1263 The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester

[Finch]

Alexandre Dumas’s immortal tale of adventure and camaraderie received perhaps the finest of its numerous screen adaptations with this two-part swashbuckling spectacular from A Hard Day’s Night director Richard Lester. Featuring Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain as the swaggering swordsmen, who thrust and parry their way through courtly intrigue in seventeenth-century France, The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers are also graced with an all-star supporting cast that includes Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Geraldine Chaplin, and Charlton Heston. Lester’s exuberant epic breathes new life into an oft-told classic through its boisterous slapstick invention, its meticulous attention to period detail, and a sense of pure, unbridled bravado that is thrilling to behold.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restorations, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
In the 4K UHD edition: Two 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the films and special features
Two for One, a new documentary by critic David Cairns
The Saga of the Musketeers (2002), a two-part documentary featuring interviews with cast and crew members
The Making of “The Three Musketeers,” a 1973 featurette with behind-the-scenes footage of director Richard Lester
Trailers
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film critic Stephanie Zacharek

New illustration by Mattias Adolfsson

[domino harvey]

Interesting choice from Criterion, these feel like movies KLSC would have gone for

[knives]

I get that though am ultimately they’re at least out there in print. Easily the best adaptation of the material and one of Lester’s very best films.

[The Curious Sofa]

I used to love these as kid, tried watch them again not long ago and soon got tired of all the Richard Lester wackiness. I have had the 2023 movies with Vincent Cassel and Eva Green on my to-watch list for a while, maybe I'll take this as a reminder for those.

[Mr Sausage]

It's been a long time since I saw these, but I remember loving their raucous comic tone, especially the first one. There's something joyous and earthy in them that really works.

[colinr0380]

Probably the best 'normal' adaptations of the Three Musketeers, although it takes a lot to knock Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds from my top spot!

(As with my childhood love of Disney's Robin Hood, its a minor miracle I never grew up to become a Furry!)

[domino harvey]

Two for One, a new documentary by critic David Cairns

Assuming from the title that this extra covers the changes these films brought to Hollywood contracts, this at least will be something KLSC would never include since it would necessarily be critical or at least present critical points of others about the production

[colinr0380]

It makes sense it is not included in this release, since these have always been put together as a matched pair, but it would be remiss to not mention Richard Lester's last big fiction film, the really ill-fated 1989 The Return of the Musketeers, with most of the cast reprising their roles, including Roy Kinnear who passed away from an accident that occurred during the filming. Here's a post on David Cairns' Shadowplay blog on that film as compared to the previous ones

What keeps the films in line is their critique of history — like Keaton’s THE GENERAL, everything is “so real it hurts”, and the best jokes come from an evocation of poverty, violence, squalor, venality or stupidity, founded in bitter fact. This is something THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN films don’t get. Michael Powell said that Lester’s first two MUSKETEERS films showed him the tone he’d failed to get with THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNELL, but the difference is that that film takes its romance and heroics seriously but its world is mere scenery. In Lester’s films the settings are three-dimensional and the characters two-dimensional, quite intentionally.

[cdnchris]

It's been a long time since I saw these, but I remember loving their raucous comic tone, especially the first one. There's something joyous and earthy in them that really works.

Same. We used to rent the first (not sure if I've seen the second one) on the old RCA SelectaVision discs often and I remember loving it dearly. Haven't seen it since, though, so it will be a bit of a trip I'm sure revisiting it here.

[The Curious Sofa]

Spoiler

It's been a long time since I saw these, but I remember loving their raucous comic tone, especially the first one. There's something joyous and earthy in them that really works.

Same. We used to rent the first (not sure if I've seen the second one) on the old RCA SelectaVision discs often and I remember loving it dearly. Haven't seen it since, though, so it will be a bit of a trip I'm sure revisiting it here.

Then you kept watching the first half of what was shot as one movie.

For me these were films that were always on TV.

[dwk]

It makes sense it is not included in this release, since these have always been put together as a matched pair, but it would be remiss to not mention Richard Lester's last big fiction film, the really ill-fated 1989 The Return of the Musketeers, with most of the cast reprising their roles, including Roy Kinnear who passed away from an accident that occurred during the filming. Here's a post on David Cairns' Shadowplay blog on that film as compared to the previous ones

Relating to Domino's first post, KLSC did release that one a couple years ago.

[cdnchris]

Then you kept watching the first half of what was shot as one movie.

Yep, pretty much! Had no idea, though, and it clearly didn't bother me. I don't even recall coming across the second one at the time, but it looks like it was released on that format.

[tolbs1010]

Having seen The Three Musketeers again recently, I remain puzzled that it is so beloved and now worthy of a Criterion release. It's strangely lethargic and dull given the source material and Lester's usual liveliness. His high standard for composition and visual style is also nowhere to be found. The jokey slapstick tone is irritating instead of funny. The whole thing has the feel of a production that hit the drink very hard during filming. They're having lots of fun while not realizing how little fun is being transmitted on screen.

