Best movie of this year hands down!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

In Elephant Walk,directed by William Dieterle and set in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the elephants symbolically represent resistance to British colonialism. Viewed from an anti-colonial perspective the film becomes a highly charged, beautifully made pamphlet against colonial grabbing as practiced by the masters of Elephant Walk, British Empire profiteers. To build his fortune, Tom Wiley, the dead, arrogant, greedy tyrant colonizer stopped at nothing, including cutting off the water supply of the Elephants and, collaterally, of the native Ceylonese. However, usurping wealth (tea) and using people as virtual slaves resulted, as usual, in knee-jerk resistance to an unjust economic order, to environmental spoilage, to the rule over the many by a few, to a system formatted to make sure the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This resistance is what the elephants represented. Instead of the ignored elephant in the room, this picture is about resistance symbolized by elephants that won't be ignored. Elizabeth Taylor portrayed a person born and raised in England who remained oblivious to the true nature of the colonial system. She was like 99% of Brits who, like most of us, were and remain victims of the class who has declared it has a right to possess the world and its people. Today we call this class Wall Street, The Banks, The 1%. Fortunately, in 1972, Ceylon became Sri Lanka and the natives recuperated their land. They may not be any richer today but anything beats being a virtual slave at the hands of British colonial masters, one of the greediest, most arrogant and dehumanizing groups ever to infest the planet. The movie masterfully depicts the true nature of the money-hungry economic parasites who were interested in only one thing – making $$$$££££ - and willing to do anything to get it. John Wiley the character so excellently portrayed by Peter Finch, is more true to life than say, The Great Gatsby, a romanticized version of a 1 percenter. The more I watch this film, the better it gets. Elisabeth Taylor is stunning. Peter Finch is captivating. Dana Andrews is, as always, excellent. The supporting cast is superb. The direction is masterful. The natural decor is hauntingly luxuriant and the interior sets are memorable. So is there anything wrong with this picture? Only that it remains underrated.

Elizabeth Taylor, fresh from Chillingford-on-the-Thames, has just married Ceylonese tea planter Peter Finch and he's taken her back home. He's got quite a place over in what is now Sri Lanka, a 'bungalow' big enough to have a polo field. And that's exactly what they do there. He and his father's friends get on bicycles and play polo in the living room.It's all tradition you know started by Finch's dad who is known to one and all as 'the Guv'nor.' He must have been something else, in everyone's memory he becomes almost a caricature of the colonial Briton.The man must truly have been nuts or else he was one of those colonials who Noel Coward warned went out in the noon day sun a little too long. He built this palatial estate right on a well worn path that the elephants use to get to fresh water when the streams dry up in their neck of the woods. The local natives have to periodically ward them off with noise. They can't kill them because of the strict conservation laws and the Buddhist tradition. Maybe I missed something here, but did he have to build the house right there? Does make for a spectacular climax though.Peter Finch feels the need to keep traditions up and all the friends come over every week, get stinking drunk, and play bicycle polo in the living room. Not exactly the home Liz had in mind. She seeks some solace with overseer Dana Andrews who being American is not into all the colonial British traditions.Elephant Walk, which is also the name of the Finch estate, has the advantage of some really beautiful cinematography in Sri Lanka. Lends an air of realism to a rather unreal plot. Check out Abraham Sofaer who plays the major domo of Elephant Walk with the biggest handlebar mustache on record. One that Terry-Thomas would have envied.Vivien Leigh was supposed to do Elephant Walk, but she bowed out do to health issues. That tuberculosis did flare up at the right time though.

I guess the moral of this tale is "be careful where you build your house". Certainly not on the side of a cliff or--better still--not where the elephants like to roam, especially when they're thirsty.ELIZABETH TAYLOR, in all her youthful splendor, was a last minute replacement for VIVIEN LEIGH, who bowed out due to severe mental illness that overtook her shortly after she read the script. In fact, there are a few glimpses of Miss Leigh remaining in certain long shots if you care to look.But Elizabeth settles down in a role that does nothing for her acting career but does allow her to be drop dead gorgeous throughout. She has to feign impatience with a husband (PETER FINCH, who was, by the way, having an affair with Leigh), who ignores her and the uneasiness that any young bride would have if she finds herself in a strangely situated house--a huge tea plantation in Ceylon, India.She copes bravely with her worries and falls in love with a neighbor (DANA ANDREWS, in one of his less impressive performances). Andrews seems to be sleep-walking through his role.Finally, after a lot of dull talk, a cholera epidemic breaks out and nobody is minding the elephants. This is where they take their famous "walk" and practically destroy everything in their path.Of course, even before their rampage, the script is a mess and the audience must have been stifling a few yawns while the melodrama builds to a ferocious climax.It's all highly improbable with a sort of "Jane Eyre in India" feeling that pervades the eerie plot. But if you want to see Taylor in her prime, this is for you. Vivien probably never regretted being unable to finish the film.

My parents took me to this movie when I was nine years old. I have never forgotten it. I had never before seen anything as beautiful as Elizabeth Taylor. (She was twenty-two when she made Elephant Walk) Remember, I'm nine, so the feelings aren't sexual, I just couldn't see anything else on the screen. I just wanted to sit at her feet like a puppy and stare up at her. She has begun to show her age, (She's almost seventy-four) but I still believe her to be one of the most beautiful and breathtaking women to ever have lived.I have seen the movie several times since, and it is a sappy melodrama. What saves it is, of course, Miss Taylor's beauty, magnificent scenery, the very impressive elephant stampede, and a well-made point on human arrogance in the face of nature.All in all, a well-spent couple of hours watching the movie channel or a rented video.