They’ve been featured in movies and TV shows many, many times, dating back to the early days of silent films. They’ve been turned into animated canines, modernized, Broadway-ized, Disney-ized, serial-ized, transformed into western heroes, portrayed by Brat Packers, featured with the Banana Splits and teamed with Barbie. In their latest incarnation, they’ve been steam-punked.
They are the Three Musketeers and, in whatever form, they are “all for one, one for all.”
Or, if you are a French purist: “Tous pour un, un pour tous.”
The trio of gallant swordsmen—Athos, Porthos and Aramis, plus their young companion d’Artagnan—have seen it all on the big and small screen.
While the story and characters are credited to French writer Alexandre Dumas—himself a fencer—the author himself claimed he took the idea from an early 16th century 1700 German book called “Memoirs of Mister d’Artagnan, Lieutenant Captain of the first company of the King’s Musketeers.” Dumas’ version of the tale was originally published in serial form in a French newspaper in 1844.
Cinema’s staging of the Musketeers saga began early in the medium’s history. There were at least half a dozen silent versions, beginning with a long-since-lost French production in 1901. Notable pioneering producers Thomas Edison and Thomas Ince oversaw their own takes on the tale.
In 1935, RKO Pictures rendered a feature adaptation starring Walter Abel as d’Artagnan with Paul Lukas, Onslow Stevens, and Moroni Olsen as the Musketeers. The project was shot under the direction of Rowland W. Lee, who, that same year, made a film called Cardinal Richelieu, centering on the Musketeers’ constant villain, with George Arliss in the title role. Two years earlier, the concept had been modernized for a Mascot Pictures adventure serial. A 28-year-old John Wayne tackled the d’Artganan part in a scenario set in North Africa, where the Musketeers (played by Jack Mulhall, Francis X. Bushman and Raymond Hatton) are members of the French Foreign Legion battling an Arab terrorist known as El Shaitan.
In 1939, a less serious approach—with comedy and a half-dozen songs—was taken by 20th Century Fox and prolific helmer Allen Dwan, with Don Ameche as d’Artagnan and the Ritz Brothers as “three lackeys” who substitute for the swordsmen. While Ameche was dashing and a suitable singer as the novice D’Artagnan, the vaudeville-trained, slapstick comic Ritz sibs are definitely an acquired taste. The supporting cast, however, was first-rate: Binnie Barnes as Milady de Winter, Gloria Stuart as Queen Anne, and Joseph Schildkraut as King Louis XIII, as well as John Carradine and Lionel Atwill.
Skipping the music and downplaying the shtick for genuinely thrilling swordsmanship, MGM took on the Musketeers in a first-rate 1948 color version. The fine cast includes up-and-coming song-and-dance stalwart Gene Kelly as d’Artagnan, Van Heflin, Robert Coote and Gig Young as the Men in Plumes, and the likes of Lana Turner, Angela Lansbury, June Allyson, Frank Morgan, and Vincent Price as “Prime Minister” Richelieu—the “Cardinal” was dropped in order not to offend church groups—in support.
Under the direction of George Sidney (Anchors Aweigh, Scaramouche), the ’48 Three Musketeers is a spirited affair, light and adventurous yet true to its source material.
Few didn’t like Kelly’s turn as d’Artagnan. Wrote New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther: “As Dumas’ magnificent hero who virtually assumed the task of shielding the weak King Louis against the dark machinations of Richelieu, Mr. Kelly may not seem precisely the gentleman portrayed in the book but he is a fair comprehension of a vigorous and genial young man. Not since Douglas Fairbanks swung through the air with magic ease and landed on balconies and beefsteaks has a fellow come along who compares with that robustious actor in vitality and grace.”
MGM continued their success with the property in the 1952 Tom and Jerry cartoon Two Mouseketeers. Here, Jerry and his little French-speaking rodent pal Nibbles are Mouseketeers out to get part of a banquet guarded by feline palace enforcer Tom. The cat-and-mice game of one-upmanship gets wilder until a rather surprising downbeat fade-out. Still, the film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short, and inspired other Tom and Jerry affairs with similar situations.
