"The Three Musketeers" (1948)

This is not my favorite movie version of The Three Musketeers.  My favorite is the 1993 version that I spent my teen years swooning over, as detailed in my review of it.  However!  This is my other favorite, and it has the bonus of being child-friendly, which the '93 isn't entirely.

To prepare for this review, I watched this movie with my kids (who are 9, 11, and 13), which was enormously fun.  This movie does NOT take itself seriously, and so I feel perfectly fine not taking it seriously either.  All three of my kids have read both an abridged version of Alexandre Dumas' book and a graphic novel retelling, so they were already familiar with the characters and basic plot, which was definitely helpful.  I've read the original myself, but that was 20 years ago, and I probably should re-read it.  Because it's been so long since I read it, I'll only be commenting in a couple places on things they changed from the book, and why I like those changes.

So, this movie starts with young d'Artagnan (Gene Kelly) taking leave of his father and going Paris to see if he can become a Musketeer, aka one of the king's personal guards.

Yes, that's Gene Kelly.  No, this isn't a musical.

His first day in Paris, d'Artagnan ends up accidentally falling afoul of three men and arranging duels with them.  The first is Athos (Van Heflin).

The second is Porthos (Gig Young).

The third is Aramis (Robert Coote).

Not knowing they're all actually Musketeers, d'Artagnan thinks he will handle three duels in one day with no problem at all.  And they all agree, he's VERY good.  He's also the most athletic d'Artagnan you've ever imagined, leaping and jumping and climbing and cavorting all over the place.

The duels get interrupted by some enemies of the Three Musketeers, and d'Artagnan helps them fight off their foes.  Obviously, they will be best buddies forever more.  Also, aren't those fantastic costumes?  Everyone in this is wildly colorful.  Not very period-correct, but extremely fun to watch.

The sets are lavish too, and this whole film is a feast for the eyes.  Here's part of the royal palace.

King Louis XIII (Frank Morgan) is very annoyed with the Musketeers for dueling and so on, but he spends most of his time scolding d'Artagnan for not having any decent clothes.

So d'Artagnan and his three friends set off to get him some decent clothes, plus a manservant named Planchet (Keenan Wynn), who is very handy to have around at all times, especially in a fight.

Now, I'm used to seeing Keenan Wynn as a scheming baddie (like in The Absent-Minded Professor) or an irascible Army officer (like in Combat! episode "The Prisoner") or a villainous old creep (like in The War Wagon).  I am not used to seeing him as a capable, albeit somewhat comic, sidekick.  It's cool, he does well, and I like it.

Of course, the next thing d'Artagnan needs is a girlfriend, so he quickly falls in love with Constance (June Allyson), the girl downstairs.  Here's something they changed from the book that I am a total fan of: in this, Constance is his landlord's daughter, not his landlord's wife.  SO MUCH BETTER, PEOPLE.  Also, because she's played by June Allyson, she is as sweet and innocent and lovable as possible.

Constance is a lady-in-waiting for Queen Anne (Angela Lansbury).  

Queen Anne is in love with the Duke of Buckingham (John Sutton), an Englishman, even though she's married to King Louis XIII.  Most of the plot revolves around Queen Anne giving the Duke of Buckingham a set of giant diamonds that King Louis had given to her, and then Richelieu scheming to disgrace her by making her reveal to the King that she gave them away.

Ahhh, yes, Richelieu (Vincent Price).  Here's another change they made that I rather like.  In the book, he's Cardinal Richelieu, head of the Roman Catholic church in France.  But in this, he's not a clergyman, he's just the king's most trusted advisor.  That means he can be totally despicable without casting slurs on the name of clergymen everywhere.  And it makes his liason with Milady de Winter slightly less... unpalatable.

Speaking of Milady de Winter (Lana Turner), here she is.  Richelieu trusts her to get at least some of those diamonds from the Duke of Buckingham to confront Queen Anne it.  It's implied that she sleeps with Buckingham to get them, but implied so obliquely that my kids never caught of a whiff of that.

Milady also catches d'Artagnan in her snares for a while, and it's also implied that they do more than kiss, given how repentant he is when he apologizes to Constance about it.  

My kids spent a lot of time discussing the way Milady's beauty mark was in a different place in different scenes, which they found both fascinating and funny.

Anyway, there's lots and lots of derring do, many sword fights, a lot of brawling, and some cunning plotting before the movie is over, but all's mostly well that ends well.  A few characters do die, but nobody seems to be overly upset about it for more than a couple of minutes.  By the end, as you can see, everyone is very pleased with themselves, and ready for many rollicking adventures to come.

My kids got a huge kick out of this, especially my son because he's taking fencing lessons right now.  He thinks maybe he should take acrobatics too so he could incorporate a few of d'Artagnan's moves into his own fighting style, hee.

Is this movie family friendly?  Yeah, it pretty much is.  My 9-yr-old was a little upset by Milady killing a couple of people because there was one shot of a dead body with blood all over its shirt, and she had to be reassured it was all pretend.  There's quite a bit of kissing and swashbuckling violence, but it's very light-hearted overall.

Since this post is for a Period Drama Blog Party (more on that below), I will just mention a few things about costumes.  The above is my favorite outfit for d'Artagnan.

Here you see some of the Musketeer cloaks, which I love.

Most of the dresses were kind of low-cut, but then had big broaches over their, shall we say, lower décolletage?  I'm wondering if this was an actual style in the time of Louis XIII, or if the Hays Code objected to their costumes for being too low-cut, so they just stuck broaches on the front of any problematic dresses.  I rather suspect the latter possibility to be the correct on.

I did not screencap most of the dresses, I'm afraid.  Sorry.  They're very swooshy and pretty, and I'll let them be surprises for you when you see this yourself!

I wrote this specifically for the Valentine's Day Period Drama Blog Party hosted by Heidi at Along the Brandywine.  Click here for the kick-off post, tag, etc!