Les trois mousquetaires

This is undoubtedly the most complete and faithful adaptation of The Three Musketeers ever filmed. It's also a pleasure to watch and succeeds in translating a plot-heavy book into a handsome set of images. Director Henri Diamant-Berger worked with the benefit of a lavish budget and many hours of screen time, since his film was released as a 12-part serial.

The authentically 17th century costumes and the sets are impressive (though the sets are too clean). The script retains almost everything from Dumas's novel but simplifies and abbreviates a few parts (including D'Artagnan's wooing of Milday and her seduction of Felton). It removes suspense by spelling out several events more than Dumas did; it also devotes excessive time to comic relief scenes with M. Bonacieux and Planchet.

Diamant-Berger's direction is assured, though not especially stylish. He has a good eye for outdoor locations (this is definitely not a set-bound film) and action on horseback, but his interior staging is rudimentary. In 1921 silent filmmaking had yet to reach its pinnacle of sophistication and style, as exemplified by Henri Fescourt's dazzling "Monte Cristo" (1929).

Casting is a mixed bag. The Musketeers look like they stepped out of the novel (especially Aimé Simon-Girard's amusing D'Artganan) but the villains are disappointing: Édouard de Max's Cardinal Richelieu is a little too campy (he really likes watching kittens frolic on his desk) while Claude Mérelle's underplayed Milady is more businesswoman than femme fatale. She doesn't project the intensity of the original, just as the movie lacks the intensity of the book.

The only surviving film print has English inter-titles, but these were eliminated from the French DVD, the only one available. But since the film is such a faithful adaptation, you'll understand almost everything if the book is still fresh in your head.

The DVD, supervised by Diamant-Berger's grandson, is controversial. To shorten the film, the inter-titles have been replaced by subtitles and narration. And not only has a symphonic score been added, but also Foley sound effects! Every hoof-beat, every rustle of the trees, and every clack of swords has been dubbed in. The clattering sound certainly keeps you awake (not that the film has many longueurs), and the pace is artificially swifter without inter-titles, but the new subtitles go by too quickly. That said, the film looks terrific--the surviving print must have been in good shape.

The Three Musketeers was one of the most successful films of the 1920s in France, and Diamant-Berger followed it by filming Dumas's sequel "Vignt Ans Apres," now lost. He also filmed a sound remake of the Musketeers in 1932--a documentary among the DVD's special features includes excerpts.

Since an English-language version of the 1921 Musketeers already exists, I hope an enterprising DVD company like Flicker Alley will make it available to American audiences. There have been many good and bad films made from The Three Musketeers, but none more comprehensive than Diamant-Berger's.

The first question that arises with this film is how one should watch it. The problem is that the grandsons of the director have not so much restored as "re-edited" this grandfather's work or at least they have re-edited as well as restoring it. And they have come in for a good deal of criticism, especially in France, for their modifications.

This is a shade unjust in that, until they took a hand, the film had suffered from complete neglect and would perhaps still not be known now if they had not decided to do something about it. There is also an element of nit-picking in the criticisms because the changes made are not really as extravagant as ll that. The film was originally composed as a serial in twelve episodes and in changing this to fourteen episodes (to create a format suitable for television, sneer the critics), all thy have actually done is even up the length of the different episodes. Even the montage of scenes from the film with which it starts (although it looks so modern) was actually in the original although it formed part of what was probably originally a more explicatory "prologue".

The use of sub-titles instead of "cartons" (intertitles) seems to me fairly unobjectionable; I have sometimes wondered why subtitling was not used at the time. So the only really hard thing to swallow is the commentary that has replaced explicatory subtitles. This, I must say, is extremely annoying.

But, but, provided you know the story (and who does not?), the "explicatory" element is quite unnecessary, so that, viewing at home, all you have to do is switch off the sound altogethr and you have a perfectly acceptable film (with the added advantage of getting rid of the rather intrusive modern score).

And (these annoyances out of the way) what a splendid film it is! An enormous improvement on the Fred Niblo version with Douglas Fairbanks (as for that matter is the Max Linder parody of that film, L'Étroit mousquetaire). The period setting, the costumes, the props, the locations are absolutely fabulous - the Niblo film was simply made in the studio - and the fidelity to the original story is near perfect. Luckily it is pre-sound (I not that Diamant-Berger's sound remake of 1932 seems to have interested nobody) so this does not render it over-talkative as most sound versions of classic novels made in the thirties (even good ones like The Prisoner of Zenda) tended to be.

It is very long (5 hours rather than 26 minutes) and inevitably flags occasionally (rather as the novel does) but it is well worth persevering because the much less well known, much darker, and, for connoisseurs, the best part of the novel is magnificently rendered.

So an end to the carping with regard to the younger Diamant-Bergers. Just turn off the sound and be grateful that we have yet another silent masterpiece (one amongst so many) to enjoy.