Three Musketeers

The precedent user must write about another version of the famous novel;Diamant-Berger's ,made in 1933,IS a talkie !Who ,in France or elsewhere, would have been to see a silent movie? Like lots of versions ,this one features two parts " Les Ferrets De La Reine" and "Milady" ,and I guess the audience of the era had to pay twice to see the whole .

The first part is faithful like a dog .The only name still famous in France is Harry-Baur -with a hyphen-,but the stand -out is Samson Failsilber as Cardinal De Richelieu ;the female parts are not bad either,Blanche Montel 's Constance et mainly Edith Mera's Milady are convincing;on the other hand ,Andrée Lafayette as the Queen plays as if she were on stage in the thirties and her performance is old-fashioned ;ditto for Maurice Escande as Buckingham.D'Artagnan and the three musketeers are not very exciting either.

The second part begins smartly: the valets summarize the first part,as they set the table ;like the seven dwarfs ,they sing while working.Anyway,the second part is partly a musical for the musketeers sing too,and so does Milady -and her songs are gorgeous ,when ,prisoner of her brother,she accompanies herself on organ-.The rest sticks closely to Dumas ' story,with a notable exception: the death of Milady ,which shows that summary justice allows a director to spare film when a movie tends to be too long.

Diamant-Berger's career spans more than 40 years from the silent era to the Nouvelle Vague,but he never produced anything memorable.