Les trois mousquetaires

In 1625 an ambitious youth joins forces with THE THREE MUSKETEERS to save the French Queen's honor from the machinations of the cruel Cardinal Richelieu.

Douglas Fairbanks had one of his most popular roles as the swashbuckling hero of Alexander Dumas' 1844 novel. Exulting in his sheer physical vitality, he never walks when he can run, never runs when he can leap. While a bit melodramatic & stagy, Fairbanks is obviously having a wonderful time and he wants his audience to enjoy themselves, too.

As producer, as well as star, Fairbanks ensured fine production values & large sets to backdrop his stunts. Notice particularly the Parisian street scenes, how detailed & exact they are, with the crowds of extras looking as if they had real purpose in what they were doing. Also be mindful of the architectural staging, whether it be walls, rooftops or monumental staircases; they were all built with Fairbanks' physical dimensions in mind, so that he could run, creep or climb along them effortlessly.

To such a degree does Doug dominate the drama, that the characters of the three Musketeers themselves remain largely undeliniated. Léon Bavy as Athos, George Siegmann as Porthos & Eugene Pallette as a most unlikely Aramis are mere window-dressing to showcase Fairbanks' exuberance. Coming off rather better are British actor Nigel de Brulier as the rapacious Richelieu, beautiful Barbara La Marr as the Cardinal's evil agent Milady de Winter & Lon Poff as the sepulchral Father Joseph. Here are three villains worth watching.

Lovely Marguerite De La Motte supplies Doug's love interest. Adolphe Menjou does well as the cold-hearted, vain Louis XIII.

Not surprisingly, the original story has been streamlined & altered in various ways and at least a couple of notable deaths have been omitted so as to provide a happier fadeout. Fairbanks would continue the tale - and reprise the role of D'Artagnan - eight years later in THE IRON MASK (1929).

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What were the facts surrounding the historical Richelieu & Buckingham? Since the novel & films make much of their rivalry, a closer examination is in order.

Both men rose from semi-obscurity to positions of enormous power & influence in their respective kingdoms. Each found it necessary to dominate the weak sovereigns whose patronage they enjoyed. Both endured the utter contempt & hatred of powerful domestic factions allied against them. And were there ever a flirtation between the French Queen Anne of Austria and Buckingham, it was of a very mild nature. There certainly was nothing resembling The Adventure of the Queen's Diamonds and all the derring-do associated with it.

Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal and Duke de Richelieu (1585-1642), came from a minor gentry family which was saddled with enormous financial debt upon the death of his father. However, blessed with a very good brain & a manipulative mother, Richelieu used his intellectual charm to advance his ascent through the Byzantine levels of Church hierarchy. Once having caught the attention of Louis XIII Richelieu never looked back. Eventually wielding absolute authority, the Red Eminence took as his life's mission to thwart Spanish Habsburg hegemony in Europe and to crush all outbreaks of French Protestantism as they arose throughout the kingdom.

For his part, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), had his extreme physical attractiveness to thank for grabbing the eye of James I - who liked to dance both ends of the ballroom - and later became the favourite of Charles I as well. The son of a knight, Buckingham soon rose to a lofty pinnacle of power and angered the English nobles by his monopoly of the king's affections and his arrogant accruement of great wealth. As a diplomat & military strategist, Buckingham was hopelessly inept and he needed the king's protection to save him from trial in the Star Chamber. Having failed disastrously in an attempt to succor the Huguenot of La Rochelle, France, he returned to England where he was quickly assassinated by a disgruntled naval officer. When news of Buckingham's death reached London the people rejoiced in the streets.

Douglas Fairbanks knew how to be in the middle of the action. In all the scenes he is in it is go, go, go. He never walks when he can run, jump, even fly. Fairbanks was very athletic and he shows those skills in the movie. Very rarely in this film does he stand still and that is not for long. When he is in a scene there is always going to be plenty of action.

The basic plot is that Fairbanks wants to become one of the King's musketeers and in the process finds himself involved in protecting the Queen's honor. The movie is a bit overlong and I found myself having troubles at time following the plot which made the move drag somewhat. But when there was action everything changed. The film comes alive during the scenes involving sword play and when Fairbanks is trying to get back to the Queen from England. And when all is said and done Fairbanks gets his wish and becomes (as you know he will) a Musketeer!

What you see at this point in cinema's history is the maturing of various formulas once considered frivolous. Griffith had done it in the mid-teens with dramatic film-making as a whole. Chaplin's The Kid had shown how slapstick could be melded with powerful storytelling. And now it was the turn of Douglas Fairbanks to develop his unique brand of adventure comedies into the realm of grand mythmaking.

Fairbanks had already reinvented his screen persona with the groundbreaking Mark of Zorro, transferring his over-the-top athleticism and comic timing to the world of romantic adventure. Mark of Zorro is amazing, but it is also something of an experiment; not too extravagant and quite straightforward in storyline. After the success of Zorro, his confidence bolstered (not to mention his coffers a little fuller), Fairbanks made his follow-up The Three Musketeers a far more lavish production, as well as allowing more time for characterisation and subplot. In other words, this was an attempt to move beyond simple genre antics and present a swashbuckler that was also a sweeping historical epic.

