Black Gate

The Three Musketeers (1948)

When you say “French swashbuckler,” two names leap instantly to mind: d’Artagnan and Cyrano. Both were actual historical figures, but it’s through their fictional incarnations that they’re known around the world. Both d’Artagnan and Cyrano de Bergerac have been fictionalized repeatedly dating back to the 17^th century — zut alors, Cyrano even fictionalized himself! — but they’re overwhelmingly best known from two sources, d’Artagnan from Alexander Dumas’s The Three Musketeers and it sequels, and Cyrano de Bergerac from Edmond Rostand’s play of the same name. There have been several memorable screen versions of Rostand’s Cyrano, but none more so than the version reviewed below. The Three Musketeers, of course, is one of the greatest adventure novels ever written, and has been filmed for movies and TV dozens of times, with varying degrees of quality and fidelity to the source material. This week we’re looking at one of the best, and throwing in an oft-overlooked sequel as a bonus.

The Three Musketeers

Rating: *****
Origin: USA, 1948
Director: George Sidney
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

There were a lot of movie and TV adaptations of The Three Musketeers in the 20^th century, but three of them tower above all the others: the Fairbanks film from 1921, Richard Lester’s 1973 version, and, falling almost exactly in between them, MGM’s star-studded entry from 1948.

This is an interesting adaptation: it starts out as a typical Hollywood vehicle for star Gene Kelly, bright, colorful, charming, and light-hearted, a musical without songs, as d’Artagnan (Kelly) finds camaraderie with the musketeers and romance with Constance (June Allyson). But the top-billed actor at the time was actually Lana Turner, then at the height of her fame, and based on her roles as a femme fatale in films noir, she was cast as the wicked Milady de Winter. Now Milady appears mostly in the second half of Dumas’s novel, so to give Turner enough screen time, the movie races through the Affair of the Diamond Studs in its first hour, enabling it to spend its second hour on the schemes of Milady.

…

Read More Read More

I have a new obsession. I seem to be switching obsessions a lot, but the truth is I’m not switching anything at all. I’m simply adding. This time around, I’m absolutely infatuated with a show on Netflix that I’m a little mad took me so long to check out. That show is The Untamed, a 2017 live-action adaptation of the Chinese fantasy novel Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation is the English title) by author Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. The novel is not yet officially translated into English, but I’m desperate for it to be. I want this thing on my shelf. Like, yesterday. Granted, since it’s a web novel, it’s not likely to be on anyone’s actual shelf, but lordy do I want this book as a real thing in my hands.

Anyway, the show is wonderful. I understand that, from my very basic research from this post, that the live-action adaptation is quite divergent from the novel, so I’m content to watch the show while waiting for that official English translation (there are unofficial online translations, but I would like to put money into the hands of the author, you know?), knowing that the two are different enough that my enjoyment of the novel won’t be impacted by having watched the adaptation first. Also, apparently this adaptation is only one of many, and so I might have to go and find other adaptations.

The story itself is a multi-layered fantasy epic drama with grand themes of belonging, family, clan rivalry, justice and love. Centering around Wei Wuxian, also known as Wei Ying or the Yiling Patriarch, an orphaned child who was adopted by his father’s master’s family and is considered a sibling of the master’s two children Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli, the story is often funny, and terribly sweet, and also very, very dark.

It doesn’t pull punches, killing many folks, straining and breaking relationships, and turning heroes into villains. Everything is difficult, and you can understand why people act the way they do, calling into question what you might do if you were caught in these positions. Essentially, it’s my favorite kind of story. Give me the darkness. Give me unsure characters and well-meaning people who unwittingly make bad choices. Give me consequence and heartache and despair. Those alone, however, do not make this one of my recent favorites. What really makes it for me is the thread of a deep abiding love that moves like gossamer throughout the whole piece; a glittering filament of hope that grabs a hold of the heart and doesn’t let go.

…

Read More Read More