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Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 1948 film The Three Musketeers.
Story
There is a fine line between doing the story justice and changing the tone and feel. The changes they made to the story didn’t help anything but get the movie past the censors. Instead of coming off as an innocent boy who falls in love at the drop of a hat, d’Artagnan comes off as an airhead.
There’s also a reason that most movies only do the first half of the book. The rest of it is a little bit of a drag.
Score: 0
Characters
D’Artagnan was terrible and flaky when dealing with women, but when he was sword fighting, he was awesome. All the other musketeers were great and I wish they’d gotten more screen time.
The treatment of the women was possibly less progressive then the novel and extremely predictable.
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
The dialogue is mostly quippy and fun, except when it comes to the romance where it’s stilted, awkward, and cringe-worthy.
Score: 0.5
Visuals and Music
The filming angles, colours, shots, lighting, and framing are absolutely gorgeous. The fight choreography wonderful and the location shoots splendid.
The music is great and epic.
Score: 1
Fun
An amazing cast which all did a great job. The fighting was fun and the little bits of humour were refreshing, but mostly it was dour. Both kids got bored and so did I.
Score: 0
Overall
A semi-faithful adaptation of the book with not enough humour or sword fighting. Although visually stunning, the changes to d’Artagnan made him unlikeable and the movie didn’t age well.
Final Score: 2 Stars out of 5