Now Playing: The Count of Monte-Cristo (1975)
Pros: Intriguing cast of familiar ‘70s faces headed up by Richard Chamberlain; Kate Nelligan makes the most of her feature film debut; Looks opulent for a TV movie
Cons: Tony Curtis seems to be phoning it in; A few clunker lines roll less than lyrically off the tongues of the actors
When I learned of the Adventure-a-thon hosted by Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Barry at Cinematic Catharsis, I knew I wanted to get in on the action (and adventure) of their new blogathon, but couldn’t make up my mind about a title.
Then came the news of Richard Chamberlain’s passing, and I knew immediately that I wanted to pay tribute to this versatile actor who in the course of his prolific career starred in quite a few rousing adventure movies.
I remember occasionally sitting down with the family to watch broadcasts of Dr. Kildare, which was Chamberlain’s first recurring TV role (and which, along with Ben Casey, set impossibly high standards for the healthcare industry, with glamorous doctors who would do anything and everything for their suffering patients).
Who knew that a little over a decade later, Chamberlain would turn in his stethoscope for a rapier sword in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers (1973), and thereafter become one of the great action-adventure heroes?
With his breakout success as Aramis in the Lester film, Chamberlain swashbuckled his way through three more Alexandre Dumas adaptations in the '70s: The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge (1974), The Count of Monte-Cristo (1975) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1977). (Please note: I'm going with the spelling of 'Monte-Cristo' according to the 1975 movie poster and the IMDb page.)
But the man’s action-adventure career didn’t end there. Starting in the late ‘70s, Chamberlain appeared in several high profile mini-series, including Centennial (1978-79), James Clavell’s Shogun (1980) and The Thorn Birds (1983), garnering prime-time Emmy nominations for the last two.
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| Dr. Kildare is ready to operate! |
More screen action followed in the ‘80s when he was tapped to play H. Rider Haggard's adventure hero Allan Quatermain in King Solomon’s Mines (1985) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986) -- a clear attempt to capitalize on the huge popularity of the Indiana Jones franchise.
The Alexandre Dumas adaptations were a big part of Chamberlain’s '70s workload. Sandwiched between his roles as Musketeer Aramis and the Man in the Iron Mask, Chamberlain’s turn as The Count of Monte-Cristo allowed him to travel thespically from the depths of despair to the heights of hubris and self-righteousness (not to mention, he absolutely rocks a 19th century Silver Fox look).
For those needing a refresher on The Count of Monte-Cristo (I confess I was hazy on the plot until watching this adaptation), it’s a classic story of betrayal and revenge. Chamberlain plays Edmond Dantes, first mate of a ship whose captain dies enroute back to Marseilles, but not before entrusting a secret note obtained from Elba (where Napoleon is exiled) to Dantes.
Dantes is to deliver the sealed message to a M. Noirtier, who, unknown to the sailor, is a supporter of Napoleon. Upon the ship’s arrival in Marseilles, life is looking up for Dantes, who expects to be given a ship of his own, and to marry the beautiful Mercedes (Kate Nelligan in her first movie role).
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| The Fickle Finger of Fate is about to tap both of these young lovers. |
But Dantes’ life is soon upended by two secretive and jealous rivals: Mercedes’ cousin Fernand Mondego (Tony Curtis) covets Mercedes for himself, and a fellow merchant sailor, Danglars (Donald Pleasence), is jealous of Dantes’ rapid ascension to captaincy. The pair, in the company of another disgruntled sailor, write an anonymous note to Marseille’s crown prosecutor, De Villefort (Louis Jourdan), accusing Dantes of being a Bonapartist.
The day before Dantes is to be wed, De Villefort arrests him and demands the secret note, still unopened (and its contents unknown to Dantes). De Villefort realizes that the conspiratorial message is addressed to his own father, M. Nortier De Villefort, and in the current political climate he will be toast if word gets out that his father is a Bonapartist.
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| "Alexa, how do you spell 'Bonapartist'?" |
De Villefort glibly assures Dantes that he is completely innocent and will only be detained overnight for administrative purposes. However, to Dantes’ dismay, he soons finds himself on a boat to the dreaded island prison of Chateau D’If, to be locked up and forgotten.
