The V.I.P.s

Has anyone seen The V.I.P.s? Is it a good movie? It has a very starry cast: Taylor/Burton, Maggie Smith, Orson Welles, Margaret Rutherford, Louis Jordan. It's about a group of people in Heathrow Airport waiting for a flight to NYC.

Boring, but not as boring as "Raintree County." Of course, no movie is as boring as "RC." Still pretty damned boring, though. Have I mentioned that it's boring?

Agree that it's quite tedious.

I liked it, but I like Terrence Rattigan.

Did Burton and Taylor ever make a decent film together after WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Well, I guess THE TAMING OF THE SHREW was pretty good.

LOVE Taming of the Shrew. Just watched it last night. So entertaining, and the characters are so engaging - love Grumio. First rate film all the way.

All star cast including a small role for the inestimable Lady Prudence Fairfax.

I thought it was tremendous!

How can anyone not love The VIPs? Based on an actual incident with Peter Finch and Vivian Leigh, plus Orson Welles playing himself and Margaret Rutherford stoned higher than Cheech and Chong.

It’s definitely not a good movie. It’s interesting only because of its starriness and being a snapshot of its time, from the “jet set” phenomenon to prevailing gender roles. I have a thing for Rod Taylor in his prime, so that was a plus. If memory serves correctly, he played an Australian so it was a rare instance of hearing his native accent on film. Other curiosities include Orson Welles slumming it for a paycheck and an early Maggie Smith performance in the parallel role to Joan Crawford’s character in the obvious predecessor to this movie, “Grand Hotel.” The centerpiece storyline between Burton and Taylor is both boring and creepy because Burton’s character is obsessed with essentially owning Taylor’s character, a fur-draped non-entity who projects nothing that would make us understand Burton’s obsession.

^^Thank -you, I couldn't remember what this was an updated remake of, but yes, "Grand Hotel". Like you said, if for no other reason it's a great snapshot of the "beautiful people" circa 1963. Especially with the world's most glamorous, scandalous couple, Burton and Taylor

Margaret Rutherford is a marvel. I love her talking about the daffodils at her ancestral home and the Shakespeare quote from “The Winter’s Tale:” “Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty.”

Also, amazing to have Dame Maggie still around, having survived her costars by decades. But overall a snoozer.

The theme music is beautiful.

I was 12 when it was first released and loved it.

The gayling in me wore the hood on my winter jacket as if it were Elizabeth's white fur hood.

The Burtons formed a friendship with David Frost, who played himself in the movie, that lasted for years.

I've been reading RIchard Burton's diaries and want to see this! I think I saw it on TCM decades ago when I didn't appreciate it. It must have a special status within the select canon of Anticlimactic Ensemble Films.

BURTON LOOKED SEXY AS HELL in "the taming of the shrew" with his highlighted curly lighter hair, thick groomed beard and showing off his hairy chest! a nice tan and even his eyes twinkled! the best he EVER looked...

after "waovw".. the couple made bomb after bomb, and soon taylor's movie career as a huge box office draw came to a end at the end of the 60's early 70's..

It's lousy--rushed out before "Cleopatra" to capitalize on the Liz & Dick notoriety....The two of them made so many bad movies together, and only in "Virginia Woolf" did they have any real screen chemistry--the Great Lovers....they certainly didn't in "Cleopatra" either, for all the hoo-haw--he bellows and snorts, and she wears eye makeup.....

I know it gets trashed, but "Boom!" is a beautiful looking film.

Rattigan and "Puffin" Asquith were A-List Homosexuals, so there is much gay involvement, if little gay interest.

@r17, The only reason Taylor/Burton were so good in "Virginia Woolf" was because they were playing their drunken, bickering selves

This is one of the movies where Liz started looking fat.

It’s a fabulous movie. Highly recommend! It how we used to fly. I remember the valets and service people knowing our names. The phone service in which the phone is brought to you, and plugged in. Oh the grand days of travel. Now flying is like a greyhound bus.

The cast list is incredible. So many greats in one movie. Maggie Smith and Rod Taylor are so young. Orson Wells, Margaret Rutherford, Louis Jordan, ....

[quote] Is it a good movie?

No, it's a low-effort, filmed quickie of 3 short Rattigan plays. It is uncinematic but in very good taste by those two masters of of good taste Asquith and Rattigan.

You should see it in conjunction with its sister production, Asquith and Rattigan's 'Yellow Rolls Royce' with has more stars and better production values.

Asquith and Rattigan's best production is that black and white masterpiece of good taste, subtle writing, discreet understatement and nascent Social Justice Warrior-ism with the intriguing battle-of-the-sexes with Robert Donat and the delicious Margaret Leighton.

Vanity Fair devoted a whole piece on the making of "The V.I.P.s." Burton was conflicted about leaving Sybil and their kids, drank a lot, and fought constantly with La Grande Dame Elizabeth. Elizabeth was the same old spoiled, petty, melodramatic Elizabeth, only much more powerful than ever before.

Although this was in 1963, it's very much in the category of those string of movies Liz and Richard did in the later 60's -- all talky and tedious. But at least, being in the early 60's, it's more visually appealing than those other later ones.

There's a terrible new Netflix movie, "The Vanished", that takes the imaginary child strand from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and tries to build a thriller around it (the Nick and Honey characters get killed). Battling Anne Heche and Thomas Jane are no Liz and Dick. Jason Patric, as a cop, is still kind of cute, but big as a house.

Grand Hotel style film with lots of name actors. Like Hotel (1968) which also starred Rod Taylor and Airport(1970) it's overly long with too many characters and subplots and is tedious as others have stated.

I love the loopy movies Liz made in the sixties and early-70's. She would never choose some Douglas Sirk soap opera: send her witches, mental illness, ghosts and perversion!

Yes, they may seem 'loopy' in retrospect, R28.

But 2 were chosen because of Dick's Shakespearean ambitions.

The Tennessee Williams and the George Stevens recalled her past glories from the 50s.

Two extremely loopy ones were directed by Joseph Losey who was the 'in-thing' briefly in the 60s.

One had the dreary cat-faced Helmut Berger.

One was an Italian film from a story by Muriel Spark (whom I consider to be an acid-tongued writer of genius but most of her stories are just too surreal and/or nihilistic for the big screen)

The funny thing about Who's....Virginia Woolf is: when Taylor was cast it was, of course, thought to be a ridiculous stunt. How could the most beautiful and elegant woman in the world, only in her mid-30s, play a blowsy, overweight, screeching harridan in her 50s? Little did we realize back then, it was perfect type-casting.

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