, Brown climbs the mountain and joins the assembled insurgents, who stand in ranks armed with a motley assortment of weapons including gardening tools and even a tin insecticide sprayer. Of the latter weapon Brown asks Philipot, ‘What is this supposed to be?’
‘The closest we could come to liquid fire,’ Philipot responds. ‘It’s full of petrol. Don’t discourage them.’
Then, standing before the ragtag band of rebels, Brown launches into his speech — in English (which none of them understands): ‘Tomorrow we attack the Tontons Macoutes. We are crazy fools. You don’t know how to fight. I don’t know how to fight. We are going to get the Tontons, we, with a handful of shotguns, machetes and a garden spray, a hotel keeper, a painter, a barman and you. You stupid bastards, the rabble of the cockpits and the slums, my ragged regiment!’
Some Haitians felt Brown’s oration was unjust and humiliating. They saw it as a manifestation of the white foreigners’ superiority complex. They saw it as an insult to the Kamoken. But Brown’s soliloquy was closer to the truth than many Haitians would admit: a none-too-exaggerated caricature of the anti-Duvalier insurgents — brave, untrained, mostly unarmed and, as Brown himself exemplified, badly led.
The Comedians was not a particularly successful film in terms of mass audience appeal, despite it being a Graham Greene adaptation with a star cast. In his book Blessings in Disguise Alec Guinness wrote that he was impressed by Richard Burton’s ‘generosity as an actor’, noting, ‘He gave himself and his talent in the most unselfish way I have ever encountered in a great star.’
Papa Doc’s guile was not to be underestimated. A few weeks after the film was released, Guinness recounts, he and his wife received an invitation from Haiti ‘to spend Christmas in Haiti’ as Papa Doc’s guest, so that ‘we could see for ourselves what the country was really like. I had a notion that if we were rash enough to accept we might end up as zombies, turning spits in the kitchen of some Haitian palace; so we declined, with flowery politeness.’
Nevertheless there was one footnote that doubtless gave Papa Doc a moment of glee. Four weeks after the movie opened in cinemas around the world, on Christmas Day 1967, President Soglo of Dahomey was booted out of office by his subordinates. As Soglo flew off to Paris to join the three other ex-presidents of Dahomey living in exile, several mundane explanations were cited for his overthrow, among them Soglo’s tough austerity programme which had included reducing the salaries of civil servants and even turning off their air-conditioning. However, there were those who suspected a darker cause — the long arm of Papa Doc and his powers of Voodoo, in retaliation for the filming of The Comedians in Dahomey. Jokingly, even Graham said he felt that Voodoo should receive some credit for Soglo’s downfall.
The reports that Duvalier received from his agents abroad painted the film as shocking — but not for the reasons that shocked most viewers. Doc didn’t see himself as others did. To him there was nothing wrong with his use of violence and bloodshed to retain absolute power. He saw nothing wrong with his role as judge and jury. Both Duvalier and God, in that order, should decide who would live or die. Like most dictators, Papa Doc suffered from pathological narcissism; having lost touch with reality, he firmly believed that he was the embodiment of right and that his ends justified the means. What outraged him was that The Comedians, in both its book and film versions, did not join his claque.
By now Duvalier was killing his own loyal officers, many of whom had killed for him. After a full decade in power, Papa Doc worked long hours, sometimes past midnight, micro-managing the details of his tropical tyranny. Diabetic and with a weakened heart, he looked much older than his sixty years. Within the Palace’s private quarters he was at war with his own family, upon whom he had lavished all that money could buy. His eldest daughter, Marie-Denise, had defied him and married an army officer whom Doc accused of plotting his assassination.
Confronting the outside world, Papa Doc and his demons were angry. ‘Mr Grem Gween is attacking me in a movie too!’ Doc raged to his aide Gérard Daumec, who in turn parroted to a visiting newsman, ‘Everyone in Haiti knows that the CIA paid Graham Greene to publish this book attacking Haiti, and now they’ve made a movie of it.’
