The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers

The two-part Dumas adaptation, being released by the Criterion Collection in a 4K restoration, features a superb cast—including Michael York, Raquel Welch and Charlton Heston—and the director’s classic wit.

By
David Mermelstein

Few works have sparked the cinematic imagination as routinely as Alexandre Dumas’s 1844 novel “The Three Musketeers.” A hasty count indicates some 40 movie versions (the first and latest from France, in 1903 and 2023) and many more made just for television. But by common consent, the best yet is Richard Lester’s “The Three Musketeers” (1973) and “The Four Musketeers” (1974), originally conceived as a single film with intermission but ultimately released as two separate pictures. Both have now been fetchingly restored in 4K and this week debut on home video in that form as part of the Criterion Collection. (Enthusiasts may select a two-disc Blu-ray set or a four-disc 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo pack.)

The Philadelphia-born Mr. Lester worked primarily in the U.K. and remains best known today for “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help,” his mid-1960s filmed collaborations with the Beatles. At an early stage, there was apparently some thought of casting the Beatles as Dumas’s sword-fighting trio plus their protégé D’Artagnan—an idea quickly quashed.

Instead, thanks in large part to the independent European-based producers known collectively as the Salkinds (specifically Ilya and his father, Alexander), a host of Hollywood and British stalwarts not only assumed the leads but also most of the supporting roles. Three seasoned actors in their prime—Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain and Frank Finlay—were cast as the world-weary musketeers: Athos, Aramis and Porthos. Michael York, fresh from his central role in the soon-to-be Oscar-winning “Cabaret,” nabbed the plum part of the callow D’Artagnan (ultimately, the fourth musketeer), who spends nearly as much time bedding beautiful women as engaging in derring-do.
Michael York and Raquel Welch PHOTO: CRITERION COLLECTION

Yet these iterations of 17th-century masculinity were in many ways outshone by their colleagues in character roles. The Salkinds already had a professional relationship with Raquel Welch, the very essence of feminine sexuality at the time, so her participation—as Constance, the queen’s dressmaker and the object of D’Artagnan’s ceaseless affections—was non-negotiable. Who knew then that this screen goddess, often as not wooden in dramatic parts, had talent as a comedic foil? Mr. Lester brought this gift to the fore by having her underplay the yuks.

Landing Faye Dunaway after “Bonnie and Clyde” but before “Chinatown” and “Network” was a coup, and she portrays the ruthless Milady de Winter, an agent of much misery, with such unforgettable hauteur that it’s hard to imagine anyone else inhabiting the role. Christopher Lee lends her lover, the fearsome one-eyed Comte de Rochefort, exactly the kind of menace that made him irreplaceable on screen for so many decades.
Faye Dunaway PHOTO: CRITERION COLLECTION

Mr. Lester opted for subtlety in selecting the royal couple. Dubbed into English by Richard Briers, the prolific French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel proves convincingly wry and appealingly oblivious as Louis XIII. And Geraldine Chaplin brings an appropriately cool mien to Queen Anne, who cares little how her actions affect others, let alone the nation.

But the real casting masterstroke was placing Charlton Heston, one of Hollywood’s leading leading men, in the pivotal role of Cardinal Richelieu, the power behind the throne and the figure discreetly controlling most of the saga’s action. Heston plays Richelieu with a welcome light touch, giving just the right weight to sotto-voce comments, asserting authority by never raising his voice and letting an arched eyebrow or a sidelong glance serve his character’s needs. The actor was initially courted to play one of the musketeers, but both Heston and Mr. Lester soon came to appreciate that veering from the obvious was the smarter move.
Charlton Heston PHOTO: CRITERION COLLECTION

In other ways, too, these films depart from the predictable without ever sacrificing what’s elemental. So, yes, there’s plenty of acrobatic swordplay in these pictures—much of it seemingly influenced by the martial-arts movies then all the rage in Hong Kong—as well as gorgeous, period-accurate costumes, all but Welch’s courtesy of Yvonne Blake, to say nothing of Brian Eatwell’s splendid production design. (The films were shot entirely in Spain, though tells are few.) But to all this Mr. Lester has added his trademark antic charm and off-kilter wit. No one familiar with his earlier pictures will fail to spot those qualities here: the offscreen ambient noises and cross-talk; the use of multiple cameras for a single scene; and the strange objects that routinely appear, including a working organ in the middle of a garden and a carousel powered by peasants. And who can forget that royal chess match in which live dogs substitute for rooks, knights, pawns and the like?

Let’s have a word, too, for the screenwriter, the Scottish author George MacDonald Fraser, whose early “Flashman” novels, with their outlandish bounder protagonist, served almost as dry runs for his spirited condensing of Dumas’s massive chronicle into two efficient pictures, each running less than two hours. It was Fraser who, when Mr. Lester asked how a particular scene should look, said, “like a Breughel painted by Rembrandt”—a comment the director clearly took to heart.

