"The Count of Monte Cristo" (1975)

Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo is my second-favorite book.  I've read it multiple times.  And yet, I somehow have this fantastic inability to remember which antagonist is which when I'm not actually reading the book.  Danglars, de Villefort, Caderousse, Mondego -- I get them horribly confused all the time.  One is a banker, one is a military guy, one is a police official, and one is a random dude... and I can never remember which is which once I've finished the story, and I sometimes get confused in the middle of it.  Especially Danglars and Mondego, I mix them up all the time.  It's so frustrating!

So when I watched this movie this time, I tried to keep careful track of names that go with faces.  And failed miserably.  Grr.  I have to keep checking imdb.com to straighten them out, even as I write this review.

But never mind, because I need to give you a quick synopsis of the story!  Because it's a rip-snorter.  Okay, it all starts when Edmund Dantes (Richard Chamberlain), respected French sailor, returns home after a long voyage.

Edmund is the young one on the right in the smashing uniform.

He's greeted by his dearest love, Mercedes (Kate Nelligan), whom he's about to marry.

Edmund and Mercedes at their wedding rehearsal.

But three men are envious of Edmund for various reasons, namely Danglars (Donald Pleasance), Caderousse (Alessio Orano), and Mondego (Tony Curtis).  They cook up a little plot that gets him arrested on the day before his wedding.

Mercedes screaming as Edmund is arrested.

He's brought before a police official named de Villefort (Louis Jourdan) who, for reasons of his own, has Edmund thrown into the infamous French prison the Chateau d'If.

The real Chateau d'If.  So much shorter than I always imagine it.

There, Edmund meets a fellow prisoner and eventually escapes.  I first encountered this story as a little radio dramatization included in a lit textbook when I was 11 -- it dramatized the section in which Edmund meets the other prisoner, and I enjoyed it so much, I got the novel from the library and read it.  And loved it.  Anyway, once he's escaped, Edmund goes to the island of Monte Cristo and finds a treasure.

Edmund and the treasure

He uses that treasure to transform himself into the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo and sets about revenging himself on the four men who ruined his life.

The ultra-handsome Count.

Danglars is now a wealthy banker.

Mondego is a successful military officer and has married Mercedes.

Caderousse is a dandy ne'er-do-well.

De Villefort is an important police official.

Only Mercedes recognizes Edmund after all these years -- everyone else just wonders who this guy is, with his astounding wealth.

Mercedes, who hasn't aged as well as Edmund.

Edmund sets out wreaking vengeance on his enemies, and I'm not going to go into all that because you really should either watch it (available on YouTube here) or read the book.

I find the costumes in this to range from adequate to awesome.  I absolutely love the count's look, with his striking white hair and black goatee.  He wears an amazing cape in several scenes, and lots of rich clothes.  I especially love shirts with swooshy sleeves like these, and he wears lots of them.

Is this a family-friendly film?  There's really no bad language, no objectionable scenes, no real violence.  So yes, it is!  Unless you're anti-revenge, as this is all about revenge.  But it does show that vengeance as an end unto itself does not promote happiness, even for the vengeance-seeker.

Even More Period Drama Tag

Month four of the Period Drama Challenge is over!  Ack!  Where has the time gone?  Only two months left! Sigh.  And i have so many movies I want to watch and review yet.  Well, for now, here are my answers to Miss Laurie's latest batch of questions:

1. What period dramas have you watched in April?

Jane Eyre (1997), Hamlet (1969), 42 (2013), and The Man from Snowy River (1982).

2. Have you ever watched a period drama where the characters time traveled between eras (i.e. Somewhere In Time, Lost In Austen, From Time To Time)?


Yup!  Off the top of my head, I can think of Somewhere in Time, the Back to the Future movies, the Terminator movies, Midnight in Paris, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, A Kid in King Arthur's Court, and Men in Black III.  One of my favorite episodes of Classic Star Trek is "City on the Edge of Forever," which involves time travel, and I really love the TV show Lost, which uses time travel in the later seasons.  But I'm sure I've seen others, those are just the ones I could think of right now.