Years later, an emaciated, hairy and bedraggled Dantes, pacing his dank cell and almost beyond the point of no return with regard to his sanity, is startled when he hears a weird scraping noise, and is confounded to discover that another prisoner, Abbe Faria (Trevor Howard), has dug a tunnel straight into Dantes’ cell.
Faria, an irrepressible polymath, has spent years upon years tunneling to what he hoped was the prison’s seawall, but due to a miscalculation, has ended up at his fellow prisoner’s cell. Trevor Howard, a tough, grizzled character actor and mainstay of action adventure pictures and dramas after notable roles in Brief Encounter and The Third Man in the '40s, is nearly unrecognizable under all the hair and grime. But his appearance is a highlight of the film.
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"Hey Abbe, have you got a match?"
"Yeah, your face and a donkey's behind!" |
While Dantes was spending years pacing his cell, Faria was forging digging tools from bits of metal, devising an ingenious sundial on the wall of his cell, tracking the movements of the stars and planets, and contemplating questions in philosophy and theology. He hasn’t let the years of solitary confinement dull his senses -- quite the opposite. Faria is quick to note the irony of their situations: he was imprisoned because of his opposition to Napoleon, and Dantes because of his supposed support.
In addition to sanity-saving companionship, Faria imparts three invaluable gifts to Dantes: the application of cui bono? reasoning to figure out who was responsible for Dantes’ imprisonment, a map to unimaginable treasure located on the island of Monte Cristo, and, upon expiring from old age, an opportunity for Dantes to escape from Chateau D’If.
As the guards prepare to remove Faria in a body bag, Dantes takes advantage of a momentary distraction to drag his friend’s body into the tunnel and wrap himself up in the bag, which is hastily thrown into the ocean.
With the treasure map in hand, Dantes embarks on the next phase of his life -- one of fabulous wealth, which fuels a mission of revenge.
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| All that glitters is not gold -- precious stones and pearls do that too. |
The Count of Monte-Cristo makes a grand entrance as he emerges from shadowy antechambers for his introduction to French high society. Unlimited wealth goes a long way in cleaning up a hairy, louse-ridden political prisoner, his all-white hair carefully coiffed, offsetting his trim dark beard and elegant black ensemble.
Over the years of his imprisonment, Dantes’ betrayers have risen high, representing diverse pillars of French society: Danglars is a wealthy banker, Mondego a pompous military man and presumptive war hero who has had a son with Mercedes (now grown into a young man), and De Villefort is as powerful as ever as the royal prosecutor.
Dantes masterfully exploits each man’s darkest secrets and character weaknesses in bringing them down. He lures Danglars into a risky investment in Spanish bonds, then bankrupts the greedy banker by feeding him bad insider information. Next is De Villefort, who gets his comeuppance when he prosecutes Andrea Benedetto (Carlo Puri), a confederate of the Count’s, for the death of Caderousse (another of the conspirators against Dantes, played by Alessio Orano). In court, Benedetto reveals nasty secrets about Villefort that lead to his ruination in full view of the shocked spectators.
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| If looks could kill, Dantes' enemies would be nothing but ash heaps. |
Finally, Dantes buys a prominent newspaper, which he uses to expose Mondego’s sordid past -- the officer had betrayed and murdered an ally, Ali Pasha, stolen his fortune and sold his daughter into slavery. When Dantes shows up at the military inquiry into Mondego, the two antagonists quickly end up crossing swords, with the stiff-necked members of the military court shouting at them to desist, to no avail. (Up to this point the Count had been a behind-the-scenes manipulator. At least this climactic duel afforded Chamberlain the opportunity to show off more of the skilled swordsmanship he demonstrated in the Richard Lester films.)
Dante’s three main antagonists distinguish this version of Dumas’ tale. For a man who looked like a nondescript accountant, Donald Pleasence got very good at playing villains, often ones who hid their evil under a mask of ordinariness. Nearly a decade before Monte-Cristo, he gained huge exposure playing the very extraordinary Bond villain Blofeld in You Only Live Twice (1967). Not long after Monte-Cristo, Pleasence got a career boost as Dr. Loomis, psychiatrist and monster-hunter, in the original Halloween (1978), and would follow that up with four more appearances in the subsequent popular franchise.
