The Three Musketeers

Dir: Richard Lester

1973

*****

I've never really been interested in Alexandre Dumas's classic story of d'Artagnan and The Three Musketeers, other than in the Spanish/Japanese canine animated adaptation of the 80s - Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds - and Richard Lester's rather silly but utterly charming 1973 comedy. It's hard to believe now but the film was originally intended as a vehicle for The Beatles with whom Lester had directed in two other films. The film adheres closely to the novel, but also injects a fair amount of humor. It was shot by David Watkins, with an eye for period detail and the fight scenes were choreographed by master swordsman William Hobbs. The film was originally intended to be an epic which ran for three hours including an intermission, but during production, it was determined the film could not make its announced release date in that form, so a decision was made to split the long epic into two shorter features, the second part becoming 1974's The Four Musketeers. Superman fans will know the names Alexander and Iiya Salkind well, the infamous producers decided to split the first film into two after principal photography was completed. Many of the cast principals sued the Salkinds as a result, stating that they were only contracted to make one film, indeed, during an advanced screening attended by the cast, after the movie ended a trailer for The Four Musketeers was shown, which none of the cast had heard anything about until then. The film may have ended on a sour note but it is a glorious epic and something of an unsung hero in the comedy genre. I'm not too sure why Richard Lester was chosen as director but I can see a lot of his 1969 adaption of The Bed sitting Room in it and it works rather well. Michael York bounds into the film as the enthusiastic and naive d'Artagnan, who is soon joined by Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay and Richard Chamberlain as Athos, Porthos and Aramis receptively, and before long the four are taking on the likes of Charlton Heston's Cardinal Richelieu, Faye Dunaway's Milady de Winter and Christopher Lee's Count De Rochefort. They assist Jean-Pierre Cassel's King Louis XIII, Geraldine Chaplin's Anne of Austria and Simon Ward's Duke of Buckingham along the way and even stop to steal Raquel Welch's Constance Bonacieux away from her husband, played brilliantly by the great Spike Milligan. The script is awesome, from the Musketeers quips, to the mumblings of the supporting cast. Roy Kinnear pretty much steals the show with his particular mumbles, while playing Planchet, the down on his luck man servant of d'Artagnan. The action is quite full on and impressive and as inventive as it is funny. Each character is written with the respective actor in mind, it works well but in hindsight, having a character live up to an actors real life alcoholism is a bit bad taste (Oliver Reed) but them was the 70s for you. I can't really fault it, there are times when the film looks amateurish for sure but it only adds to the overall charm. Some scenes look straight out of a low-budget Monty Python scene while some look as exuberant as the Palace of Versailles probably did look back in the day. It's pretty much got everything you could want from every kind of genre (apart from horror and nunspoitation). I think my favorite aspect was Raquel Welch's character's bad luck and clumsiness. Slapstick is hard to pull off, even for seasoned comedians but watching Loana from One Million Years B.C. falling about and getting hit over the head by various falling objects is a joy to behold, even now, all these years later. Classic French/British swashbuckling nonsense with a cast to die for.