3. What historical era is your favorite and why?

The American West.  I love western movies and books, I love horses and heroes and pioneers and people working super hard to achieve their dreams, all of which seem bound up in the western era.

4. How many William Shakespeare film adaptations have you seen?


Oh, jeepers.  Only counting movies using the original language, I've seen 16:  Much Ado About Nothing (1993),  Romeo and Juliet (1968), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Richard III  (1995), Henry V (1989), Love's Labour's Lost (2000), Hamlet (1948 -- Olivier), Hamlet (1964 -- Burton), Hamlet (1969 -- Williamson), Hamlet (1990 -- Kline), Hamlet (1990 -- Gibson), Hamlet (1996 -- Branagh), Hamlet (2000 -- Scott), Hamlet (2000 -- Hawke), Hamlet (2002 -- Lester), and Hamlet (2009 -- Tennant).  (Five of those Hamlets are filmed versions of stage productions, though, does that count?  I didn't see them live, I saw the filmed versions, but they weren't made specifically to be films.)

5. If a new biographical film based on the life of your favorite classic author were made would you rejoice or be the first to sign a "do not make this film" petition?

Hmm.  How do you define "classic author," exactly?  If you mean "someone who has been dead more than 100 years," then that would be Robert Louis Stevenson according to my list here.  I think it could be great fun, as he was definitely an adventurous person.  I've been reading a few pieces he wrote about the American West while he traveled there, and he sounds so interesting!

My Ten Favorite Westerns

Inspired by the Flowers of Quiet Happiness post listing Kara's favorite rom-coms, I've decided to do a series of posts listing my ten favorite movies in various genres.  I think I'll go in the order in which I've arranged my movies on my shelves (I have them organized first by genre, then by alphabet), which means I'll start with my favorite movie genre of all, westerns!  If I've previously done a post about a particular movie, I've linked the title to that post.  I'm also including my own one-sentence synopsis of each movie, and any thoughts I might feel like adding.

1.  The Man from Snowy River (1982)

Jim Craig must clear his name after he's accused of freeing his employer's most valuable horse in retaliation for being told he can't court the boss's daughter.  Sometimes I don't consider this to be a western, but it's about guys riding horses and rounding up cows, so... that makes them cowboys, right?  It's about Australia, not the American West, but oh well.

2.  The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)

Four brothers (including John Wayne and Dean Martin) reunite at their mother's funeral and work together to find out how their parents lost their ranch.  My favorite John Wayne movie!

3.  The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Poor Mexican villagers hire seven gunfighters to defend them from the bandit who's been oppressing them for years.  Steve McQueen, Yul Brenner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn... magnificent, indeed!

4.  Rio Bravo (1959)

A sheriff, a recovering alcoholic, an old man, and a young gunslinger fend off a host of bad guys bent on springing a murderer from jail.  John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan, and Ricky Nelson play the four heroes.  Angie Dickinson plays the love interest.

5.  Gunfight in Abilene  (1967)

A Civil War veteran agrees to resume his job as sheriff out of guilt for accidentally killing the brother of the man who runs Abilene.  My favorite Bobby Darin movie.

6.  Silverado (1985)

Four outcasts set out to rid Silverado of the evildoers who sent one of them to prison unjustly, stole another's horse, and debauched another's sister.  The best "modern" western, IMHO, and has a knockout soundtrack.

7.  Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969)

Jason McCullough (James Garner) uses unorthodox methods to clean up a town and woo the mayor's daughter.  The funniest western spoof I've ever seen, and possibly the movie my father quotes more than any other.

8.  Tombstone (1993)

Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and his pal Doc Holliday face off against the outlaw band called The Cowboys and bring them to justice.  Val Kilmer's turn as Doc Holliday is mesmerizing (and so quotable!), and he's really the whole reason I love this movie.

9.  The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

A young lawyer faces down a notorious outlaw, and what everyone believes happened during that shoot-out launches his political career that takes him far.  I love the way John Wayne and James Stewart engage each other in this, bringing out some great acting in each other.

10.  The Rare Breed (1966)

A British widow and her daughter accompany the prize bull they've sold on its way to its new home in Texas, convinced it will revolutionize the cattle industry.  James Stewart, Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith, Don Galloway, and Juliet Mills -- their characters are like my dear friends.