His character Danglars combines an almost nauseating unctuousness with a quiet ruthlessness in pursuing profit (a good combination for success in our times as well as Dumas’). However, Danglar’s willingness to blindly follow the investment advice of his perceived superior, the Count, proves his fatal undoing.
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| Danglars likes the finer things in life, but it's all about to go bust. |
The Count faces another Bond villain, Louis Jourdan, as the royal prosecutor De Villefort (although Jourdan’s turn as Roger Moore’s nemesis in Octopussy was a few years down the road). Jourdan was the epitome of suaveness and courtliness, always adding an element of class to whatever he was in. He was especially effective as a villain, distracting his marks with old-world charm and sophistication even as he was plotting his heinous acts. (As such, he turns in a great performance as the titular character in the almost forgotten TV movie Count Dracula from 1977.)
True to form, Jourdan’s De Villefort is all smiles and silken reassurances that Dantes will only have to spend a night in custody -- all a formality of course -- even as he is arranging to have the unwitting Dantes carted off to spend the rest of his life in a dank dungeon.
In the courtroom scene, De Villefort is full of arrogant self-assurance as he walks into the Count’s trap. As the tables quickly turn and his dark secrets are revealed, the man's breakdown in full public view is all the more spectacular for his former smug confidence.
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| "Why I oughta....!!!" |
Tony Curtis as Mondego is, well, Tony Curtis. The only clue to the passage of time when Mondego meets up with Dantes as the Count is a dramatic streak of white in his hair. Curtis’ natural boyish charm (even in middle age) is on full display here, which highlights his character’s self-satisfaction -- after all, Mondego is a decorated war hero with a beautiful wife and handsome, strapping son. But the Count soon wipes the smirk off his face, as well as wiping up the floor with him in the climactic sword fight.
Feature film newcomer Kate Nelligan as Mercedes has a lesser role, but makes the most her great dramatic moment, when, realizing the real identity of the Count, she appeals to whatever humanity Dantes has left after her son, trying to uphold the dignity of the Mondego family, challenges him to a duel. Before the decade was out, Nelligan would secure the role of Lucy Westenra in the bodice-ripping, heart-throbbing Frank Langella version of Dracula (1979).
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| "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Oops, wrong movie! |
Chamberlain is impressive as the Count, wearing his cool, impassive mask over Dante’s seething thirst for revenge. He even manages ripe lines like “I shall move like the Sword of the Lord with a terrible swiftness,” without venturing into unintentional comedy. He’s at his absolute best in the late scenes with his lost love Mercedes, as it dawns on him that for all his wealth he’s still broken, and revenge has not made him whole:
Dantes: "That was simple justice, madam, and believe me it brought me no joy. But now my task's accomplished. I've no particular place in the world, no strong desire in life... but to make amends where I've hurt the innocent."
Mercedes: "Avenging angels may not ask forgiveness of their victims."
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| Mercedes mourns the soul-death of her dear Edmond. |
This version of Dumas’ tale, produced by the UK’s ITC Entertainment, was originally envisioned as a mini-series, but ultimately it was sold to NBC as a TV movie (although it did see theatrical release in parts of Europe). As in any adaptation, some characters and scenes from the novel don’t make it to the screen, and others are given short shrift. Some details are altered, e.g., the fates of Danglars and Mondego are switched. [Wikipedia] And, the sword fight between Dantes and Mondego at the climax is not in the novel -- but it was a good call to add it.
Like its namesake sandwich the Monte Cristo, the 1975 movie serves up generous portions of acting ham and cheesy dialog, but it’s so well made and sumptuous-looking, and the veteran cast so endearing, that, even with all the other adaptations floating around out there, it’s worth gobbling up, er, looking up.
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| Much like the sandwich, The Count of Monte-Cristo is a sumptuous feast for the eyes with a gooey, cheesy center. |
Where to find it: Streaming 1 | Streaming 2
