The Count Of Monte Cristo
(1975)
Director: David
Greene
Cast: Richard Chamberlain, Tony Curtis, Trevor Howard
With currently over 500 movies reviews on this web site,
I think it is safe to say that for over a decade I have put a lot of
work into The Unknown Movies. Even with all those reviews I have done,
it is still a challenge each and every time I decide to write another
review. I have to find movies that would be appropriate to review,
research them to find information that may help my subsequent writing
or give readers some interesting trivia. It's a lot of hard work. With
that in mind, you might think that sometimes I look back on the days in
my past before I started this web site, when I didn't have all this
extra work. But when I look at the years before starting this web site,
I find that I was sort of doing work for this web site - preparing
work, to be exact. All the movies I watched as a youngster warmed me up
to the work I now do on my web site. Even when I was young, I was
judging movies and thinking about how I would review them in print.
Plus, I was expanding my knowledge on certain kinds of movies, so that
I would be an expert on these certain kinds of movies when I was much
older. For example, I watched dozens of movies from Menahem Golan and
Yoram Globus growing up, and all that helped me to become an expert on
The Cannon Group as an adult. Also when I was growing up, I did a lot
of preparation for the future writing of reviews. In school, I signed
up for a number of English and writing classes. In fact, years later,
when I graduated from university, I graduated with an English degree. I
thought that was great, even though the job market didn't always think
so.
While I did plenty of stuff to prepare for starting and
maintaining this web site, I have to admit that there are a few areas I
should have better experienced, areas that with some focus on might
very well have resulted in making an even better web site. In a past
review, I admitted that until I reached my adult years, I was largely
ignorant of movies that would be considered "classic" (in other words,
movies made before 1960.) But with cable and DVD rentals, I have slowly
been building my knowledge in this area. There is, however, another
area that I kind of regret not focusing on more when I was younger, an
area that may have helped me become a better writer. That area is
classic literature. During the years before I became an adult, I read
very little classic literature. I mentioned in an earlier review that I
read King Solomon's Mines as a child and loved it, though it
didn't push me to seek out more classic literature. I did read an
abridged Robinson Crusoe, and I also read several Sherlock
Holmes stories that also had been abridged for children. They were
entertaining, though I remember as a child also reading a Peanuts
cartoon strip where Charlie Brown said that such children's
abridgements were like "drinking diluted root beer," so I knew I was
missing out on the entire experience. When I went to university, things
did improve somewhat. My classes got me reading, among other things,
Shakespeare, The Scarlet Letter, The Canterbury Tales,
and Moby Dick (that last book being one of the most agonizing
pieces of literature I have ever read. The central story was
interesting, but every other chapter brought the narrative to a stop so
the narrator could tell us every boring bit about the subject of
whaling you could think of.)
But after university, I stopped reading classic
literature. So today, you can safely call me someone who is not an
expert on classic literature. While I may be able to get away with this
fact when it comes to writing about many of the kinds of movies I
review, I guess there is the question of how I can review a movie based
on a piece of classic literature when I don't have that much experience
with classic literature. Well, I know I'm not the only person out there
with this inexperience, so I think these particular people will have a
better idea when reading the review if they will like the movie or not.
But there is also the question as to why I would review the movie The
Count Of Monte Cristo, based on a classic novel, when I have
shown little interest in classic literature. There are several reasons.
I actually saw the 2002 movie version (I honestly don't remember why I
went to see it - maybe I had a movie coupon that was about to expire)
and I enjoyed it, so there was the possibility I could relive my
enjoyment again. The second reason was the cast. Besides Richard
Chamberlain, Tony Curtis, and Trevor Howard being in the cast, I
learned there were roles for other notable actors like Louis Jourdan
and Donald Pleasence. The third reason was that I had the possibility
of losing very little with an investment in this movie. See, this
movie's copyright, for some reason, was not renewed several years back,
so it's now in the public domain. I found it on a DVD paired with the
Alain Delon Zorro movie at a price of just over one
dollar.
