Customer Reviews for
The Three Musketeers (1948)
Lana Turner, the memorable menace of Dumas' evil character...
When D'Artagnan (Gene Kelly), a brilliant swordsman, left his Gasgon village, in 1625, with a letter to Monsieur De Treville, captain of the King's Musketeers (Reginald Owen), he didn't expect to have in his first day, three duels with the three best swordsmen in Paris: Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young), and Aramis (Robert Coote).
But as the duels were forbidden in Paris by Cardinal Richelieu, Chief Minister to King Louis XIII, D'Artagnan had to challenge, first, Jussac, captain of the Guard (Saul Gorss).
The duel, under Tchaikowsky themes, was hilarious and explosive, with great acrobatic skills, good for lots of laugh, specially when D'Artagnan didn't kill the nobleman but he sent him to Richelieu well humiliated "trousers dropping." This amusing scene opens the door of an eternal friendship between D'Artagnan and the three famous Musketeers...
Cardinal Richelieu (Vincent Price) was unpopular, but extremely powerful... He was an ambitious man who wanted war against England and the complete destruction of the King's powers...
King Louis XIII (Frank Morgan) opposed Richelieu's plan for war with England... But the Cardinal, who well knows everything that transpires or has transpired in France, discovers that George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham (John Sutton) - in love with the Queen - was in possession of a set of diamonds studs, twelve studs to be exact, that were delivered to him only last night by the elegant Queen Anne (Angela Lansbury) in love with the Duke...
Richelieu asks his mistress, lady De Winter (Lana Turner), to travel to England and to steal two of them... His plan is to demonstrate Buckingham's relation with the Queen, in order to make the poor King "lessen," and "lesser."
The mission of the Musketeers is to return the Jewels to Paris in nine days time, as the Queen has to wear them at the banquet...
Lana Turner gives her finest performance as the cool Lady De Winter, the most notorious woman of France, that Duke of Buckingham even couldn't resist... This lethal lady is rather a peripheral character but so forbidding a creature is she as she lies, steals and murders her way from France to England, from palace to boudoir, that she makes Lucrecia Borgia look like Mary Poppins... Turner's character remained Evil Incarnate from the beginning to the end and the decision to sustain her satanic nature throughout was a great asset to the film and true to the spirit of the original Dumas delineation...
Kelly's D'Artagnan was just as Dumas portrayed him-a 17th-century country bumpkin who combines cockiness with courage, ingenuity and a fine gift of swordsmanship... His first meeting with the three musketeers; their consternation at finding that each is to fight a duel with the newcomer at almost the same hour; their sudden enduring friendship with the country lad; D'Artagnan's romance with Constance (June Allyson), the Queen's lady-in-waiting-all this leads into a rapid succession of adventures on land and sea, in tavern, court and boudoir, as they slash their way through a dozen ambushes to save the Queen's honor and to foil the scheming Prime minister and his evil accomplice in their plot to dethrone the King...
Van Heflin is powerful enough in his colorful role as Athos, a man in love with a woman who was evil, selfish, death, poison, a lady whom he don't dare to forgive...
Vincent Price is exciting as the strong Cardinal... I remember him whispering to the weak King quietly at the end of the film: 'I am the State your Majesty. I am France!'
Loaded with spectacular Swordsplay, and with excellent action scenes, and under George Sidney's good direction, this colorful swashbuckling adventure romance is visually great entertainment...
The Three Musketeers (1948)
Bizarrely enough this 1948 version of The Three Musketeers reminds me a bit of . . .
KILL BILL Vol. 1 & 2. Both heroes and villains alike in this film are killers. Lana Turner as Milady, and Vincent Price as Richelieu are deliciously fun as villains. Gene Kelly's D'Artagnan sword fight scenes are truly awesome! They honestly hold up against anything excellent that's being done in action sequences today, seriously bordering on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" type fight scenes.
Unfortunately, it's not quite long enough for us to truly invest in D'Artagnan's Beatrix Kiddo like character. Only Van Heflin's portrayal of Athos imparts true emotional substance as one of the alleged heroes in this film. Athos is forever tormented by his love for cold blooded killer/assassin Milady, a bit like Beatrix and Bill in "KILL BILL" as well. Meanwhile, D'Artagnan barely has time to flinch when his beloved newlywed wife Constance is murdered at the hands of Milady.
The Three Musketeers (1948)
Fearfully hearty
There have been many adaptations of Alexandre Dumas's most famous novel, and this 1948 adapation is one of the most most familiar, but it is terribly uneven, as is the central perfvormance of its star, Gene Kelly. Kelly was extraordinarily handsome (especially in profile), and his attractiveness coupled with his athleticism makes his d'Artagnan tremendous fun to watch, especially in his duels. He was never much of an actor, however, and his director George Sidney unfortunately encouraged him to indulge in such embarrassing antics as flipping on his back and wiggling his legs in the air to show sexual arousal when he spies on the fair Constance (the awesomely unlovely June Allyson) undressing. Except for Van Heflin as the melancholy Athos, acting, indeed, is not this production's strong suit: Robert Coote and Gig Young have practically nothing to say as Aramis and Porthos; Frank Morgan plays Louis XIII exactly like he played Professor Marvel in THE WIZARD OF OZ; and Angela Lansbury struts around looking gorgeous and inexpressive as Anne of Austria.
And then there is Lana Turner as Milady. Ideally cast in physical terms, Turner works hard at her big scenes pretending to be dying in the Duke of Buckingham's castle; she is much more memorable inexpertly executing her little bits of stage business, such as attending to her makeup, while other characters talk around her. She's pretty unintentionally hilarious, as are the production's odd uses for location footage: while the Musketeers gallop at frenetic space to England, they seem to move from Monument Valley to Big Sur in just one cut, and neither locale seems even passably convincing as Normandy. And at one point Sidney uses what seems to be a brookside Cape Cod as a seventeenth-century inn. But it is almost impossible to dislike the film given its high energy and spirits. Everything moves so lickety-split that the whole movie passes by quickly and painlessly.The Three Musketeers (1948)
Good but...
I enjoyed every second of this movie, except the last 2 minutes. Gene Kelly played a great D'Artagnan, energetic and brash. Although the movie is only two hours, the complex plot makes sense. However, in the last 2 minutes all the problems get swept under the rug and everyone lives happy ever after. It isn't a satisfying ending.The Three Musketeers (1948)
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