None of this makes these pictures high art, but they are consummate entertainment. Few of us want a meal of Bergman and Bresson every night. Sometimes, the menu calls for romance, intrigue, broad comedy, gaudy settings, lavish dress, and, of course, sexy women and dashing men. And when you want to dine out on that, Mr. Lester is happy to serve you.

E.T.

On May 26, 1982, Steven Spielberg unveiled E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial at the Cannes film festival. The sci-fi classic would become a summer smash en route to four Oscar wins at the 55th Academy Awards. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:

Jaws. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Raiders of the Lost Ark. And now, E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial. Steven Spielberg has done it again. He has created another instant American classic.

As director and co-producer (with Kathleen Kennedy), Spielberg has crafted with warmth and humor a simple fantasy that works so superbly on so many levels that it will surely attract masses of moviegoers from all demographics. At the heart of the story line, E.T. is really My Favorite Martian, with a bizarre-looking but disarmingly lovable alien (designed by Carlo Rambaldi, who designed the creature in Close Encounters).

However, the film goes past the myth of a marooned spaceman trying to figure out a way back home. While E.T. is being befriended, hidden and protected (from the adults) by his Earth buddies, the picture conveys a relationship story, an adventure, a mystery, and ultimately, the time-worn but always timely message that no matter how different God’s creatures may be, there’s a common bond between the thinking ones — because they’re also capable of love. Sometimes, kids are always the ones to recognize this on a more immediate level than adults.

Sound sappy? Yes. But Spielberg’s magic as a director is to take these themes and weave them into a straight-forward tale so delicately that you are never sledge-hammered and come to perceive screenwriter Melissa Mathison’s intent through the exquisite subtlety of this beguiling fairy tale.

Amid the wonder, excitement and joy that virtually every frame of this picture elicits — swept along by John Williams’ playful and uplifting score — one really does fall in love with the delightful little alien, and indeed, finds oneself reaching for the handkerchief (and realizing but not minding upon later reflection) right on cue. Never mind that certain plot leaps of faith are necessary to advance this fantasy along, the characters (mostly kids) are so compelling and endearing that you’re easily pulled in.

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER

How many mothers can you fit into 101 minutes of film? Well, that depends on how you define what a mother is. A biological womb? A nurturing guardian? A dependable caretaker? An emotional support cheerleader? A homebase to return to? A financial backer? A character role to embody, or an archetypal performance? All About My Mother (1999) showcases all of these mothers (and more) in a layered portrait dedicated to "all actresses who've played actresses, to all women who act, to men who act and become women, to all who wish to be mothers." In his Oscar-winning film, Pedro Almodóvar's many leading ladies blur the definitions of motherhood into a single Matryoshka-like narrative, with roles nested within roles, and each woman becoming a slightly modified version of the others and of herself.

All About My Mother pays explicit homage to the film All About Eve (1950) and the play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) by weaving them directly into the script, creating an overlapping picture of women echoing each other. Manuela (Cecilia Roth), a single mother in Madrid, works as a nurse who sometimes helps young doctors simulate the experience of asking grieving relatives to donate their loved ones' organs. When she takes her son, Esteban (Eloy Azarín), to see a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire for his seventeenth birthday, his earnest attempts to get an autograph by the show's star, Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), are ignored as she drives away from the theater. In a direct nod to the same scene from John Cassavetes's Opening Night (1977), Esteban is struck down by another car without ever getting the autograph he so desperately wanted. At the same hospital where she performs as a grieving mother, Manuela is now forced into the role for her own personal tragedy.

To distract her from her son's haunting memory, Manuela moves back to Barcelona to find the father Esteban never knew he had: a trans woman named Lola (Toni Cantó) who Manuela had left after finding out she was pregnant. But nobody in Barcelona knows where Lola is. After finding her old friend Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a feisty trans sex worker, and meeting Rosa (Penélope Cruz), an optimistic young nun who helps all the "hookers and transvestites" until she discovers she's HIV-positive and pregnant with Lola's child, Manuela finds herself in a complicated web that links her past, her present, and the ghosts of futures she could have had. Drawn to rewatching Streetcar performances at the theater, she becomes embedded in Huma's life and the play itself, the same scenes repeating nightly. They're the same roles Manuela and Lola had played 20 years earlier when they had first met in a theater troupe. Now though, Manuela is reliving the same lines with no evidence to hold onto about all that's happened in between: her marriage to Lola, Lola's new breasts, their secret son, his tragic death. And yet, everything around Manuela is a series of interconnected quotes in a tight feedback loop of references. Losing her son doesn't rob Manuela of motherhood. Unexpectedly, she both is cared for by, and takes care of, a whole chosen family of women trying to be, have, and deliver the same maternal role that they each need from each other, in their own ways.