I did a list of my favorite westerns about six years ago, and I see that my ordering has changed a bit since then.  The old list is here.

Have you seen any of these?  Did you like or dislike them?  What are your favorite westerns?  Maybe you'll recommend some I haven't seen, and I'll discover some new favorites!

Unexpectedly Joyful Morning

At the public library on Saturday, I walked past the CD collection on my way to the stacks, and happened to see the soundtrack for While You Were Sleeping (1995).  I thought, "Hey, I love that movie -- why have I never listened to the soundtrack?"  I got it, put it on top of the little CD player in my kitchen, and forgot about it until this morning when I was making breakfast.

I popped it in (had to take out the Les Miserables soundtrack, a birthday gift from my dad), turned it on, and didn't stop grinning for several minutes.  I hummed and whistled along with nearly every cue.  Before I'd even listened to the whole thing, I went to Amazon.com and ordered my own copy.  It's such happy, bouncy music (with some pensive tracks thrown in), and brings back so many great memories of the movie, of people I've watched the movie with... I love it!

I first saw While You Were Sleeping in the theater with two of my best friends, the morning after a sleepover.  A year or so later, I rented it and watched it with my mom -- not sure where my dad and brother were.  She loved it too, and before long, we owned a copy.  My dad and brother then watched it too, and also found it hilarious.  Really, just a fun, sweet movie. I watched it many times in college with various friends too.

Anyway, you can listen to the soundtrack on YouTube here.

"The Man from Snowy River" (1982)

This has been my favorite film since I was two years old.  And I've already written a lot here about my relationship to this film, so today I will just review it briefly.

The Man from Snowy River himself is Jim Craig (Tom Burlinson), a young Australian man who is orphaned early in the movie when his father dies in an accident due to a mob of brumbies (wild horses).  

Jim Craig (Tom Burlinson)

Jim has to earn the right to live up in the mountains on his father's homestead, so he goes down to the flat country and winds up working for Mr. Harrison (Kirk Douglas), a wealthy American rancher.  

Mr. Harrison (Kirk Douglas)

Jim falls in love with his boss's daughter, Jessica (Sigrid Thornton), but Mr. Harrison hates mountain men, so he forbids the match.

Jessica Harrison (Sigrid Thornton)

Then this really valuable horse goes missing, and Jim is blamed for the disappearance.  To clear his name, he joins the group of men hunting down the horse, which has joined the same band of brumbies that caused his father's death.  And then a lot of amazing horse riding commences.  

The super-famous shot of Jim riding his horse down a steep mountain.

This is Jim's chance to clear his name, prove he's grown up and can live on his own up in the mountains, and show Mr. Harrison he can succeed at really hard things, thereby maybe earning his permission to court Jessica.  "Prove yourself" is a very important theme to me, though I'll never know if it's because of this movie, or if I love this movie because I was going to love that theme no matter what.

I love some of the costumes in this movie!  Jessica gets some very Victorian dresses, as does her Aunt Rosemary (Lorraine Bayly).  I managed to capture this, which shows off Jessica's bustle and most of Jim's usual outfit.

There's a scene or two where Mr. Harrison, his daughter, his sister-in-law, and some guests wear evening clothes.  They spend the whole time seated at a table, so this is about all you see of them, though you do get close-ups now and then.  I love all the period props in this shot too.

But Jim Craig and most of the men wear your ordinary Aussie-western apparel.

Jim meets his horse.

Jessica watches Jim return to the homestead.

The Harrison Homestead.

Is this a family-friendly movie?  Pretty much.  There are a handful of bad words, and there's a question about Jessica's true paternity, though I can tell you from personal experience that the latter flies right over the head of a small person.

Well, there you have it, a brief review of my favorite movie of all time.  I got to watch it over my birthday with one of my best friends, which was a great pleasure.  I'll leave you with one final shot of The Man himself, tipping what I consider to be one of the greatest hats in cinema history.

Hamlette and "Hamlet"

Today is Shakespeare's birthday, supposedly.  We don't know for sure, we just figure it was probably today cuz he was baptized on the 26th, and at that time, babies were baptized when they were 3 days old.  So his birthday is probably today.  Happy birthday, Bard of Avon!