It probably should come as no surprise that I have never
read anything by Alexandre Dumas, including the novel that this movie
is based on. With that fact in mind, and being too lazy to read every
little bit of the extensive Wikipedia page that is devoted to the
novel, I have to admit that I have
little idea just how closely this particular movie version follows the
novel. Though from the little I read at Wikipedia, and what I remember
of the 2002 movie, the beginning of this particular film version does
seem to follow the novel somewhat. In France of 1815, we meet returning
sea voyager Edmond Dantes (Chamberlain), who is about to marry his
sweetheart Mercedes (Kate Nelligan). However, Edmond's fellow sea
voyagers Caderousse and Danglars (Pleasence), along with Mercedes'
cousin Mondego (Curtis) frame him as a Napoleonic sympathizer. The
chief prosecutor DeVillefort (Jordan) knows he's innocent, but
has his own reasons for seeing that Edmond is sentenced to life. In
prison, Edmond meets fellow prisoner Abbe (Howard), and through Abbe's
efforts during the long years that follow, Edmond escapes from prison
fully prepared for revenge. If what follows does not represent the
novel well, that does not concern me. I'm just interested in a movie's
story being done well in whatever way it decides to proceed. And there
are some well done things in this movie. I thought most of the
performances were good, for one thing. Among the supporting cast,
Howard is the most memorable. I believed his character, being both well
educated and one who had numbed by being in prison for many years.
Admittedly, his death scene is unintentionally funny, but I blame this
scene on the direction.
As for the others in the supporting cast, Pleasance may
not be as memorable as Howard, but he's still solid. The only one among
the supporting cast that I thought didn't fit was Curtis. I happened to
like Tony Curtis as an actor - he had a great sarcastic sense of humor
that has played well in other movies. But seeing this boy from the
Bronx stuffed in a costume and trying to portray a Spaniard was pretty
embarrassing to behold; at least his scenes put together only last for
a few minutes of the movie. That leaves Chamberlain to talk about,
whose in almost every scene of the movie. Chamberlain has to switch
several times the kind of man he's playing - he starts as a young
unscarred man, then one who is numbed by years of imprisonment, and
after that to a middle-aged gentleman hell-bent on revenge. He is
convincing in whatever the scene requires him to be, which would
normally be a big challenge to an actor, but probably proved to be a
bigger challenge than you might think. The original novel is reportedly
a complex one, with many characters and subplots, and it seems that the
quest to shave it down to fit a two-hour timeslot with commercials
(this was intended as a made-for-TV movie, at least in North America)
made some parts of the screenplay suffer as a result. Take the opening
part of the movie, for example. Edmund is arrested after we have
reached the nine minute mark of the movie, and he arrives at prison
approximately seven minutes later. As you can imagine, this gives us
little time to learn about the characters and their various motivations.
This
lack of time to properly tell details is not just confined to the
beginning. We never learn, for example, how after Edmond has escaped
from prison and is back in France, just how he properly prepared his
disguise and credentials to play the title figure. It's never explained
how Pleasance's character, seen as part of a ship's crew at the
beginning of the movie, somehow manages to have raised his status to be
branded a Baron years later. There is a mystery for the longest time
about the identity around a woman that is seen with Edmond in one
scene, then not seen again until near the end of the movie. (Although
her identity is revealed, it's not revealed how Edmond found her and
learned about her.) Observing questions such as these throughout the
movie, I sometimes got the feeling I was watching a movie version of a
Classic Comics adaptation of the novel. And remembering the often
unspectacular art of those comics, the production values of this movie
seemed to be imitating that sparse look. Although the movie never looks
seriously cheap and was in fact shot in various locations in Europe,
you'll still get the feeling that the producers were being held back
somewhat. You might be getting the idea at this point that I am giving
this movie a negative review. But I said there were some good things
here. Besides what I mentioned earlier, the movie is never boring, even
though its telling may be garbled at times. Plus, the quest for revenge
is
something I think all of us can relate to, and you'll be interested in
just how Edmond will plan and execute his revenge against his many
challenges. Though the movie may indeed slip up in key areas at times,
it without doubt knows how to get its audience to side with someone
wanting revenge, then having the same person delivering the revenge in
a way that will give its audience some satisfaction. Call this a
marginal
recommendation; if you're desperate and can't find the superior 2002
version, this will do under the circumstances.
Check
for availability on Amazon (Blu-Ray/DVD combo) -
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Check
for availability on Amazon (Amazon Prime Video) -
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Check
for availability on Amazon of original novel
See also: Framed, Lone Hero, Outlaw Force
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