A Hard Day’s Night and Help! director Richard Lester had once envisioned a version of The Three Musketeers starring The Beatles. While this never came to pass (who would play d’Artagnan? Paul or Ringo?), Lester ultimately got a
chance to fashion his take on the Dumas tale with The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), which were shot back-to-back in Spain. Produced by Alexander and Ilya Salkind (who would later team with Lester on the Superman movies) and adapted by George MacDonald Fraser (of Flashman fame), these jaunty films became international hits by mixing pageantry, slapstick, daring swordplay, period accuracy and a game all-star cast. Michael York was the fresh-faced d’Artganan to the musketeers limned by Oliver Reed (Athos), Frank Finlay (Porthos) and Richard Chamberlain (Aramis). Also cast were Faye Dunaway as the duplicitous Milady, Christopher Lee as Rochefort, Charlton Heston as Richelieu and Raquel Welch as the accident-prone seamstress Constance.
Most of the reviews were positive, although the New York Times’ Vincent Canby had some reservations about Lester’s first installment, writing that it “looks like an evening in a bump-o-car arena, with magnificently costumed people in place of cars. The adventures are less swashbuckle than slapstick.”
But the swashbuckle that was on the screen was often too real. Producer Ilya Salkind is quoted in Robert Sellers’ book Hellraisers that Reed would “sometimes go berserk and really fight—100 percent real. And we would have to say ‘Oliver, it’s just a movie.’” According to Salkind, Reed’s insistence on real swordplay made him a target for angry stuntmen, eventually landing him in a hospital for four days with blood poisoning from a wound.
Lester and Fraser would revisit the Musketeers in 1989 in Return of the Musketeers, based on Dumas’ Twenty Years Later, but the results weren’t so happy. While many of the original cast members returned, Roy Kinnear, the British comic and Lester’s close friend, died during production following a fall from a horse. The film never received theatrical exposure in the U.S., making its debut a few years after its slated release date on cable TV.
Disney tried to turn the Musketeer formula into something of a Mousketeer formula for their 1993 MTV video-inspired version. Hal Hinson’s review in The Washington Post mirrored other critics when he wrote: “Even with all the leggings and horses and medieval gear, Walt Disney’s ‘The Three Musketeers’ looks more like a beach-party movie than an adaptation of a beloved classic. The movie stars Kiefer Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Charlie Sheen and Chris O’Donnell and has been lovingly referred to as ‘Young Guns in Tights’ — a description that probably can’t be improved upon.”
Spinoffs of the story—including several versions of Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask, in which the Musketeers figure prominently—have been cranked out for years in America and other countries. Cornel Wilde played d’Artagnan Jr. in 1952’s At Sword’s Point, in which the children of the original Musketeers (including the daughter of Athos, played by Maureen O’Hara) are represented on screen as well. A few years before his stint on Grey’s Anatomy came along, model Justin Chambers was recruited to play d’Artagnan in Peter Hyams’ 2001 The Musketeer, a movie with high-flying sword skirmishes choreographed by Xin-Xin Xiong, the ace stunt coordinator of Hong Kong director Tsui Hark.
Now there’s another reboot of The Three Musketeers with a steampunk look, from British director Paul W.S. Anderson of the Resident Evil films and Alien vs. Predator fame. Here, havoc rules the day in Anderson’s interpretation of Dumas’ story. There’s all sorts of Rube Goldberg-like weaponry, flying machines invented by Leonardo Da Vinci, and mano y mano brawls that resemble The Matrix’s bullet time sequences. This time, d’Artagnan is played by fresh-faced Percy Jackson star Logan Lerman, and the Musketeers are enacted by Matthew Macfadyen, Ray Stevenson and Luke Evans. Richelieu is played by sneering Oscar winner Christoph Waltz and the two-timing Milady de Winter by Milla Jovovich, Anderson’s lithesome real-life wife.
Sumptuously shot in Germany, the film was made in 3-D; even flat, it is a treat to watch with gorgeous scenery, impressive field of depth photography and a cool look that appears antiquated yet futuristic at the same time. The reviews were mostly unfavorable and the film was not given a chance to find an audience, spending an abbreviated time in theaters.
While there are some pleasures to be had with the latest cinematic edition of Dumas’ classic, this was definitely where it was “all for some, and some for all.”