Les trois mousquetaires

Let me begin by expressing how refreshing it feels to watch a series of action scenes without wretched shaky cam! After seeing Guardians of the Galaxy and the new Ninja Turtles movies at the cinema recently, I had almost forgotten what it was like to have a comprehensible fight sequence.

This 1973 version of The Three Musketeers is the best version of the story I have ever seen, even better than the over-praised Gene Kelly adaptation. It's athletic, earthy, and light-hearted, paired with one of the most perfect casts ever brought together for a movie and Michel Legrand's amazing score which proves adventurous and heart-achingly romantic in equal turns.

If you love action and comedy, then I cannot recommend this enough. I never wanted it to end and cannot wait to watch the sequel.

This film, and its sequel (filmed concurrently) is by far the best movie version of the Dumas novel ever produced. The cast is excellent. The sets and costumes are marvelous. The swordplay (and there is much) is possible some of the most realistic ever filmed. And it's the only Musketeer movie I am aware of in which the Musketeers actually use muskets. Authenticity seems to have been very important to the producers, as well as staying true to the novel.

Sadly a film like this wouldn't be made these days. First off the fighting would be "punched-up" with a lot of wire work. And of course Hollywood would change the story to eliminate much of the "sleeping around" characters do (today's movie heroes in this type of movie aren't usually sexually active). They would also provide some creative story editing so that a certain character who dies in the novel would survive so as to supply the requisite happy ending. Fortunately for us this version does not suffer that kind of revisionism.

If you're a fan of Dumas or just looking for a fun film with lots of realistic sword fighting then you won't want to miss this.

Alexandre Dumas's classic The Three Musketeers seems to never lose its appeal, it gets another cinema version every generation. In the seventies Richard Lester shot such a long film that producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind decided to release it in two parts. This film only takes us to the point of the affair of the diamond studs.

Michael York is one truly bumptious Gascon in his interpretation of D'Artagnan. Apparently it's a French mantra that people from Gascony are braggarts and quick to fight. I don't know how well that point is known outside the French speaking world, but it's in the strength of Dumas's tale that we Americans even those who haven't studied The Three Musketeers in high school of college English can appreciate that fact. Because of that fact he manages to make all kinds of enemies, the wrong ones and the right ones.

Fortunately the right ones, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain all recognize York's worth and he becomes a companion of The Three Musketeers. The King's own guard, fighting against the encroaching power of France's prime minister Cardinal Richelieu.

Charlton Heston adds to his collection of real historical characters portrayed on film with his interpretation of Richelieu. He was hardly the villain in real life that he is here. As he said on his deathbed that he had no enemies, but the enemies of the state. Richelieu was in fact a great French patriot though as a Cardinal was not terribly pious or scrupulous.

Richelieu was also not a tall man and the six foot two inch Charlton Heston had to stoop over a bit when playing him. Note that carefully when you watch Heston, especially in his scenes with Christopher Lee as Rochefort. Lee does not lack in the height department either.

Three women have substantial roles in The Three Musketeers. Raquel Welch makes a sexy Constance, not quite the innocent that June Allyson played her as in the MGM version with Gene Kelly. Geraldine Chaplin is serene and beautiful, but tragically unloved except by Great Britain's prime minister the Duke of Buckingham {Simon Ward}, France's mortal enemy. Milady DeWinter played by Faye Dunaway is as deadly and beautiful as Lana Turner was in the Gene Kelly film.

Personally I've never thought that Hollywood ever got The Three Musketeers quite right. It will never happen I'm sure, but I'd love to see the operetta that Rudolf Friml wrote the music for, made into a Three Musketeers film. Still this one isn't too bad with an accent more on bawdy comedy than anything else. The followup Four Musketeers takes a more serious turn.

Richard Lester has to be one of the greatest directors of comedy there ever was. There are dozens of slapstick gags and situations in this movie and almost 100% of them work. And what an opulent setting they are placed in! Lester and his cohorts have created a film in which almost every frame resembles a museum painting come to life (and gone berserk.)

Lester is better with style than relating a narrative. I found it impossible to completely comprehend the story line here, and I think if you asked most people what the movie was about, they'd tell you there was a lot of swashbuckling and general mayhem and lunacy, but I doubt they'd give you much of Dumas' story. When the style is this good, however, a little fuzziness on the substance is not a fatal flaw. Still, it might keep this picture from being an all-time classic rather than "just" a most enjoyable film.

Lester is such an auteur that his direction is the main focus of this film even with such an all-star cast. It was a wise decision (actually it seems like a no-brainer) to divide what was originally shot at one time into two films, this one and 'The Four Musketeers.' There really can be too much of a good thing, and even at under two hours, 'The Three Musketeers' threatens to be overwhelming. But on balance this film is great entertainment.

Richard Lester did what no one before or since has been able to do: tell Dumas' story as magnificently as it deserves to be told. This tale gets told again and again in Hollywood, but leave it to a European to do it right. The cinematography, sets, and costumes are all fantastic, but they aren't all clean and impossibly perfect like the 1948 Gene Kelly or 1993 Kiefer Sutherland versions. Lester infuses this familiar story with an energy and tone that made his work with the Beatles successful. Yes, "The Three Musketeers" is an intriguing adventure, but the humor in their friendship, that's what draws me in again and again. And what an amazing cast he had to work with: all the Musketeers are perfect, especially big Oliver Reed, who can be silly, witty, and scary all in the same scene. The supporting cast is full of great actors, including Charlton Heston (having fun at being evil here), Christopher Lee (gets to mix deadpan humor in with his menace), Raquel Welch (cast as beautiful but clumsy, really enabling her to be a character and not just a live mannequin), Spike Milligan (doing what he does best), and most wonderfully Faye Dunaway (seductively evil: my favorite kind!). And, of course, holding it all together as D'Artagnan is Michael York, who never found a greater role.

Besides handling the shifts in tone well, Richard Lester also had the great rare luxury of breaking Dumas' large novel into two seperate movies which he filmed simultaneously. This really allows for greater character development and a truly epic scale. All of the other film versions try to cram all of that plot into 120 minutes. Not only is it impossible (in the 1993 version they simply change it completely using only the basic idea of Dumas' book), but it makes this huge complicated story with many threads seem contrived and ridiculous (the 1948 version has such dramatic and sudden shifts of tone - from wacky comedy, to romance, to heavy drama - that it can confuse and lose the audience).

This is great moviemaking.