As outrageous as it may sound to anyone who appreciates literary integrity, the view that any book or magazine article not favourable to the regime must have been paid for by the regime’s enemies was common in Haiti (as in much of Latin America). It wasn’t a question of whether the writer or reporter was stating facts about the country. Money, it was assumed by Duvalierists (as well as by many Haitians on the political sidelines), was the only motivating factor that would induce a writer or reporter to risk incurring Papa Doc’s wrath. Even such a well-known and successful author as Graham had to have an ulterior motive for writing such a book and making such a movie. Of course, in Haiti under Papa Doc there was no such thing as literary freedom; Duvalier had executed four of Haiti’s best-known authors.
Papa Doc became particularly mesmerized by the audience-shocking scene described to him in which Dr Magiot meets his gory end. In the scene Papa Doc’s Tontons Macoutes arrive to confront Dr Magiot in his hospital’s operating theatre. He sees them coming, but he doesn’t run and calmly continues his operation. While two Macoutes stand guard with guns drawn, a third takes a surgical knife from the table and, seizing Dr Magiot from behind, proceeds to cut his throat. The audience is treated to a lifelike throat-slitting with blood spurting from Magiot’s jugular vein. The Marxist physician collapses on top of his patient and dies with his surgical cap still on his head. ‘It has never happened. It is a dirty, dirty lie,’ Papa Doc protested to Daumec.
‘This barbaric act, above all, made Dr Duvalier mad,’ Daumec explained. Interestingly — and in a bizarre reflection of Papa Doc’s twisted mentality — he found the ghastly scene an affront to his Hippocratic oath.
Graham had no idea just how deeply his arrow had struck its mark with the film version of The Comedians. It would be years before the ensuing reaction in Haiti’s hermetically sealed National Palace could be pieced together. When I eventually informed Graham of the pain he had caused the regime, he reacted with almost youthful glee and quipped sarcastically, ‘I’m so glad I could be of help.’
So far as is known, Papa Doc never actually saw the film version of The Comedians. The ban on the film in Haiti was total, with not even a sneak preview reported at the Palace. Papa Doc, it was said, relied completely on the reviews of the film provided by his agents abroad, and he read with alarm the glowing reports in the exile press about the movie. Thus the battle over the celluloid version of Graham’s dark novel was joined within days of MGM releasing the film. Duvalier spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (of depleted public funds) waging war against a movie. It would average out to an extraordinary amount of money — according to one source $5,000 for each of the 150 minutes of the lengthy film. For Papa Doc, however, this was a crusade. Graham Greene became Haiti’s Public Enemy Number One. Duvalier ordered his diplomats abroad to attack the film as baseless fiction, a grossly distorted portrayal of Haiti under his stewardship. Ironically, with his protests Papa Doc became the film’s chief publicist.
On 1 November 1967 the Haitian embassy in W
ashington, DC, issued a lengthy statement blasting The Comedians — possibly the first time in diplomatic history that a national embassy had ever officially protested against a movie. The diatribe, printed and distributed on Duvalier’s black-and-red official letterhead, declared:
The embassy of Haiti strongly protests to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer against the film The Comedians, which constitutes an inflammatory libel against Haiti and has been publicly released to mislead the American people. No effect has been spared to slander the people, the government and the entire Haitian Nation. It is not less than a character assassination of an entire nation. From the first to last the film presents an utterly distorted picture of Haiti, its people and its government.
Filmed in Dahomey, The Comedians shows Haiti with a wrecked port, dirty customs, shabby taxis, dilapidated hotels and houses, broken up streets and roads, a nation of cripples, beggars, voodoo worshippers and killers.
This is not only indirect aggression against a government representative of the masses and the peasantry in their fight for religious and economic freedom from an oligarchy allied to exploiting foreigners, but this is also an economic assault and propaganda aimed at disgusting and scaring the American tourists at the beginning of the season. Our Department of Tourism, our national associations of hotels and resort owners, taxi drivers, our Chamber of Commerce are now investigating and estimating the damages … Haiti is one of the most beautiful, peaceful and safe countries in the Caribbean.