Today is my actual birthday, no supposedly about it.  I love sharing a birthday with Shakespeare (and Sandra Dee, Sergei Prokofiev, and Shirley Temple).  I'm 33 today, and Shakespeare was 36 when he wrote Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, which really has nothing to do with anything except that I've been feeling like writing about why I love that play, so this seems like as good a time as any.  I think today I'll post about how I discovered it, and go into deeper stuff about themes and characters and identification another time.

I bought this journal on Etsy a few years ago -- real leather and so gorgeous.

I first read Hamlet when I was 17, nearly half my lifetime ago.  A year or so earlier, I had attended a presentation with some other homeschoolers staged at a local community college, a presentation about Shakespeare.  Get the kiddies excited about the classics, that sort of thing.  Well, my brother and I were obsessed with exceedingly fond of classic Star Trek at that time, and at this Shakespeare presentation, they recited some of his most famous lines and speeches, including several from Hamlet.  And Johnnycake and I recognized a whole bunch of Trek titles!  Like "The Conscience of the King," "Dagger of the Mind," "The Undiscovered Country," "By Any Other Name," and so on.  I decided that I would read through all of Shakespeare's plays, searching for titles and lines used in Star Trek.

Yes.  I started reading Shakespeare because I love Star Trek.  See where good pop culture can lead you?

Okay, so I got this massive, red, gilded, leather-bound copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare out of the library.  I began at the beginning of the book, I think with Two Gentlemen of Verona.  I toted it everywhere, even to the bowling alley at one point.  I read and read and read, searching for those Star Trek references.  And falling under Shakespeare's spell at the same time, of course.

Eventually, I ran out of renewals on that copy and had to return it.  I'd only read five or six plays!  I remember Measure for Measure and Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labour's Lost were among them.  What to do?

I went and bought my own copy, of course.  Paperback, weighs a ton, onionskin pages with teeeeeeeny print.  I had to break the binding in order to read the words on the inner edges of the pages.  Eventually, I got to Hamlet.

At this time, I was also obsessed with exceedingly fond of the word "dream."  Any song that had the word in the title or used it a lot in the lyrics, I'd memorize the lyrics.  Bought journals, t-shirts, bookmarks with the word "dream" on them.  And guess what word is used eleven times in Hamlet?  By the time I'd finished reading it, I was hooked.  I memorized the entire "To be or not to be" soliloquy.

But I really didn't understand the play as a whole until I saw it performed.  The first version I saw was Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 movie starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close and Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Bates and Ian Holm.  I convinced my parents to tape it off TV, and oh my goodness, it was obsession at first viewing.  Revolutionized my whole way of thinking.  I don't know how many times I watched that version in the year or so before I went to college -- probably half a dozen.  Would have been more, except no one in my family wanted to watch it with me very often.

In college, I studied the play in two different classes, though both with the same professor.  My senior year, I also got to help teach it in a class called Poetry and Drama that was part of an internship I did.  I got to write and grade the tests on it, which was thrilling.  Truly.

And here you see where my obsession has led me.

Okay, not all of these are "Hamlet."  But most are.

These are the versions I like well enough to watch over and over.

I've seen ten versions on DVD/VHS, but I've seen it performed live only once so far.  That once was on Broadway, with Jude Law in the title role, so I can't complain ;-)   (Read what I thought of it here.)  I have lots of Hamlet-related things, I've devoted a Pinterest board to it, I read all kinds of essays and critiques of it... and I'm constantly seeing different parts of it in a new way.  It never gets old for me.  Or, at least, it hasn't in the last 16 years, so I'm kind of guessing it never will.

I have this as a magnet on my fridge.  He still hasn't shown up, though.

Monday Movie Quote Link Up 4

Today's quote comes from Pirates of the Caribbean:  Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).  The original and the best.

"But why is the rum gone?"

I don't like rum.  But I love this quote.  It fits so many situations.  I usually use it in reference to coffee, but "But why is the coffee gone?" just doesn't have the same ring, so I still say rum.

This will be the last of these link ups for a while, as Little Lady is taking a blogging break :-(