Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favorite musketeer adaptation!, July 16, 2006
I'm a huge fan of just about everything musketeers related (look at my other reviews), and this is my favorite big screen adaptation. Kelly is easlily the most fun D'Artagnon to watch and the sword play in this movie is excellent with his athleticism.
Of course, anyone who read the novel would know that though it includes sword play it is the charaters and plot that move the story along, so in that respect this movie does a much better job than most Musketeer adaptations. It stays fairly close to the original plot and though there is little time spent developing their personalities the Three are more consistant with their literary counterparts than in, well really, any of the other adaptations.
Over all one of the most fun adventure movies I've seen.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Three Musketeers - 1948 version, April 25, 2002
This is a fun film full of action and comedy. The players are wonderful - Gene Kelly as D'Artagnan, Van Heflin as Athos, Gig Young as Porthos, Lana Turner as Milady DeWinter, June Allyson as Constance, Vincent Price as Cardinal Richelieu and more. Kelly is delightfully acrobatic, jumping around as if his legs were coiled springs, swinging on ropes, fencing like a master - he is a joy to watch - he puts Erroll Flynn to shame. Van Heflin and Gig Young are perfect as his comrades - brave, dashing, as well as foolish and impetuous. Lana Turner is the beautiful and dangerous Milady DeWinter who seduces men to achieve the Cardinal's purposes and can be deadly. June Allyson is the virtuous and hapless Constance. Vincent Price is marvelously evil as Cardinal Richelieu - he uses people like chess pieces and even when thwarted he doesn't wish to kill D'Artagnan but to recruit him. The King is Frank Morgan (the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz), a bumbling but good-hearted king who doesn't quite know what is going on. The costumes and sets are breathtaking and the Technicolor is as good as it gets. There are some beautiful exterior actions scenes along the ocean (undoubtedly the Pacific but still gorgeous). It is Kelly who pulls the picture together, however. He seems to be everywhere at once, so full of energy and life. Although he is a bumpkin from Gascony he is more than a match with a sword for any man in Paris be he one of the King's Musketeer or one of the Cardinal's guards. He does quite a lot with his eyes and his facial expressions, a bit overacted occasionally but still quite enjoyable. Lana Turner has top billing and she is deliciously beautiful with a seemingly endless wardrobe of wonderful costumes From the first scene, however, this movie is all Kelly's - it seems a bit odd that he is so good in what is primarily an action film - but have no doubt he is completely convincing as the most athletic and acrobatic D'Artagnan ever seen on the screen - he is a bit like Burt Lancaster in "The Crimson Pirate" but without the trampoline. Van Heflin has the most serious role as the nobleman-turned-drunken musketeer - lamenting the loss of his treacherous wife and then trying to warn D'Artagnan of the danger of Milady, who loves him not and is far more dangerous than any of his swordman adversaries. This is a version of this often-told story where the film makers "got it right" - there is plenty of action, comedy, romance, intrigue, villainy, heartbreak all going on seemingly at once. The characters are portrayed closely to the way they were written by Dumas and this is precisely how they should be played.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lana Turner, the memorable menace of Dumas' evil character..., January 20, 2007
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...
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