Also, it is a pity that even the diplomatic representation of a great South American Nation has been ridiculed in many scenes of adultery, one of which is truly bestial and shocking.
The Embassy of Haiti has also sent a note to the State Department protesting the release of the film on the territory of the USA, based on existing Treaties and Charters and remembering that Haiti and its Government according to the same Charters, Treaties and Laws have never allowed any aggression, or assault, to take place on its territory against the prestige and dignity of the noble American people, its government and its president.
Papa Doc’s attempt to suppress the film in the United States drew the attention of the Miami Herald, which on 25 November 1967 devoted an editorial to what the South Florida newspaper called the ‘comedy of Haiti’s protest’:
Papa Doc is raving through the mouth of his ambassador in Washington. He has been irked by a film version of Catholic author Graham Greene’s The Comedians. The picture stars three British subjects, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Alec Guinness.
The comic side of The Comedians is the fact that the bloody Haitian dictator’s official agent in Washington seems to think he is at home when he protests exhibition of the picture.
Perhaps he believes that President Johnson will join Queen Elizabeth in an agreement to suppress the producers and actors and deny their right to work. Freedom of expression is sadly exotic in the Haitian Republic … The picture was filmed in Dahomey because Duvalier prohibited shooting in his country … The Comedians doubtlessly symbolizes the oppression, fear, anxiety and the insupportable conditions to which Haitians have been subjected by the former physician who betrayed his mandate and renounced and violated all the principles of his humanitarian profession.
In Mexico, Papa Doc’s Ambassador, Rudy Baboun, the first Lebanese-born Haitian to be appointed to such a diplomatic post, also protested at the showing of the film. His protests were ignored by the Mexican government and only kindled further interest in the movie. In Haiti’s next-door neighbour the Dominican Republic, however, President Joaquín Balaguer was quick to oblige Papa Doc. He immediately issued a decree banning the film. Then, when the Dominican government — after the fact — organized an official private showing to see what they had banned, they discovered that someone had stolen their only existing copy of the film. The movie remained banned, sight unseen. In Spain Generalísimo Francisco Franco made the expected gesture to his fellow Haitian dictator and forbade projection of the film on Spanish territory. Meanwhile Haiti’s Foreign Minister René Chalmers complained to the UN General Assembly that Graham was paid with ‘gold from mercenaries’.
The censorship battle over The Comedians made good news copy, and Graham enjoyed every minute of it. On 4 May 1968 he wrote to me:
There has been a battle in France, too, and I rather think Papa Doc has succeeded finally in having the film suppressed. On the whole with a few bright exceptions the film had a very bad press. Film reviewers now seem only to enjoy avant-garde films which of necessity deal with very simple stories with two or three characters so as to give the director plenty of room for imaginative film cutting. When you have a rather solid story there’s nothing to be done about it but make a rather solid script. I am glad anyway that it has had a certain effect.
He again mentioned meeting Fred Baptiste in the south of France and an ‘ex-major in Duvalier’s army who only defected of recent years. He was an intellectual and I couldn’t help suspecting him of being an informant for Papa Doc. I wish you had been around so that I could have spoken to you about the affair.’ Graham explained that Papa Doc — having failed to evoke tears of sympathy in the United States with his campaign against The Comedians — had turned to Haiti’s former colonial master, France.
A Parisian lawyer named Sauveur Vaisse recounted in an interview with me in 1991 how one day near the end of 1967 he received a telephone call in Paris from a former student named Samuel Pissar, who at the time was with a Los Angeles law firm that specialized in the movie business. ‘I have a very special case,’ Pissar said. ‘I am not sure whether you will accept it.’ His client was Dr François Duvalier, the President-for-Life of Haiti. Duvalier, Pissar explained, was seeking legal action against MGM to halt the showing of Les Comédiens in France. The movie, its original English-language dialogue dubbed into French, was scheduled to open in France soon afterwards. For all he knew, Vaisse recalled, Haiti ‘could have been on the moon’. He did have some recollection that, like his native Algeria, Haiti had once been a French colony. ‘Curiosity got the best me,’ he admitted, and he told Pissar, ‘Sure, why not.’