BUT if it opens the door to Criterion releasing Lester's two best films, Petulia and Robin And Marian, I hope this set sells a boatload of copies.

[Matt]

I think it's one of those cases where it's more beloved than good.

[MichaelB]

It makes sense it is not included in this release, since these have always been put together as a matched pair, but it would be remiss to not mention Richard Lester's last big fiction film, the really ill-fated 1989 The Return of the Musketeers, with most of the cast reprising their roles, including Roy Kinnear who passed away from an accident that occurred during the filming.

I'm sure this is common knowledge round these parts, but it was Kinnear's fatal accident that made Lester more or less give up filmmaking - his sole directing credit since then was a concert film for Paul McCartney, presumably as a favour (Lester and McCartney went way back to the Beatles' heyday, with Lester having directed A Hard Day's Night and Help!).

Nobody ever suggested that Lester was personally responsible – indeed, the inquest put the majority of the blame on Kinnear's inadequate hospital treatment afterwards – but the fact that he both abandoned filmmaking and has adamantly refused to talk about this particular film pretty much says it all. (Kinnear was a close friend as well as a regular performer in his films.)

[The Curious Sofa]

Lester's penchant for slapstick and broad comedy was praised because it was seen as a nod to classic Hollywood, at a time when Chaplin films were still getting major theatrical re-releases and the likes of Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang were always on TV. Looking at his films now, his comedy feels labored and poorly executed, and by shoehorning it into films that would work better played for straight adventure, he undermines the material and throws the pacing off. He is always winking at the audience, lowering the stakes of the drama, and this is the case with both his Musketeers and Superman films. What seemed fresh and irreverent then, now looks clunky and dated.

The same goes for his 60s comedies, I last time I tried to re-watch The Knack (that rape joke!) and The Bed Sitting Room, I didn't get very far. Maybe his Beatles films still play well, but I can't see myself in the mood to ever watch them again.

I agree with tolbs1010 that his more serious films are far better, with Petulia being his masterpiece, and I too hope that one day it will see a Blu-ray release. The streaming version I last saw on Prime looked pretty good, although it could probably do with another upgrade by now. I'd like to revisit Lester's Cuba, which was poorly received at the time, but I remember liking it.

[Finch]

I didn't even make it through the first film because the comedy played so badly. I don't think that an adaptation has to be deadly serious but the slapstick fell totally flat for me. Michael Curtiz was so much more successful at the mostly lighthearted tone in Adventures of Robin Hood. Serious Richard Lester seems to be more my jam because I thought Juggernaut was wonderful.

[Orlac]

Anyone remember 2002's THE MUSKETEER, a weird attempt to cross the story with a kung fu movie?

[colinr0380]

Anyone remember 2002's THE MUSKETEER, a weird attempt to cross the story with a kung fu movie?

That was likely the consequence of the bleed-over effect of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon upon every other part of cinema, including literary adaptations, in the early 2000s (see also the Christian Bale 'gun fu' take on a 1984/Fahrenheit 451 dystopian world, Equilibrium). Perhaps the most successful take on that kind of incongruous mash-up of styles was Christophe Gans' Brotherhood of the Wolf.

(I mean, I'd love to live in the world where Ang Lee made Sense and Sensibility after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, meaning that Kate Winslet would have to get into a giant wire-fu battle with Hugh Grant over some small indiscretion or trifling matter of dining room etiquette! With the behind-the-scenes featurette showing Emma Thompson going through mounting despair at what was being done to her script!)

[The Curious Sofa]

Fun fact: there is a 2004 musical version, co-written by and starring Volodymyr Zelenskyy as d'Artagnan.

I've only seen the 40s Gene Kelly and the Richard Lester films, but for those immune to the charms of the latter, the two well-received French films of 2023 may now be the definitive adaptations, with a cast as impressive as the 70s version. An acclaimed adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo followed in 2024.

[CSM126]

Well hold on now, let’s not forget the 3D action version directed by Paul WS Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich. That’s quality cinema.

[Roger Ryan]

I’ve only seen the Lester “Musketeers” films once each when first released (fun for a ten-year-old, but I was never compelled to revisit them). I distinctly remember the first film ended with a “To be continued…” preview montage of scenes from the second film. Was this carried over when the first entry was shown on TV or on home video?

[colinr0380]

Here's a post about the upcoming release from David Cairn's blog, with a particularly relevant piece of info:

In fact it was only the day before yesterday that my editor Chase Barthel and I informed Criterion that our video essay was going to be two and a half hours long, which would make it the longest video essay they’ve ever released, though their longest special feature is probably the extended cut of UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD. So as of two days ago it’s now a four-part documentary, and not a video essay at all. I got to to talk to some very special and delightful people for it, about which more later.

[domino harvey]

Wow, I take back my “KLSC could have done this”

[nicolas]

Criterion confirmed that the pitch issue that affected Studiocanal’s 4K releases has been corrected.