The broader canvas of The Three Musketeers allows for greater freedom of expression for its director Fred Niblo, who had also filmed Zorro. Niblo was an expert at balancing rhythm and motion in crowd scenes, but was also a great dramatic director. Here he gets to show off both these abilities, providing a realistic and constantly moving backdrop with the masses of extras at his disposal, yet also allowing the more emotional scenes to play out at a steady pace, giving them dignity and bringing out naturalism in the performances. He still recognises however that this is first and foremost an action picture. He gives a unique look to every action shot, sometimes putting figures in the background, other times foregrounding them, sometimes having them move towards the camera, other times across the frame. A great shot is the one in which Fairbanks steals food from the cardinal troops. The guards are placed in the foreground at the right of the frame; Fairbanks appears on the left in the background. This arrangement focuses us on Fairbanks, and the depth of his position also allows him room to do his stunts without having to move the camera or change angle.

Like Chaplin, Fairbanks always ensured that he was the star of the show and centre of attention, but in this more generous production he does allow some room for great supporting players, confident that they will make the picture more enjoyable without stealing it. Of note here are George Siegmann (Porthos), who can mostly be seen playing villains for Griffith, but here gets to show off his comedy skills - check out the casual way he wipes his sword and saunters off after dispatching a guard - and Eugene Palette (Aramis), also a great comedy player, and worth mentioning simply because it's interesting to see him without the huge belly he had acquired by his 30s heyday. Other than that Adolphe Menjou is great as usual, although he expresses far too much confidence and smugness for the puppet monarch he portrays. Fairbanks's regular leading lady Marguerite De La Motte is not bad, getting a little more time and space to show her acting range than she did in Mark of Zorro.

Still, there is a problem with The Three Musketeers, one which arises from its larger scale and dramatic pretensions - it's a bit slow. The screenplay goes to lengths to allow Fairbanks's character to gradually emerge, and takes time to set the scene, which is all fair enough, except that this is done at the expense of pacing. The first ten minutes are used up establishing the political intrigue, and it's a full thirty-eight minutes before we get to the first real action sequence. While I agree it's a good idea to keep us in suspense before showing off D'Artagnan's fighting skills, the build-up would work much better if we were treated to a small burst of action at the beginning - a "hook", screenwriters call it. Also the best fight scenes are weighted to the middle of the story, robbing the picture of a satisfying finale. The Mark of Zorro, although it is far more simplistic, at least has a continuous frenetic pace that makes it extremely watchable. Nevertheless, The Three Musketeers did settle once and for all the character of Doug Fairbanks, a character that was the same no matter what name it went by - that of the mythical, ever-living hero.

This light but enjoyable version of the often-filmed story of "The Three Musketeers" also offers Douglas Fairbanks plenty of material that plays to his best strengths. While he made several other movies that had more substance to them than this one does, the role of D'Artagnan is one of the roles that was best suited to his talents.

The adaptation of the Dumas novel considerably abridges both the story and the characters. It does not really attempt to deal with many of the themes of the book, instead concentrating on the parts with the most action and suspense. In itself, this results in a perfectly entertaining movie with plenty of things going on. But to enjoy it, you do have to set aside any expectation that the movie might come up to the book's standard (which in any case would be a difficult goal for a normal-length film feature to accomplish).

Fairbanks revels both in his early scenes as the ambitious young Gascon and in the rest of his sequences as the companion of the Musketeers. He also gets lots of help from the supporting cast. Nigel De Brulier has probably his best role as Cardinal Richelieu (a role he would also play in several later movies), with the austere, reserved Cardinal providing an ideal match for De Brulier's style. Marguerite De La Motte is appealing as Constance, and Barbara La Marr makes Milady de Winter a worthy adversary.

Everything fits together pretty well, and while this film version is much lighter than the novel, it succeeds at what it intended to do.

Another great Douglas Fairbanks film, not one of his best but still hugely entertaining. As an adaptation it is rather abridged, the details and spirit are there but there are versions since that have had much more depth to characterisation and such, the musketeers here are still very fun to watch but can feel like window-dressing. However, as a film and a stand alone there is plenty to love. Aside from the abridgements the only real misgiving was the rushed ending. The Three Musketeers though is still beautifully photographed and the costumes and sets equally evocative and lavish. It is wittily written, a lot of chat especially for a silent film but it has the Dumas spirit and none of it feels like irrelevant filler. As well as rousingly scored, there are three scores available one from 1921 and the others from 1996, the most fitting of the three is Louis F. Gottschalk's from 1921. The story is still diverting and goes at a crisp pace, with lots of twists and turns along with a real sense of adventure, excitement and suspense, basically all the ingredients for a great period adventure. The action sequences are highly athletic with lots of exciting bravado, it is edge-of-the-seat stuff with no signs of clumsiness or predictability. Fairbanks is great, he is full of charisma with touches of arrogance, wit and sparkling humour and tackles his stunts with a real effortless ease. Margarite De LaMotte is a touching Constance and Barbara La Marr a sensual and haunting Milady DeWinter. Adolphe Menjou is appropriately cruel and the Musketeers are well-played, but aside from Fairbanks the standout in the acting department was Nigel De Brulier as a sly and malevolent Richelieu. Overall, the 1973 Richard Lester version is still the definitive adaptation of The Three Musketeers but if we're talking about adaptations being judged on their own this is one of the better and most enjoyable ones, apart from the Burbank Films Australia animated version and the updated one from the Asylum I don't think any of the adaptations are really terrible(yes that is including the 1993 film). 9/10 Bethany Cox