So began a lawyer—client relationship between Duvalier père and attorney Vaisse that eventually would continue with Papa Doc’s son and successor in power, Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, for more than a quarter of a century. But if Vaisse had any misgivings about taking on Papa Doc as a client to do battle with a giant Hollywood movie studio, the Paris attorney admitted that he became fascinated with Haiti — as happens with so many foreigners. At the time of our interview Vaisse was Jean-Claude Duvalier’s attorney. Baby Doc was by then was living in exile in the south of France, following his overthrow in 1986, and Vaisse agreed to an interview to discuss the case of The Comedians, whose plaintiff had now been dead for almost ten years.
The law firm Vaisse, Lardin et Associés occupied well-appointed offices at 51 Avenue Montaigne in Paris whose accoutrements reflected a conspicuous interest in Haiti: a Haitian painting hung in the foyer leading to Vaisse’s office and was visible from the waiting room. On his desk were copies of Haitian newspapers including Le Petit Samedi Soir, printed by an exiled Duvalierist in Coral Gables, Florida.
The Papa Doc film case lasted nearly three years, Vaisse told me. ‘At the end of the first year, when we had begun to get some good results, François Duvalier asked us to [visit] Haiti. That was my first visit to Haiti. It was November 1968.’ In Port-au-Prince, Vaisse and another French attorney met Papa Doc.
‘He was in very good shape,’ Vaisse said. ‘We had two working sessions with him at the National Palace. He explained to us his doctrine. He spoke quietly in a very low voice. He had a very good sense of humour. This was one of the things which impressed me — his very good sense of humour.
‘Duvalier generally tried to show us how he was upset by the book The Comedians. He said Graham had written this book because he had “personal problems” with the Haitian government. But Duvalier,’ Vaisse added, ‘did not explain what he meant by personal problems. Th
ere were so many people to whom we were introduced. We were honoured guests. Even the French Ambassador was a little frustrated because we were being treated better than himself.’ After spending less than a week in Haiti, lodged at the El Rancho Hotel, Vaisse ‘left more convinced than ever before that both the book and the film were a travesty’.
Vaisse explained that the grounds alleged for the lawsuit in France were that the film insulted the chief of state of a friendly nation recognized by France, adding that ‘We argued Haitian history and what François Duvalier was trying to do — it was a classic tragedy. If you did the same with De Gaulle, publicly, that had been done to Duvalier, you would have obtained similar results. There had been plots against De Gaulle and people were arrested and shot.’
The first success achieved by Papa Doc’s lawyers was to obtain a court order prohibiting the film from being shown in France while the case was being tried. The case lasted from 1968 until March 1970. Haitians, at least those who read Le Nouveau Monde, which had become Duvalier’s newspaper, did not learn about the court case of François Duvalier v. The Comedians until Friday 13 March 1970. On that day the paper reported, for the first time, that the case was being argued before the 17th Court of Appeals in Paris. Le Nouveau Monde claimed that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had denied all responsibility for the production of Les Comédiens, alleging that it had been produced by Maximilian/Trianon. The article went on to recount the arguments presented by the Duvalier government’s lawyers and their demand that damages be paid to Haiti’s President-for-Life amounting to 10 million francs (then $2 million). To justify this amount it was alleged that a plethora of wrongs had been done: ‘To Duvalier, admired as a man of letters and ethnologist. To Duvalier, as a learned doctor. To Duvalier, as an eminent statesman to whom the great personages of this world … have paid visits. To Duvalier, the president of Haiti, incarnation of the Haitian state …’
The Seeds of Fiction Page 18
